Sorry for the delay, everyone! The ChinesePod Integrated Chinese Blog is now back on track and will be here with you to finish off the semester!

Lesson 6 of Integrated Chinese is all about “Making Appointments.”

Dialogue I is called “Calling One’s Teacher.” As with most telephone conversations, it begins with the word 喂 (wéi). But wait a minute! If you look the word up in a traditional dictionary, you will find that the reading is “wèi,” and there may be no “wéi” reading at all! What’s going on here?

Don’t freak out, people. While many of us wish that each character had one tone and would never change, the reality is that Mandarin Chinese is a living, evolving language, and it does change. So in cases like this, rather than freaking out, just tell your self, “it’s the same character, but it sounds one way when you answer the phone, and another way on the street.” And that’s exactly how it works!

English is actually the same. We say “hello?” (rising tone) when we answer the phone, and we often say “hello!” (falling tone) when enthusiastically greeting someone. Same word, but different intonation for different words. The difference is that in Mandarin, 喂 (wèi - fourth tone) means “hey!” It can be pretty rude, as in, “hey, get out of the way,” or, “hey, what are you youngsters doing on my property,” or, “hey, watch where you wave that light saber, you jerk!”

So don’t let dictionary entries confuse you. If you want to look up 喂, you might try doing it here.

Dialogue II is called “Calling a Friend for Help.” Remember how we just focused on one simple word for all of Dialogue I? Well, we’re going to do the same thing here (and as it turns out, this expression was in Dialogue I as well)!

Let us now turn our attention to the simple phrase 请问 (qǐng wèn). It often gets translated as “may I ask…” or “excuse me, but….” These are fine translations, but if you’re like me, you’d kind of like to drill down, deconstruct, and see what you find. Cool!

Well, the expression is made of 请 (qǐng), which you probably know as “please,” and 问 (wèn), which you should know as “to ask.” So you put them together, and you get “please ask.” The thing is, you’re not asking someone else to ask — you’re the one that wants to do the asking. So when you deconstruct it this way, it might not make a lot of sense. That’s why we say to think of it as a chunk, meaning “may I ask…” or “excuse me, but….” Learn it early, because you’ll find it very handy for all your polite question-asking needs! If you can’t think of many uses, then by all means, let us help you!

And for the rest of this lesson’s vocabulary, here is your new Lesson 6 vocabulary list PDF:

• IC Level 1, Lesson 6 Vocabulary

As always, we like comments.

P.S. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a whole ChinesePod show dedicated to answering your questions, and it was aptly named Qing Wen (请问)?? Yes, we thought so too.

-John Pasden