"我叫张明，你叫什么名字？"
Translation:I am Ming Zhang. What is your name?
108 Comments
We are in a very very basic, simplest level .
Why does he have to pronounce so fast at this very early stage ?!?
It would be wonderful to have a progress bar underneath audio playbacks that function similar to YouTube videos: you could change the playback to 0.5x; and use the slider/pause to replay only parts of the sentence, back it up, and listen to just that section again (the accents of "什么名字" is throwing me off, but I have to play the whole thing just to listen to the middle section)
Same here. My best friend speaks chinese and i want to battle who can speak chinese better, but its so fast.
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That's true, although the speed is average or slightly slower than that. It'd be great to have a 0.25 to 2 speed playback option!
名字 means "name", so without it, it's "What are you called?" and with it it's "What is your name?" which are basically the same at least, that's from my understanding
How would the sentence look like if it were formed as "你叫什么名？ " - wouldn't it also be "what is your name?"
I wrote "what is your first name" and it got declined :-)
I don't know why 'what is your first name ' is marked wrong. We may not always say that in English, but it's cleanly what is meant, as opposed to 'xing' (?)
What?? No. Please do not go around saying wrong stuff like that at such an early stage. 你叫什么名字？See that 什么 is not at the end. It functions like "What name (are you called?)" As to the original question: you can't leave out the 字 from 名字 here
I'm a native speaker. 名字 means name. And it can be literally translated as " What name are you called?"
The tooltips give that as first name, leading us to believe the sentence asks for a first name.
It just doesn't sound so great to omit 名字, it's less formal. It's like "What're you called" vs. "What is your name?"
it does not matter whether or not you add the words '名字', in fact most native speakers just say, '你叫什么‘ trust me, i'm bilingual, learned both at the same time, just pumping exp rn
It would be more formal. But I feel we never really say that. We just ask "你叫什么"
adding 名字 makes it describe more to the topic without it the person your speaking to might say it in a answer you don't know or a answer you did not expect so if you add 名字 they know you are talking about their name.
Ming zi generally means the surname/last name. Jiao means the first name.
I thought that 'ming zi' refers to first name and 'hui xing' is surname, 'hui' being an honorific or added word of respect. I'm just a learner.
I don't get it very well.. 什么 means this is a question... each of this characters (什) or (么) means "what", and both together means "what" too... Could someone explain this a little better?
Don't even bother dissecting compound words when starting out. Many individual chars have their own meaning, but words rarely consist of only one character in Chinese. 玻璃 meaning "glass" is made up of what amounts to basically two nonsense characters that only mean glass when used together, but this means that sloppy dictionaries and such will still list either char as glass, regardless of the fact that they are barely ever used on their own.
什么 is fixed. As is the case with every language, there are plenty of synonyms such as 啥 or 何, but they require a certain context or register and shenme is much more ubiquitous in modern Putonghua.
I highly recommend you download the zhongwen pop-up extension for your browser, it features plenty of grammar notes, properly segments words and allows you to quickly look up characters without switching tabs.
Classical Chinese was largely monosyllabic. Modern Chinese is largely disyllabic. You will need two characters and two syllables to form most words nowadays. Even "what" in English is formed of two parts, the "wha" part that is the same as what we see in "who" and "why", and then a "t" neuter suffix.
I would have preferred if they structured these lessons the same way they did with French. These lessons were more difficult since they did not have any translation on the onset.
Yes, it might be easier to remember the characters if we knew what they meant when they were first being introduced. With this structure, you have to learn the character knowing nothing but the sound, and then try to associate that with a meaning in one or two questions in the last part of the lesson.
I find that it works best to just follow the course as it is. In my very short experience the course seems perfectly planned and repetitive enough to allow us to discover the subtle meaning of the different combinations and syntax involved... After all Chinese is not a language one can easily compare to Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Romanian, Portuguese or English, or to German. It is a different system and it requires a different approach both to teach it and to learn it.
I was frustrated at first, too. I started to write the Chinese characters as they were introduced. By the time, the meanings were given, the characters were familiar to my mind.
It might be helpful if they were fewer, yet for the Chinese word we simetimes must use more than one character. We do not have the advantage of a phonetic alphabet such Korean, Spanish or the Japanese katakana.
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As a tip: 1 character=字，2 characters=词，3 or more characters (can be) 短语，4 fixed characters=成语，more than four fixed characters (variable, can be) 谚语、歇后语……
"What's " and "what is" are literally the same thing and it said I used the wrong word?
How come they don't define these words before they ask you for definitions? I have absolutely no clue what I'm looking at and feel like I'm doing this wrong
I put "I am Zhang Ming, how about you?" and still got it wrong. Isn't that acceptable?
No. There is a character for "how about...?" 我叫张明，你呢？
It would, however, be reasonable to omit the repetition of "name" here.
Also, in Chinese the surname is said first so Zhang Ming translates to Ming Zhang.
How about you is not specific to identity or name. How is more about feeling or state of mind. Your sentence might happen also when you do not know the person next to you. Maybe you want to know how they like or dislike something you both saw, like a movie or performance.
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1 character=字，2 characters=词，3 or more characters (can be) 短语，4 fixed characters=成语，more than four fixed characters (variable, can be) 谚语、歇后语、俗语、名句……
Fixed characters often (always?) have "origin stories" or are taken from famous works of famous writers and authors e.g. poems and each 朝代 (era, dynasty) has its own form e.g. 唐诗、宋词、散文、小说 that was developed and perfected in that period of time.
A short (and not at all comprehensive) note on Chinese "words, phrases, idioms, sayings".
I would like pronunciation so you could actually say things right/know what hes saying
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I am not sure if the audio is working, but in any case the correct pronunciation is as follows:
Wo3 jiao4 Zhang1 Ming2, ni3 ne?
I don't understand why the tone of certain words, when given separately as a word recognition test, sound wrong. eg xing is written 4th tone, but sounds (to me) as definitely 1st tone. Yet when it's given in a sentence it does sound 4th tone. shi (written2nd tone) sounds to me as 4th tone. There seems to me - in certain words - a discrepancy between the tone in isolated words and in sentences. Also the consonant in shi in isolation also sounds like zhi. I realize consonants can be difficult to get right, though it does sound like 'sh' in the context of sentences, but it's the differences that are confusing, particularly in some tones. I know tones can change in a sentence (eg 'bu') but I thought words in isolation should be presented in their dictionary tone.
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Some of it is what you have to listen carefully and learn to recognised, but others are examples of when they differ from what you call their dictionary tone, e.g. 一 and 不 which can, depending on what follows, be tones 1, 2, 3 and 1, 2 respectively. There are also word with many tones or pronunciations or both with different meanings for each one. These are known as 多音多义字, e.g. 好 (hao3 or hao4) and 长 (chang2 or zhang3). Duolingo gives the dictionary tone and is generally pretty accurate to me, though I sometimes mute it as, for example, it is grating to hear the typical dictionary pronunciation when it is really something else.
I appreciate that, and thanks for your response. I do know that there are different reasons for modified tones. eg 爱好 (ai hao) where hao seems to change to 4th tone from 3rd, as you mention. But that I can assume is context, where hao adapts to help create the new meaning of 'hobby'. But I have listened carefully to the ones I referred to. I'm getting the answers right, but xing, shi, ren do sound wrong without any context to explain to me why they should be modified. Of course, my hearing might not be properly attuned yet to pick out the tones correctly.
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That is correct. I would suggest looking it up in a dictionary e.g. an online English-Chinese one, which should have the probable pronunciations and meanings for any character. A quick google search of the word or phrase followed by 读音 i.e. pronunciation, without a space in between, will generally yield the same result. It is not the most accurate but is pretty easy to find and use, and I find more than enough for duolingo.
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Both of these characters 明 and 名 seem to be pronounced the same, Míng. What is the difference? And hiw to distinguish them in speech?
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They sound the same but mean different things and so can be distinguished by context.
The audio says: My name is Zhang Ming", but the correct accepted answer is "My name is Ming Zhang," So I'm supposed to write down something different than what I hear? I understand surnames come first before given names but am I to believe it's written opposite of what is said? (as in this example)
Zhang is a surname, Ming is a given name. In Chinese, (native) surnames are written first and given names last; in English, given names are first and surnames are last—at least usually. When mentioning Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Hungarian names in English, the name order is flipped.
Like with any translation, I guess the idea is to keep the content of the message intact, but still to express it the way it would naturally be said in the target language. Otherwise, "Traduttore, tradittore!"
In the second sentence the word in English 'your called' should be really 'you're called'. It is a common spelling error in English.
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I think if you want to address DUOLINGO themselves you have to use the "report" option or else find the means to write to them directly. It has worked for me in the past.
The suggestion translation 'I'm Ming Zhang, what's yours?' isn't good English.
It marked me wrong only because my PUNCTUATION MARK wasn't the same as the answer! And there is no option to report that! This is irritating!
This sequence is once translated as "What is your name?", and yet in another instance as w"What is your full name?" ...
The clues do write "everything" under one of the characters, so I think that "What is your name?" or "What is your full name?" should both be accepted in both instances. Is there a reason why they shouldn't that I do not see? Thasnks moderators. DUOLINGO is great.
Suggest the translation "I am Ming Zhang" should be accepted. Was told I used the wrong word and corrected to "I'm Ming Zhang". It's easier to type "I am" than I'm" when using the phone app.
I guess what is and what's don't have any difference but it says that it's incorrect lol
on the "matching pages" or the "write in English" pages, the Chinese characters are too small
I said whats your name and it said it was wrong because what's is the same as what is?
I feel like there are few lessons in actually using Duolingo. Is there a way to be taught the words/phrases/grammar before being tested?
Would be great if we could have the phonetic spelling underneath the characters
good: I'm call Zhang Ming. what is your name? wrong: I'm Ming Zhang. What is your name?
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The audio for the last character in "What's your name?" just doesn't sound right to me. When you listen to the characters individually, it's pronounced like "fu," but when the sentence is put together, it's pronounced like "za." Am I missing something?
I'm just guessing at this point. Pronouns, verbs.... it's all mashed up with no explanations. Full phrases??? I guess I'm supposed to be subdued-- er, enlightened with repetition.
So you can bot traslate with the persons name in oppisite order Zang Ming instead of Ming Zhang?
"I'm" and "I am" are the same in English. First informal, the second formal.
Its very fast are they are giving us very long sentences in these early stages. The Chinese alphabets look like worms and bugs.
