Greetings:

Ni hao - Hello. I think everyone knows this saying, literally translated as “you good” meaning “Hello”.

Ni hao ma? –How are you?“ma” is a “yes” or “no” question word that you can add at the end of the sentence to make it a question. For instance:“Ni shìKelly.”means “you are Kelly.” while“ni shìKellyma?”means “Are you Kelly?”

Okay, if people say“Ni hao ma?”to you, you can answer back:

“Wo hen hao”(I am good), if you are doing fine. But if you are not, you can say:

“Ma ma hu hu”(so so), literally translated as “horse horse tiger tiger” and I believe that this phrase can be listed as one of the top 10 popular expressions among westerners. You are probably wondering why horse and tiger can form the meaning of “so so”. Here is a short story to explain why: In ancient China, there was a painter who drew a horse, and he was very happy with his work, so he asked his friends to come over and appreciate his work, but after seeing the painter, one of his friends said: “The tiger you drew is very good!”…so which means his painting was actually just “so so”.?

Or you can answer“Wo hen máng”(I’m very busy) or“Wo hen lèi”(I’m very tired”

Apologies:

Duì bù qi—Sorry, or excuse me.

Méi guan xi –Doesn’t matter.

Méi wèn tí—No problem.

Appreciation:

Xiè xie –thanks

Bù kè qi / bú yòng xiè --you are welcome

but literally these mean “no need to be polite / no need to say thank you”.

In China, somehow “politeness” = “distance”. We think if a person is being too polite, it makes people feel like this person is trying to put certain distance between himself and the others. So very different from western culture, in Chinese tradition, the closer you are, the less polite you are. For example, I hardly say “thank you” or “sorry” to my parents…difficult to imagine, huh?

It took me quite a while to get used to saying “thank you” all the time when I just started to work with westerners, and now after many years, saying “thank you” is like a natural reflex for me, but when I sometimes say thank you to my oldest friends from my school days, they feel very uncomfortable and distant and look at me as if I’m a stranger !?

So I think the ideal situation for our society should be: being polite to taxi drivers, waiters, shop assistants, Ayis, etc, but not being too polite to your friends and families. Easy to do?

So when to be polite or not, that is the question! What do you think?

Kelly Wang is author of this article on Learning Mandarin. Find more information about Studying Mandarin Online here http://www.accentmandarin.com/online.asp.