What you will be able to do
- Say how many people are in your family with 口, and describe each of them.
- Choose the sibling term that carries the right relative age, and never reach for a generic one.
- Split 是 from 有: one identifies a person, the other says you have one.
- Ask an age three ways — 几岁, 多大, 多大年纪 — and match each to the person in front of you.
Chinese words in this text can be activated to show a dictionary gloss.
Talking about a family
Counting a household
- 。 Wǒ jiā yǒu sì kǒu rén. — There are four of us at home.
- ？ Nǐ jiā yǒu jǐ kǒu rén?
kǒu is the measure word for members of a household and it is used for almost nothing else. Outside the family the word for people is ge — sān ge xuésheng, liǎng ge péngyou — and the polite version is wèi, used for guests, teachers and customers: sān wèi lǎoshī. Saying of your own friends sounds oddly ceremonious.
Siblings are never generic
There is no word for brother or sister on its own. Relative age is part of the word, and you cannot avoid choosing.
- gēge — older brother. dìdi — younger brother.
- jiějie — older sister. mèimei — younger sister.
。 Wǒ yǒu yí ge gēge hé yí ge mèimei. — I have an older brother and a younger sister.
All four are reduplications, and in all four the second syllable is neutral: gēge, not gēgē. The same shape runs through bàba and māma.
The rest of the household
- bàba, māma — and fùmǔ for parents as a pair.
- érzi son, nǚ'ér daughter, háizi child.
- zhàngfu husband, qīzi wife. In casual speech lǎogōng and lǎopo are extremely common; they are warm rather than formal, and out of place on a form.
，，。 Wǒ yǒu liǎng ge háizi, yí ge érzi, yí ge nǚ'ér.
and
Two verbs, two jobs, and mixing them produces sentences that are hard to repair.
- shì identifies: 。 Tā shì wǒ gēge. — He is my older brother.
- yǒu possesses or asserts existence: 。 Wǒ yǒu yí ge gēge. — I have an older brother.
The negative of is méiyǒu, never : 。 Wǒ méiyǒu mèimei. This is the one verb in the language that refuses outright.
Age
suì carries the whole sentence — no verb is needed.
- 。 Tā jīnnián wǔ suì. — He is five this year.
- 。 Wǒ māma wǔshí'èr suì.
The question changes with the person:
- ？ Nǐ jǐ suì? — to a small child.
- ？ Nǐ duō dà? — to someone roughly your own age.
- ？ Nín duō dà niánjì? — to an older person, with .
Asking a stranger their age is far less loaded than it is in Europe, because the answer decides which term of address is appropriate. It is a practical question, not a personal one.
Dropping between people
is grammatical, but with family, close friends and institutions you belong to, the is normally left out: , , , . Keeping in these phrases is not wrong, only slightly stiff — and its absence is a small, cheap signal that you have listened to real speech.
How to work through it
Age is inside the wordread
Read the lesson and then describe your own family silently, in Chinese, before writing anything down. Notice how often you have to decide an age before you can pick a word — that decision is the lesson.
Everyone at the tablevocabulary
Eight cards, learned in four opposed pairs: 哥哥 against 弟弟, 姐姐 against 妹妹, 爸爸 against 妈妈, 儿子 against 女儿. Say each one twice, and let the second syllable go light both times.
Four in the house, two brothers, one is a teachersentence
Build a short paragraph out loud: 我家有…口人。 我有…。 我哥哥是…。 我妹妹今年…岁。 Five sentences is enough, and every one of them uses 有, 是 or 岁 — the three engines of this lesson.
Is one, has onequiz
Ten items. Six choose between 是, 有 and 没有 in a family sentence; four choose between 口, 个 and 位 for the people being counted.
Introduce a photographspeaking
Take a real photograph of your family and talk through it for one minute: how many people, who each one is, how old two of them are. Then answer three questions about it from a partner, one of which must be 你家有几口人？