Posts tagged language

Living among Chinese-speaking Taiwanese for a year left me with these ten—and at least ten more—useful phrases, which I’m able to pronounce correctly and naturally after hearing them daily.

Click on the links to hear audio, but I think my extremely accurate academic phonetics in quotes should suffice!

1. THANK YOU—“She A she A”

2. I LOVE YOU—”Woah eye knee”

3. STREET—”Lou”

4. GOOD/OK—”How”, which you often hear repeated rapidly the way we say “Good, good, good”

5. YES—”Do aye”, same goes for this one—say it five times fast—you’ll sound fluent!

6. I DON’T UNDERSTAND—“Tieng Boo Dong”

7. I/ME—”Woah”

8. YOU—”Knee”

9. HELLO—“Knee how” in person, or, if you’re answering the phone, “Waaaaaaaay?”

10. WHERE—”Nah Lee?”