How to Say "May I ask, Can you speak English?" in Mandarin

Hello and welcome to Chinese learn Chinese lessons. Today I would like to teach you a very useful sentence and that is “May I ask, do you speak English?” So, may I ask, do you speak English? In Chinese: Qing wen, ni hui jiang ying yu ma? May I ask do you speak English? That’s fantastic. So let’s have a look at each Chinese characters. Okay, so let’s have a look at the characters of this sentence. Qing wen, ni hui jiang ying yu ma? So the first characters “Qing wen” means “May I ask” which means “May I ask”. So its quite that common Chinese phrase to say “May I ask” Which is very polite. So “Qing” means “May” or to make a request. “Wen” means ask. “Ni Hui” the third character mean “you”. “Hui” the fourth character means “can”. “Jiang” the fifth character means speak. “ying yu” the sixth and the seventh character means English. So “ying yu” means English or British. “Yu” means language. So all together, “ying jiang”, English language which as simple as just English. And “ma” the last character is there to represent a question is that overstatement. So in Chinese again we have same order for the questions and statements. So depends on whether you have the “ma” at the back, it represents a question or a statement. It’s fantastic. So let’s have a look at each individual character. The first character “qing” means to make a request or simply “may”. So you can see there is the left and right structure. So you write the left bit and then the right upper bit and the right lower bit. So as demonstrated that’s the way you write it. [Demontration] For the pinyin it is quing so “q”pronounce “chi” in Chinese pinyin. “ing” pronounce “yung” altogether, “chi yung”, “chi yung” with the insert “tong” which is like a v-shape going from up t down and then up a bit. “Chi yung” or in a shorter version, “Chi yung”. You’re fantastic. Let’s have a look at the second character “wen” So you can see that “wen” is like an outer and then an inner structure. The ay of writing this character as demonstration is from out to in. [Demonstration] So if you have a look at the pinyin, it is”w-e-n” top is pronounced “w” and e-n. That’s “en”, “w” “en”, “wen”, “w” “en”, “wen” with the force on going from p to down it is “wen”, “wen”, which in a shorter version, “wen”,”wen”, “wen”. Have you mastered that? You’re fantastic. If you haven’t, don’t worry just practice for a little bit more. So let’s have a look at the next character “ni”. “Ni” again it’s a left and right structure. So you can see this in the demonstration. There it goes from left to right, up to down. [Demonstration] And the pinyin is “N-I” so “n” pronounced “N” and “I” pronounce “E” the “E” “NI” with the insert tone that goes from up to down and then up again. It is “NI”, “NI”, in a shorter version, “Ni”, “Ni”, and “Ni”. Okay, I hope you have already mastered it but again, if you haven’t mastered it in this stage, you just need to practice with yourself a little bit more. So let’s have a look at the next character “hui”. “Hui” means “can”. Again it is upper and lower structure, so the way of writing this character is from up to down and you can see the ran components put in together as one character. [Demonstration] So the pinyin is “H-U-I” which pronounce “HUI”, “HUI”. So “H” pronounce, “H” and U-I pronounce “UI”, “UI”, “UI”. With the force which goes from up to down it is “HUI”, “HUI”, and “HUI” with a shorter version, “Hui, hui, hui”. You are fantastic. Let’s have a look at the next character which is “Jiang” which means speak. “Jiang” is also a left and right structure. The left component and the right component put together in order to form this character as we have in this demonstration. [Demonstration] So we can see that “Jiang”, “J-I-A-N-G” for the pinyin. So “J” pronounce “J” and “I” pronounce “I” and “A-N-G” pronounce “Ang”, so altogether, “J-I-ANG”, “Jiang”, “J-I-ANG”, “Jiang”. With the insert tone which goes from up to down and then up again. “Jiang”, “Jiang” “Jiang” with a shorter version. “Jiang”, “Jiang”, “Jiang”. The next character is “Ying”; “ying” again is an upper and lower structure so the way to write it from upper component to the lower component as you can see there from the demonstration. [Demonstration] So you can see that “ying” is again Y-I-N-G. So “Y” pronounce, “Yi” and “ING” pronounce “ING”. So altogether, “Ying”, “Ying”, “Ying”, “Ying”, and “Ying” which is the first tongue take is going from totally flat. So in a shorter version, “Ying”, “Ying”, “Ying”. Okay, so the next character is “yu”. So “yu” again it’s a left and right structure and you can see that from the demos ration. How do write this character from different components and put together into one character? [Demonstration] So “Yu”, the pinyin is Y-U. so “y” pronounce “yi” and “u” doesn’t really pronounce “oo” this time because “U” in this case pronounce “Yu”, “Yu”, “Yu” with the insertone there is going upper to lower and then upper again. It is “yu”, “yu”, “yu” and the shorter version “yu”. That’s great. Let’s have a look at the last character already. This character is “Ma’. And again, it is a left and right structure with different components. You can see in the demonstration how do you write it. And in fact, I really love this demonstration because it gives you exact data order of writing this character. [Demonstration] So “Ma”, if you have a look at the pinyin, it is M-A. So “m” pronounces “meh” and “a” pronounces “a”, “Meh-a”, “Ma”, “Meh-a”, “Ma”. And again as I have mentioned, “Ma” doesn’t have an actual meaning. It is there to represent a question. So the tone is tone of no tone which means you whisper this character, so altogether, for three times, “Ma”, “Ma”, “Ma”. You’ve been a great audience for mastering the sentence. So let’s pronounce the whole sentence once more. Qing wen, ni hui jiang ying yu ma? Okay, that’s fantastic. I believe now you have already mastered the tones, the pronunciations, the writing and the meaning of this sentence. Qing wen, ni hui jiang ying yu ma? So that’s the lesson for you today. So until next time please feel free to subscribe to my channel and rate my video. I’m working hard on a cost to provide some Chinese skills especially for the pronunciations, the tones, the Chinese characters and the grammar. So I’ve got lots and lots of Chinese dialogues, conversations, sentence input in order to provide you’re everything you need for basic Chinese skills. And if you are not satisfied, I’m going to provide some tools for you to learn Chinese by yourself, until next time. [Foreign Language]