Lesson 1: Ni Hao

No, you do not need to bow when saying this.

Ni Hao ahhh yes..ni hao… everyone knows this one. John Cena, Mark Zuckerberg and even Kawhi Leonard are a part of this group — see links below (I recommend Kawhi Leonard (3rd link 0:15)

Mark — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTmHtOSqHTk&ab_channel=KiniTV

John — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1RqxR872uw&ab_channel=WWE

Kawhi — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kURy9lPQtSU

In the Chinese characters themselves 你好. Easy enough right? You just like need this stroke, then you do that one put two dots and then yeah put a line through it and voila you have it. Got it? Great let’s move onto something else!

Ok yeah maybe it wasn’t that easy…how about something that is? Some numbers

So numbers are real easy but take a long time

One = “一”

Two = “二”

Three = “三”

Four = can you guess what it is?

Well, if one is one stroke and two is two… well then four is four right? This is just too easy

Yep congrats you’ve now got the number system down. All you need to do is write the number of strokes of the number you want and you’ve got it. So when you want to write 1,928,703 you know what you’ve got to do.

Ok this is total bs. The first three numbers may follow that, but the rest certainly don’t. 1,928,703 is actually

一百一二十九万八千七百零三

The point of these two examples above is to really say one thing about Mandarin: It is difficult. You are learning a completely different style of language where there isn’t an alphabet as we have in English but rather a character system comprised of different strokes. So, on your journey learning Mandarin give it time!

Key takeaway: Mandarin takes a long time to learn be patient!

Oh and now you know the first three numbers

一， 二， 三