Beginner's Guide to Talking About Directions in Mandarin

Avoid getting lost by learning directional vocabulary with ChinesePod’s Jillian Steward. In this video lesson, follow Jillian around NYC’s Chinatown as she goes over commonly used vocabulary that will allow you to ask for directions, as well as talk about common objects you will find on the street. Read more to view the video and read the review vocabulary and grammar points!

Don’t forget to scroll below once you are done watching to view this lesson’s vocabulary list and grammar point!

Selected Vocabulary

Direction

方向 | Fāngxiàng

Street Corner

街口 | Jiē kǒu

Intersection

路口 | Lùkǒu

Grammatical Point: Is it far? Is it close?

Have a look at this sentence from the lesson:

Excuse me is Doyers St. far?

请问Doyers街远不远? | Qǐngwèn Doyers jiē yuǎn bù yuǎn

First off, let’s break down the above sentence to it’s individual components:

• 请问 | Qǐngwèn = Excuse me 
• Doyers街 | Doyers jiē = Doyer’s Street 
• 远不远 | yuǎn bù yuǎn = Is it far?

Take a closer look at ‘Is it far’:  远 | yuǎn shows up twice. 远 is the character for ‘far’. When you add a 不 | bù in front of yuǎn, it means ‘not far’. Combine these two (远 + 不远) and it would literally mean “far not far”. However, this structure actually indicates that you are asking the question ‘Is it far?’ This grammatical structure of “verb + not verb” indicates a question… think of it like this “Is it far or not?”

Check out the below sentence for another example:

Is it close?

近不近 | jìn bù jìn

This question follows the exact same structure as above: 近 is the adverb for close/near, and to ask “Is it closeby?” you would literally say “close not close”.

Now that you have the vocab and grammar down from this video, check out some of the vocabulary and grammar points from Jillian’s first video, which you can view here.

Supplementary Vocabulary

East

东方 | dōng fāng

West

西方 | xī fāng

South

南方 | nán fāng

North

北方 | běi fāng

Supplementary Grammar Point: Using Mian versus Bian

When talking about something being in front, back, to the right or left of you, you are presented with options based on the space that you are giving direction to/towards.

For example, have a look at front:

Front

前 | qián

前面 | qiánmiàn

前边 | qiánbiān

As you can see, you have the option of using just qian, qian + mian or qian + bian. Qian would be used for anything in front of you.

So, in what circumstances would you use mian or bian? Let’s start out with defining each individual character.

• 面 | miàn  = Surface/2-D 
• 边 | biān = Edge/2-D

There are certain collocations that you will see more then others because mian describes a surface area (think 3-D) and bian desribes an edge (think 2-D). However, when it comes down to it, it does not really matter which word you use. The most frequently used collocations are highlighted in red below.

Front

前 | qián

前面 | qiánmiàn

前边 | qiánbiān

Back

后 | Hòu

后面 |  Hòumiàn

后边 | Hòubiān

Right

右 | Yòu

右边 | Yòubiān

Left

左 | Zuǒ

左边 | Zuǒbiān

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