dear ..., 谢谢！（email)
goulnik
August 15, 2007, 05:04 PM posted in General DiscussionI've been exchanging quite a few emails in Chinese with Vera (my CPod coach) and a few friends, it's all very informal. But I'm gearing up to sending more and more emails to colleagues in Shanghai and I'd like to know what patterns people routinely use.
In English you'd start off with Dear (Ms/Mr/Dr X) / Dear (firstname) / Dear colleague(s) / Dear all, and you'd end with Sincerely yours / Best/Kind/Warm regards / Thanks / Cheers / Thx / Bye etc. from formal to very casual depending on context.
I've only found a few Chinese equivalent so far, not sure how common they are :
尊敬的(姓+位): dear (last name+position)
(名字)你好: hi (first name)
亲爱的同事们: dear colleagues
位亲爱的同事：dear all
…
诚挚的 sincerely
谨此致候 best regards
谢谢! thanks
拜拜! bye
And there's a few set phrases and abbrevations one uses, FYI, ASAP, BTW etc.
What do you use?
tianfeng
August 15, 2007, 05:10 PMmany = man
amber
August 17, 2007, 09:42 AMIf addressing someone in a higher position than you, you could use: “尊敬的” “Zūnjìng de” For example, the letter intro could read: 尊敬的王总： Zūnjìng de Wáng zǒng： 您好！ Nín hǎo！ If you're just writing to your colleagues: 各位（亲爱的）同事： Gèwèi (qīn'ài de) tóngshì： 你们好！ Nǐmen hǎo！ or: 亲爱的同事们： (Qīn'ài de tóngshì men：) 你们好！ Nǐmen hǎo！ If you're just writing to one person, you can say: 王先生： 你好！ When writing to a friend, you can use: （亲爱的）＋名字： (Qīn'ài de) + míngzi: .... for the conclusion of the letter, it would be best to use this common phrase: 此致 (Cǐzhì) 敬礼！(Jìnglǐ!)
goulnik
August 17, 2007, 10:15 AMThanks Amber, that's brilliant. To tell you the truth, the experience within my company so far has been rather disconcerting. For every email I've been sending to my 上海分公司的同事们 in Chinese I received an answer in English. I'm thinking ok, my Chinese isn't good enough, they're trying to be helpful. But I mentioned it to Vera this morning and she said lots of joint-ventures in Shanghai have a policy that all company email be in English. Gotta check but if it's the case then there's hope, it's nothing personal ;-)
babliku
August 17, 2007, 04:50 PMCheck this out man haha: http://www.xinminss.moe.edu.sg:1285/chinese/gonghan.htm I also learnt that to be respectful, you can sign off with your name followed by 启or 敬启, but I haven't actually used it in a real situation before.
babliku
August 17, 2007, 04:58 PMok I realise I'm Lord of Off-topic. Forgive me, I can't suppress my superpowers.
tianfeng
August 15, 2007, 05:10 PMI use the every unpopular 名字+同志。 It drives people crazy because they think I don't understand and they try to explain it to me without really getting into it and I continue to play dumb for even more fun. It is a wonder I have as many friends as I do. Many I can be annoying in Chinese.