The 50 Most Used English to Chinese Words List
Chinese Words List
One of the quickest ways to become fluent in any new language is by learning some of the most useful vocabulary words so you can immediately begin communicating. You will be able to make yourself understood on a basic level, and then navigate onward from there. So what are the 50 most used Chinese words? It depends on the situation. If you’re going to a restaurant, for instance, you’ll want to know words that will help you order something to eat. If you’re traveling to China, you’ll need to know travel words and phrases so you can get around without too much trouble. The point is, you need to make up your own list. In this article, we’ll give you a general Chinese words list to cover some commonly used terms. [caption id=“attachment_130969” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]
Chinese Characters
Chinese can seem like a rather daunting language, particularly when you’re starting out. Unlike English, in which you only have to tackle 26 alphabet letters, there are over 60,000 characters in the Chinese language. The bounty of characters has baffled the Chinese themselves, and there probably aren’t that many Chinese people who are completely well-versed in all 60,000, who use the 60,000 characters every day as part of their regular spoken and written vocabulary. This is a boon for the Chinese language learner. You only need to know about 3,000 to 5,000 of these characters to pass as reasonably well educated in the language. Knowing 3,000 characters would help you read a modern Chinese newspaper, and knowing 5,000 characters would help you get started with a Chinese literary work.
Chinese Words
The characters are used to form the words. Let’s look at fifty of the most useful words for you to know:
1. (to) Study - xuéxí
2. Afternoon - xiàwŭ
3. Age - suì
4. Airport - fēijīchăng
5. Book - shū
6. Breakfast - zăocān
7. Brothers - xiōngdì
8. Cafe - kāfēiguăn
9. China - zhōngguó
10. Chinese - zhōngwén
11. Chinese characters - hànzi
12. City - chéngshì
13. Country - guójiā
14. Dinner - wăncān
15. Direction - fāngxiàng
16. Doctor - yī shēng
17. English - yīngyŭ
18. Evening - wănshàng
19. Father - fùqīn
20. Friend - péngyou
21. Good - hăo
22. Goodbye - zàijiàn
23. Hello - nĭ hăo
24. Help - jiùmìng (call for help)/bāngzhù (need help)
25. Hospital - yīyuàn
26. Hotel – lǚguăn
27. I - wŏ
28. Mister- xiānsheng
29. Money - qián
30. Month - yuè
31. Morning - zăoshàng
32. Mother - mŭqīn
33. My - wŏ de
34. name - míngzi
35. No - bù
36. Please - qing
37. Police - jĭngchá
38. Restaurant - fàndiàn
39. Room - kèfáng
40. Shop/Store - shāngdiàn
41. Sisters - jiĕmèi
42. Taxi - chūzū qìchē
43. Teacher - lăoshī
44. Thank you - xièxie
45. Vehicle - chēzi
46. Water - shuĭ
47. We - wŏmen
48. Word - zì
49. Year - nián
50. Yes - shi
The key to learning is to make these words part of your everyday conversation. The more you use a language, the more proficient you become at it.
Resources
Here are some sites that can help you learn Chinese: BBC - Chinese Image by qgadrian from Pixabay