How to say good morning in Chinese, already

Flag of China.

I went to a bilingual Mandarin-English toastmasters club in Singapore. I heard the convener saying what sounded like, 'knee how?' and everybody replying, 'How!'

I asked what that meant and a new friend told me, "It is a greeting. 'Knee how' is 'you good' and 'how' is 'good'."

What was easy to understand and remember. It stuck. the equivalent of the English, 'how are you?', and the reply, 'fine, thank you,' or, 'good, thank you'.

This week I met a Singaporean lady who knew Mandarin. I said to her: "Good Morning. Knee how!"

She replied, "Woe how!'

Ah! I remembered that wo means I in Mandarin. Chinese sentence construction is very simple and succinct. Chinese is hard to pronounce with unfamiliar words, but a little vocabulary goes a long way.

I noticed that when she spoke to me in English, she kept ending sentences with the English word already. I thought, that must be a direct translation from Mandarin. Shopkeepers often say, "No more already" when an English shop assistant would use the phrase, "Sorry, we've sold out,' or, "We're out of stock''. So I reckoned that already is a handy word to either use of recognize, because it crops up so often.

Wo how means I good.

English - Chinese (Mandarin)
I - wo
you - ni
good - hao
how are you - ni hao
I am fine (thank you) - wo hao
I put the thank you in brackets because it is not in the Chinese, so a direct translation would not include the thanks. but if any Chinese readers wants to know the correct English, they should be aware that it sounds polite to add thanks, and rude to fail to do so.

Mandarin - English
wo - I
ni - you
hao - good
ni hao - how are you (literally 'you good?')
wo hao - I'm fine/well/good

Good morning
morning
already

早上好
早上
已经

Zǎoshang hǎo
zǎoshang
yǐjīng

The z in when said by my new friend 'Maggie' sounded like sz, like Suzie without the u.
The first time I repeated the word as sow-shang, she told me, "If you say it like that, people won't understand you."

So I repeated the word, more like Z at the start.
better. but she repeated the vowel.

I adding the dipped vowel sound, a bit like asking "really?", with your voice going low and then up at the end of the word.

That seemed to do the trick. Once you know the sound to listen for, you can listen to other people talking. or practise with every person you meet, until the pronunciation becomes automatically correct.

If I were to learn just one word a day, that would be about 300 a year. After three years I would know 900 word. In ten years I would know 3.000 words.

Chinese is spoken in China, Taiwan and Singapore. (Hong Kong, more Cantonese.)


Flag of Singapore.

Just 150 words learned if we are stuck at home for 6 months. Or stuck at home for 14 days and get in the habit of learning a word or two every day. The same applies to any other language you care to learn.

With many people stuck at home because of the coronavirus, a great opportunity to learn a language. So that when we are able to travel, we enhance our enjoyment with our command and understanding of another language.

Useful Websites
google translate
duolingo

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages