After learning how to say hello or thank you in Chinese, the next phrase on your list is probably please. Thankfully, saying please in Chinese consists of only one character, meaning that it is only one sound. That is the good news, but the bad news is to come. The challenge with saying please is not only speaking the right sound, but also saying it with the correct tone.
Information on the Tone
Tones, put simply, are the song of the voice as you speak a character in Chinese. If you think of those brief songs as a required element to speaking Mandarin, then you have the concept of this language set correctly in your mind. While there are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, we'll examine what it's like to say the third tone because it is the one used to say please.
Another way that you can identify the third tone is by calling it the falling and rising tone, and you'll soon see why. If you want to speak this tone correctly, you must lower the pitch of your voice to a low tone and then bring it back up again to a pitch that is higher even than the one you began with! Even though the sound is quite unique, it does resemble a grunt of frustration. Think of someone who is saying, "No!" when they mean that "That's not how things are at all." When you have the image clear in your mind, you're on your way to speaking the third tone.
How to Pronounce Please
Using the PinYin system, you can say "qing." But, for those not quite familiar with this system, you can instead think of the sound as a combination of the two sounds "ch" and "ing." With these together, you'll just need to add the tone to the sound.
Putting it All Together
Since your voice needs to lower and then rise, figuring out which sound to use for the turnaround at the bottom can be a challenge. For native speakers, this thought never enters their mind because saying characters with tones comes pretty naturally to them. For those of us learning it as a foreign language, it seems a little tricky.
In my opinion, using "i" as the turn around point makes it much easier to say this character. That means, of course, that you'll be saying "q" or "ch" on the way down, and using "i" for the turn around. That way, on the way back up, you can simply add the "ng" from "ing" to make the phrase complete.
Grammar Note
One small point to remember when it comes to grammar is that "qing" often comes at the beginning of the sentence in Mandarin. While in English, we often find the please at the end or beginning of the sentence, for Chinese it usually comes as the first or second character. You'll want to keep this in mind as you add please to your sentences in Mandarin Chinese.
Information on the Tone
Tones, put simply, are the song of the voice as you speak a character in Chinese. If you think of those brief songs as a required element to speaking Mandarin, then you have the concept of this language set correctly in your mind. While there are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, we'll examine what it's like to say the third tone because it is the one used to say please.
Another way that you can identify the third tone is by calling it the falling and rising tone, and you'll soon see why. If you want to speak this tone correctly, you must lower the pitch of your voice to a low tone and then bring it back up again to a pitch that is higher even than the one you began with! Even though the sound is quite unique, it does resemble a grunt of frustration. Think of someone who is saying, "No!" when they mean that "That's not how things are at all." When you have the image clear in your mind, you're on your way to speaking the third tone.
How to Pronounce Please
Using the PinYin system, you can say "qing." But, for those not quite familiar with this system, you can instead think of the sound as a combination of the two sounds "ch" and "ing." With these together, you'll just need to add the tone to the sound.
Putting it All Together
Since your voice needs to lower and then rise, figuring out which sound to use for the turnaround at the bottom can be a challenge. For native speakers, this thought never enters their mind because saying characters with tones comes pretty naturally to them. For those of us learning it as a foreign language, it seems a little tricky.
In my opinion, using "i" as the turn around point makes it much easier to say this character. That means, of course, that you'll be saying "q" or "ch" on the way down, and using "i" for the turn around. That way, on the way back up, you can simply add the "ng" from "ing" to make the phrase complete.
Grammar Note
One small point to remember when it comes to grammar is that "qing" often comes at the beginning of the sentence in Mandarin. While in English, we often find the please at the end or beginning of the sentence, for Chinese it usually comes as the first or second character. You'll want to keep this in mind as you add please to your sentences in Mandarin Chinese.
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