Hello and welcome to Chinese Learn, Chinese lessons. Today, I would like to teach you a sentence and that is “How did you do that?”
So “How did you do that?” in Chinese is, “ni shi zen yang zuo dao de?” I know it’s a little bit long which has got seven characters. I use seven pronunciations. But, if you just learn how to pronounce each individual character with the correct pinging and the correct pause we can put them together in no time. So it will probably take you a little bit time to master this sentence, but it’s going to be useful when you meet Chinese friends.
“ni shi zen yang zuo dao de”, so again this has been a request on Twitter or comment in YouTube. So I recommend everybody to send me a comment on YouTube or request on Twitter for words you want to speak in Chinese and I can transform them into such kind of lessons for you and you can learn some Chinese sentence.
So let’s have a look at how do you read, write and communicate “ni shi zen yang zuo dao de” into Chinese.
Okay, so let’s have a look at this sentence “ni shi zen yang zuo dao de”. So as you can see that “ni” means you, “shi” means are or in some cases it means yes, confirmed or is. “zen yang” the third and the fourth character altogether means how, so this is just one word. “zuo dao” the fifth and the sixth character altogether means achieved and “de” the last character of this sentence doesn’t have an actual meaning but it is there to fulfill the need for the grammar.
So in Chinese grammar, asking a question has exactly the same order as making a statement and that’s why you put how in the middle, not in the front of this sentence. So in Chinese grammar, it is not “how are you achieved?” It is, “You are how achieved?” It’s exactly like saying you are achieved this way was exactly the same order.
Let’s have a look at each individual character. So as we can see, the first character “ni” means you. So the pining is N I and the ni is with the third tone. So as I have taught this character in many lessons, ni is a left and right structure of character. So the right and left beat and then you write at the top of the beat and the bottom of the right beat and you put all the components together to form this character “ni”. It is the third tone. So listen to me for three times long pronunciations and three times short pronunciations in order to master the tone of the sentence.
Okay, that’s fantastic. Let’s have a look at the next character, shi. So shi means yes or ah in this case. It is a top and bottom structure so the way you write it is to write the upper component and then the lower component. And as long as you can put them together and it looks like shi, you are fantastic in writing this character.
Let’s have a look alt the next character zen. As we can see, this is again a top and bottom structure character. So the way of writing this character is to write the upper bit and then the lower bit. And as long as you can get the components right and put them together, it becomes a character.
Let’s have a look at the next character, yang. So as you can see, yang has a very similar pronunciation as yang in English. So yang is again a left and right structure and each one is a different component. So the way is to write from the left component to the right component.
That’s fantastic. Let’s have a look at the next character zuo. So zuo is one of those harder to write chinese4 characters because it’s got three components, the left, middle and the right. And the way of writing this character is to write from left to middle to the right components. So you can basically just put the components together in order to form this character.
That’s fantastic. We’re almost at the end of the characters. So let’s have a look at this character dao. So dao is again a left and right structure character. And for the left bit components, there are two components as well. So it has the upper component and then the lower component for the left side and then you have another component at the right side. So the way of writing this character is from top to bottom and then from left to right.
So let’s have a look at the last character de. So as I mentioned, it doesn’t have an actual meaning and it is again a left and right structure character. So all you need to do is to write the left components and then the right component. And as long as you can get the components right, it doesn’t really matter with the order of the lines.
So altogether, “ni shi zen yang zuo dao de?”
Okay. That’s fantastic. Now I believe you have already mastered the tongue, the pronunciation and the writing of this sentence, “ni shi zen yang zuo dao de?” At the moment, I’m also constructing a formal course to teach you some basic Chinese skills like reading and writing especially in the pronunciations and the writing of the characters and also some common phrase in Chinese. So I hope you enjoy my course when it comes out. And until next time, please feel free to subscribe to my channel and rate my lessons.
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