你 (nǐ). This translates to the second person singular “you.”. 好 (hǎo). This translates to “good” or “well.”. Thus, 你好 ( nǐ hǎo) literally translates into “you good.”. The key takeaway here is that “hello” in Mandarin includes a subject and you’re allowed to change that subject depending on who you’re talking to! Chinese Pinyin example sentence with 身体 ( shenti / shēntĭ ) ⓘ Writing in Pinyin Before using this Pinyin example sentence, consider that Chinese characters should always be your first choice in written communication. If you cannot use Chinese characters, it is preferable to use the Pinyin with tones. Grass Mud Horse. The Grass Mud Horse ( Chinese: 草泥马; pinyin: cǎo ní mǎ) is a Chinese Internet meme and kuso parody based on a word play of the Mandarin profanity cào nǐ mā ( 肏你妈 ), which literally means "fuck your mother". Homophonic puns are commonly used in Chinese language as silly humor to amuse people, and have become an A direct translation is 你好吗？ ni hao ma? But you will find Chinese native speakers never use it to greet people, generally, they will use 你怎么样？ ni zen me yang? or 你最近怎么样？ ni zui jin zen me yang? Add: or 好久不见！ Hao jiu bu jian (Long time no see) It's also pronounced with different directions in tone. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but when you say "ni", the tone in your voice gets lower, while when you say "hao", it goes down then up. If you say it the wrong way it could come out to some really weird literal translations. For example, "ma" can mean horse, a question mark, mom p70wC.

ni hao ma chinese characters