Learn Mandarin Chinese Lesson 2 – How to Say Where Are You From in Mandarin Chinese
In this lesson you’ll learn how to ask somebody where they’re from in Mandarin Chinese. To ask somebody where they’re from say: nǐ cóng nǎr lái de (你从哪儿来的?). In Mandarin nǐ means you. We have learned that many times in previous lessons. To character cóng (从) means to come from. The two characters nǎr (哪儿) put together mean where. The “r” sound is typical to Bejing. In southern China and in Taiwan you would say nǎ lǐ (哪里).
Personally when I speak Mandarin naturally I say it the Taiwan way but I used the Bejing way in the video as Bejing Mandarin is considered the proper Mandarn, or Standard Spoken Chinese. The character lái (来) simply means to come. Make sure you get the second tone right on this one. The last character de (的) is simply a particle and means of or from in Mandarin Chinese.
I hope this video on learning to ask somebody where they are from in Mandarin helped. In the next video we’ll go through the countries so you’ll actually be able to tell people where you come from in Mandarin Chinese! Good luck!
November 5th, 2009 at 6:59 am
I’m from the Philippines and i’m 14 years old. I would like to thank you because I learned some mandarin words. Hope you can teach me more and soon I can speak well.
I have no money to enroll in chinese school. Our income is not sufficient.