How to address people in Mandarin Chinese

In this lesson, Lucky teaches you the dos and don'ts regarding addressing people. Find-out more at HowToChinese.com!

How to address people in Mandarin Chinese: Video #20 Transcript

Wanshang hao, my good student. Today our focus is on how to address people in Chinese.

In formal occasion:

Westerners put the titles before their surnames,but for Chinese people this is totally different. We put the titles after our surnames. In this case

Mr.Chen would become Chen Mr.Chen xiānsheng王先生 .
Miss Zhang would become Zhang Miss Zhang xiǎojiě张小姐in Chinese. Mr. is xiānsheng, Miss is xiǎojiě.

You can put surnames before xiānsheng or xiǎojiě,while you can also put full names before xiānsheng or xiǎojiě. For example:

Hú xiǎojiě 胡小姐 , Hú Shān xiǎojiě 胡珊小姐 ,hu is the surname,hu shan is the full name. Wú xiānsheng吴先生, Wú yuan xiānsheng吴远先生,wu is the surname and wu yuan is the full name.

In informal occasion:

Xiansheng and xiaojie are used in very formal occasion, when people know each other well and in informal occasion, older people are commonly to be addressed by their surnames with lǎo老'old'in front. By contrast, younger people are being addressed by their surnames with xiǎo小'little'in front:

Xiǎo Hú Young Hu 小胡
Lǎo Wú Old Wu 老吴

Special addresses:

For showing some respect and intimacy, relative addresses are commonly used in our daily life. For example even to unfamiliar people, we can also address

shūshu叔叔'uncle',
āyí阿姨'aunty',
dà xiōngdi大兄弟'old brother',
xiǎo xiōngdi小兄弟'young brother'
dà jiě大姐'old sister'.

So don't be curious why Chinese people have so many relatives when you hear about this in China.

For some addresses need to be careful though:

In Chinese, there are a few addresses need to be paid more attention.

1. xiǎojiě

If xiǎojiě is used after the family name to address a lady, there isn't any problem, but if you only use xiaojie alone,then you need to be careful.Because Chinese people also address prostitutes as xiǎojiě. So it represents an unrespectable status for girls

2. tongzhi

Tóngzhì is a very usual address between adult people, meaning comrade but now it's more commonly used to refer to gays in Chinese.

3.furen vs taitai vs laopo

Fūrén was used as a formal ancient address to mean wife while tàitai is its modern equivalent. Lǎopó on the other hand is used mostly between friends during informal meetings and sometimes doesn't necessarily means wife... it's used jokingly to refer to one's girlfriend as a wife.

4.How to address your wife or husband's parents

In China, if you get married, then you should also address your wife or husband's parents as fùqīn and mǔqīn in formal occasions while bàba or māma for informal occasion in Chinese. fùqīn and bàba both mean father, while mǔqīn,māma both mean mother.

Chinese Fact

Throughout Chinese history, wealthy and well respected men often had many concubines in addition to their wife who usually managed them on his behalf. In fact, it wasn't unusual for Chinese emperors to have large harem made-up of hundreds of concubines!

Good class ! Your homework for today -- tell me some interesting addresses in your culture.Don't forget to subscribe to channel. Baozhong.