Does the red one look nice?

Basic expressions

Mary is shopping in Beijing, looking for a coat. Today’s dialogue is carried out between a shop assistant and Mary.  The shop assistant is trying to persuade Mary to buy a coat. Let’s learn the new expressions in the dialogue first.

A surnames is appeared before xiăojie小姐 Miss, such as

                Lǐ xiăojiĕ 李小姐              Miss  Li

                Zhào xiăojiĕ  赵小姐         Miss  Zhao

                Wáng xiăojiĕ 王小姐         Miss  Wang

More colours are given below:

       lǜ                    绿            green

       huáng              黄            yellow

       lán                   蓝           blue

       zǐ                     紫           purple

       fěn                   粉          pink

       bái                   白          white

       hēi                   黑          black

       zōng                棕           brown

       huāde              花的       mingle-colours

 Hăo好good can precede verbs of action to imply nice to as in hăotīng 好听nice to listen.

 Duō多is followed by a stative verb to form an expression which shows speaker’s admiration, such as 多好看how beautiful!

 A duplicated verb is pronounced in neutral tone. A duplicated verb of action phrase implies that 1) an action which lasts for a short time, it is similar to V+一下such as in

      wŏ kàn kan jiù   gĕi    nĭ.

   a. 我 看  看    就    给    你。

    I  look look then give you

I’ll have a look (for a little while first) and I’ll give it to you;

2) it is used to soften the tone of voice as in

        ná     qù gĕi   tā  kàn kan.

    b. 拿     去 给   她  看   看。

    take go give her look look

Take it to her and let her have a look.

The latter one is often used when a verb is placed at the end of a sentence. A duplicated verb is pronounced in neutral tone as indicated above.

tĭng 挺 very is similar to hĕn很. tĭ