100+ Basic Chinese Phrases for Beginners: Greetings, Travel, Pronunciation & More

Key Takeaways

• For a short trip, about 35 well-chosen phrases cover polite survival; around 80 make travel comfortable; 100+ give you confident everyday basics.
• This guide teaches Mandarin, the standard spoken variety of mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore, with each phrase in a Chinese, pinyin, and English table.
• The biggest beginner traps are register (你 vs 您) and the wrong "sorry" (对不起 vs 不好意思), so those are shown mistake-first.
• Tones change meaning (买 mǎi "buy" vs 卖 mài "sell"), but context rescues most slips; you mainly need a few tone-sandhi rules.
• Learn by situation, shadow native audio for tones, and space your reviews so the phrases actually stick.

Basic Chinese phrases are the high-frequency Mandarin expressions that let you greet people, be polite, travel, and handle daily life before you ever study grammar or characters, which is why they are the fastest route from zero to actually speaking. This guide groups 100+ of them by real situations, from greetings and travel to love, business, teaching, and pronunciation, each laid out in a simple Chinese, pinyin, and English table you can use today.

I. Why Learn Basic Chinese Phrases?

Learning basic Chinese phrases lets you handle the highest-frequency situations of a trip or daily life, such as greeting people, being polite, ordering food, asking directions, and paying, without studying grammar or characters first. For a short trip, about 35 well-chosen phrases cover polite survival; around 80 make travel comfortable; 100+ give you confident everyday basics. Most beginners stall not because Chinese is too hard, but because they lack a system, and a situational phrase bank is that system.

Think about what a small set actually unlocks. Thirty-odd phrases already let you say hello, say thank you, ask "how much?", find a toilet, order a dish, and get help. That is most of a travel day handled, without a single grammar lesson. The reason phrases beat grammar for absolute beginners is simple: you speak from day one, and speaking is what builds confidence and memory. Characters can wait, because Chinese is written and spoken as two separable skills, and you can hold a conversation while reading almost nothing.

How many basic Chinese phrases do you really need? It depends on the goal, so match your target to your trip before you scroll:

• Around 35 phrases (survival): greetings, thanks, sorry, numbers, directions, and ordering. Enough to be polite and get through a short holiday.
• Around 80 phrases (comfortable travel): add hotels, transport, shopping, and simple conversation. You can travel independently without freezing.
• 100+ phrases (everyday confidence): add self-introduction, questions, emergencies, and a few niche sets, and you can hold basic everyday exchanges.

One more thing before the tables. This guide teaches Mandarin (普通话, Pǔtōnghuà), the standard spoken variety used across mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore and spoken by roughly a billion people. All pronunciation here uses pinyin, the romanization system that writes Chinese sounds in the Latin alphabet with tone marks (like nǐ hǎo). With the target set, start where nearly every conversation starts: the everyday essentials.

II. Everyday Essentials: Greetings, Politeness & Simple Conversation

The everyday phrases you will use most are a politeness system first and a vocabulary list second, because the beginner's real risk is not forgetting a word but picking the wrong register (你 vs 您) or the wrong "sorry" (对不起 vs 不好意思). The five groups below are ordered to fix those choices before you memorize the lines, so you sound polite rather than merely correct. Here is how to greet people, thank them, apologize, introduce yourself, and ask basic questions, each as its own table.

1. Greeting Phrases (你好, 您好 and More)

The real beginner trap in greetings is register, not the word 你好 itself. 您好 (nín hǎo) is the respectful "hello" you owe elders, teachers, officials, and customers, and defaulting to 你 (nǐ) everywhere can sound blunt to people who expect deference.

Pronunciation & register tip (你 vs 您): Use 您 (nín) for elders, teachers, officials, and customers to show respect; use 你 (nǐ) for peers and friends. Using 你 with an older stranger is not offensive, but it can read as blunt, so 您 is the safer default when in doubt.

Note that 拜拜 (báibái, borrowed from English "bye-bye") is the casual goodbye younger speakers actually use in texts and quick farewells, while 再见 stays the neutral standard.

2. Saying Thank You & You're Welcome

Beginners learn 谢谢 but freeze when someone thanks them back, so learn each thanks together with its standard reply. The most common response you will hear and use is 不客气 (bú kèqi, "you're welcome").

Reach for 不客气 as your default reply; 不用谢 works too, and 没关系 (méi guānxi) softens things when someone apologizes rather than thanks you.

3. Apologizing & Excusing Yourself

The common error is treating "sorry" as one word. Natives split it: 对不起 (duìbuqǐ) is for real fault, 不好意思 (bù hǎoyìsi) is for minor social friction like interrupting or squeezing past, and 抱歉 (bàoqiàn) is more formal or written. Beginners who use 对不起 for everything sound over-apologetic.

Pronunciation & usage tip (对不起 vs 不好意思): Say 对不起 only when you actually did something wrong, like stepping on a foot or breaking something. Use 不好意思 for everyday friction: getting a waiter's attention, interrupting, or asking a stranger a question. Overusing 对不起 is the classic beginner tell, so let 不好意思 carry most of your light "sorry" moments.

4. Introducing Yourself & Basic Conversation

The lines that actually keep a beginner afloat are not the introductions but the repair lines: "I don't understand," "please slow down," and "say it again." Memorize those three first, because they buy you time in any conversation.

Swap 美国人 (Měiguó rén, American) for your own country, but keep the three repair lines at the top of your list. In our teaching experience, learners who drill "please say it again" early stay in conversations far longer than those who only memorize their self-introduction.

5. Asking Questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How)

Chinese questions are easier than English ones because word order does not change. You keep the statement's order and either add 吗 (ma) or use the verb-not-verb pattern, so question-building is really two fixed moves rather than dozens of sentences to memorize.

How do you make a yes/no question? You have two options, and both keep the word order fixed: add 吗 (ma) to the end of a statement (你好吗？"are you well?"), or use the verb-not-verb pattern (你是不是学生？"are you a student?", literally "you are-not-are student"). Pick either one and you can turn almost any statement into a question. Once you can ask, you can travel, which is where the biggest phrase bank comes in.

III. Basic Chinese Phrases for Travel & Tourists

Two things carry a traveler further than any word list. First, one reusable pattern: "[place] 在哪里？" ("where is...?") answers most navigation questions once you learn to swap the noun. Second, one modern reality: cash is increasingly refused in China, and QR-code mobile payment dominates, so you will need the "can I pay by app?" lines as much as the polite ones. The seven groups below follow the sequence of a real trip: arrive, move, sleep, eat, shop, count, and handle trouble.

1. Directions & Getting Around

One pattern does most of the work here: "[place] 在哪里？" Learn it once, then swap in any destination noun and you can ask where almost anything is.

Drop any noun into "…在哪里？" and you have a new question: 地铁站在哪里？(where's the metro station?), 酒店在哪里？(where's the hotel?). One frame, dozens of questions.

2. Taxis, Tickets & Transport

The phrase that protects a tourist most in a taxi is 请打表 (qǐng dǎ biǎo, "please use the meter"), which heads off the fixed-price overcharge. Pair your destination line with it every time.

Name your destination first, then ask the price, so the driver knows the route before money comes up.

3. Hotel & Accommodation

Hotel check-in in China always needs your passport (护照, hùzhào), so keep it in hand along with these core room phrases.

Have the passport ready before you reach the desk, because staff are legally required to register foreign guests at check-in.

4. Ordering Food & Dining Out

You do not need to read a menu to order. "我要这个" (wǒ yào zhège, "I want this one") plus pointing covers it, and 不要辣 (bú yào là, "not spicy") saves spice-sensitive diners from a painful surprise.

When you cannot read a single character on the menu, point at a dish or a neighbor's plate and say 我要这个. It works every time.

5. Shopping & Bargaining

Two context rules matter more than the words. Bargaining works at street markets but not in malls or chain stores, and most vendors expect mobile QR payment, so learn to ask about both the price and the app.

Try 太贵了 followed by 便宜一点 at a market stall, but do not haggle in a supermarket or brand store, where prices are fixed.

6. Numbers, Time & Money

Chinese numbers are a system, not a memory list. Once you know 1 to 10 plus 百 (bǎi, hundred) and 千 (qiān, thousand), you build the rest by stacking, so ten words unlock almost any number.

Numbers stack logically: 二十 (èrshí) is "two-ten" = 20, and 三十五 (sānshíwǔ) is "three-ten-five" = 35. Learn the pattern once and you never memorize a number again.

7. Emergencies & Asking for Help

Beginners misuse 救命 ("save me") for minor trouble, but 救命 (jiùmìng) is for life-threatening danger only. For ordinary help you say 帮帮我 (bāngbang wǒ, "help me"), so keep the two apart.

Save these emergency numbers too: 110 for police, 120 for an ambulance, and 119 for fire. With travel handled, three smaller phrase sets round out real life: love, business, and the classroom.

IV. Basic Chinese Phrases for Love, Business & Teaching

These three contexts share the same politeness system but flex it in opposite directions. Love is intimate and informal (你), business is formal and ritualized (您 plus set phrases like 请多关照), and the classroom runs on clear instructions in both directions. Grouping them together shows how one system bends to fit the situation, so here are the phrases that fit each.

1. Basic Chinese Love Phrases

Handle 我爱你 with care, because 爱 (ài, "love") carries far more weight than the English "I love you". It signals serious commitment, while 喜欢 (xǐhuan, "like") fits early dating, so do not jump to 我爱你 too soon.

Early on, 我喜欢你 says what you mean without overcommitting. Save 我爱你 for when you truly mean it.

2. Basic Chinese Phrases for Business

Business Chinese is defined by register and ritual, not vocabulary. Always use 您 (nín), lean on set phrases like 请多关照 (qǐng duō guānzhào), and present your business card with both hands to signal respect.

请多关照 has no clean English equivalent; it politely asks the other side to look after the relationship, and it lands well at the end of a first meeting.

3. Basic Chinese Phrases for Teachers & the Classroom

Classroom phrases run both ways. Students greet with 老师好 (lǎoshī hǎo, "hello teacher"), and teachers greet the class with 同学们好 (tóngxuémen hǎo, "hello students"), so learn the response side as well as the instruction side.

老师好 is the standard greeting a whole class says together when a teacher enters. All of these phrases only work, of course, if you say them with the right tones, which is where many beginners get nervous.

V. Tones & Pronunciation: Saying Basic Chinese Phrases Correctly

Here is the reframe that calms most beginners: tones do change meaning (买 mǎi "buy" versus 卖 mài "sell", or 妈 mā "mother" versus 马 mǎ "horse"), but context rescues the vast majority of slips, because no one orders a horse at a shop. The real must-learn is not tone perfection but the handful of tone-sandhi rules that make memorized phrases sound natural. So this section moves from why tones matter to the few changes you actually need.

1. The Four Tones + the Neutral Tone

Anchor the whole tone system on one syllable. Said five ways, "ma" means five different things, which is exactly why every table above carries tone marks.

One syllable, five meanings. That single set is the whole argument for reading the tone marks in every phrase table, not just the characters.

2. Tone Sandhi & the 不 / 一 Changes

Tone sandhi is why "nǐ hǎo" is actually said "ní hǎo": a tone shifts based on the tone that follows it. A beginner needs only three of these rules, and each one is tied to phrases already in this guide.

You do not write these changes with the tone marks; they happen in speech. That is why hearing native audio matters so much, because it makes the shifts automatic long before you could reason them out. Which raises the practical question: how do you actually drill all this fast?

VI. How to Learn Basic Chinese Phrases Fast (+ PDF & Audio)

The goal is not to cram 100 phrases in a night but to learn them so they stay. Retention comes from chunking phrases by situation, shadowing native audio for the tones, and spacing your reviews, so the method below is ordered by what actually makes phrases stick, not by what feels fast.

1. Learn by situational chunk, not isolated words. Study a whole table (greetings, or ordering food) as one scene, because your brain recalls "the restaurant set" far more easily than six random words.
2. Listen and shadow native audio. Play a phrase, then repeat it aloud immediately, copying the pitch. Shadowing is how you internalize tones and sandhi without memorizing rules.
3. Space your reviews. Revisit each set after a day, then a few days, then a week. Spaced repetition fights the forgetting curve better than one long session.
4. Practice in real or role-play situations. Say the lines out loud, ideally in a mock dialogue, so recall happens under mild pressure the way it will on a trip.
5. Save an offline copy plus audio. Keep a PDF and audio on your phone for when you have no signal, so you can review in a taxi queue or before you walk into a restaurant.

Do the first four in short daily bursts rather than one marathon, and the fifth turns dead time into practice.

Pronunciation is the one part you cannot reliably self-check, and that is exactly where AI helps. Prep's proprietary Chinese pronunciation AI, ATLAS, analyzes your initials, finals, and tones down to the phoneme, and its Chinese Dialogue Shadowing feature lets you shadow and role-play real dialogues with pinyin you can toggle on or off, while the Teacher Bee AI assistant answers your questions 24/7. You can learn Chinese and practice HSK with AI pronunciation scoring, coming soon on Prep.

VII. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A few questions come up again and again once beginners start using these phrases, so here are direct answers to each.

1. How Many Basic Chinese Phrases Do I Need to Get By?

For a short trip, about 35 well-chosen phrases are enough to be polite and handle the basics: greetings, thanks, directions, ordering, and numbers. For comfortable daily travel, aim for around 80, and 100+ gives you confident everyday conversation. The right 35 phrases matter far more than a random 100, so start with the greetings, politeness, and travel tables above rather than trying to learn everything at once.

2. Is "Ni Hao Ma?" (你好吗?) How Native Speakers Really Say "How Are You?"

Not usually. 你好吗 (nǐ hǎo ma) is grammatically correct but sounds textbook-stiff between people who already know each other. Native speakers more often greet with 你吃了吗？(nǐ chī le ma? "have you eaten?") or 最近怎么样？(zuìjìn zěnmeyàng? "how've you been lately?"). 你好吗 is not wrong, and it is fine with someone you have just met, but it is rarely how friends actually say hello.

3. Do These Basic Chinese Phrases Work in Cantonese?

Mostly no, not for speaking. These are Mandarin phrases, spoken in mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore, while Cantonese (Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong) sounds very different even though it shares most written characters. For example, 你好 is "nǐ hǎo" in Mandarin but "néih hóu" in Cantonese, so the pinyin in this guide will not match Cantonese pronunciation. If your trip is to Hong Kong or Macau, you will want a Cantonese resource instead.

4. Can I Get These Basic Chinese Phrases as a PDF with Audio?

Yes, and it is worth it. Saving these phrases as a PDF is genuinely useful for offline study on a trip when you may have no signal, and pairing them with audio is essential, because tones cannot be learned from text alone. To check whether your tones are actually right, AI pronunciation feedback helps: Prep's Chinese pronunciation AI analyzes initials, finals, and tones down to the phoneme, and you can learn Chinese and practice HSK with AI pronunciation scoring, coming soon on Prep.

VIII. Conclusion: Start Speaking Chinese Today

You already have enough to speak: the roughly 35 survival phrases, the greetings and politeness set, and a few tone rules let you handle real situations from day one. The fastest progress does not come from adding more phrases but from saying the ones you have out loud and shadowing native audio until the tones feel automatic. Pick one table today, the greetings or the travel set, and say every line aloud twice. When you want your tones checked so those memorized phrases actually sound native, you can learn Chinese and practice HSK with AI pronunciation scoring, coming soon on Prep.