Learning Chinese with Idol Producer: Simple Introduction

IT’S A LEARN CHINESE COMEBACK! I know I have neglected this column for some time, but I was kind of busy and after all of the work it took to put together the other posts, I was tiredddd so that’s my excuse. In any case, give me some feedback about this post and let me know what you want in these Learn Chinese columns so that I can tailor them for you guys (look at my final words also to see more about what to comment about).

This is probably going to be replacing my reviewing column because I’m only one person and I’m not about to sacrifice my brain for this blog so that’s pretty much it.

So today we will be going over how to introduce yourself! I know I already released a prior post about it but that was just the written words~ Here’s where you can get an idea of how to introduce yourself in context.

I feel like there are already a lot of great resources out there for learning Chinese, so instead of just writing the same things they do, I hope you will actually learn how to speak and write from the shows that I feature. There are a lot of subtitles in Chinese shows already, so a lot of the times, if there are also English subtitles, you can pause the video and speak along with the people speaking already, or study the Chinese words shown at the bottom by using your context clues and identifying the words you already know.

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Lesson Objectives:

Today, hopefully you will come away from this post with the following:

• A simple greeting that you can use to greet other people casually
• How to introduce yourself and your name casually
• How to state where you are from (This is probably not a must have in every introduction but it is good to know)

There are various ways to state each of the following, and if you are a basic learner you can at least come away with the basic sentences and basic concepts and if you are more advanced you can learn pretty much all the ways I have suggested below as well as additional methods which have been linked to~

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Start the vid from 1:13 and stop at about 1:23

After you watch the video and read the post, try repeating after Chen Linong and also make sure you understand all of the concepts that were in this post.

¹Chen Linong: 老师们好 [lǎoshīmen hǎo]
²Lay: 你好 [nǐ hǎo]
³Chen Linong: 我是来自[insert entertainment company]的陈立农。你们可以叫我农农。
[Wǒ shì láizì [entertainment company] de chénlìnóng. Nǐmen kěyǐ jiào wǒ nóng nóng.]

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First of all before we begin, this show is called Idol Producer or 偶像练习生 and is based off of the Korean Produce 101 where 101 boys come together and compete for the audience’s votes. There are judges who evaluate the contestants’s performances but they do not decide who wins. The vote of the audience decides which boys eventually form a final boy group. Only nine people are selected at the end out of 101 people (in this case a few people quit before the show so I don’t think there is exactly 101 people in Idol Producer). The episode clip you are watching comes from the first episode where each person has an initial audition and is placed into a specific level based off of their performance. This is only their initial rankings and is subject to change. Chen Linong was one of the contestants while Lay was the main host and also a judge of the show.

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The first thing we should probably go over is the 2nd line, 你好 [nǐ hǎo]. For those of you who are here without context, you can visit my previous Introduce Yourself post, but this literally translates to “you good” and means “Hello”. This is a typical way to greet another person.

Before this though, Chen Linong says 老师们好   [lǎoshīmen hǎo]. This means “Hello Teachers”. Teachers is a way to refer to someone who is respected and knows more about a specific topic than you. When you greet other people, besides saying the generic “Hello”, you can also direct your greeting specifically to someone.

Examples of this in Context:

Grace好 –> Hello Grace
Susan好 –> Hello Susan
Claire,你好 –> Hello Claire (this is more of if you are speaking directly to the person)

Basically, as long as you attach 好 to a subject (as in a person name or a type of person such as a teacher) you are greeting them. You can also attach 你好 to the end of a subject. Typically 好 is enough if you are just casually greeting someone.

Last sentence: 我是来自[insert entertainment company]的陈立农。你们可以叫我农农。
[Wǒ shì láizì [entertainment company] de chénlìnóng. Nǐmen kěyǐ jiào wǒ nóng nóng.]

*I was honestly too lazy to type out the entertainment company name and it isn’t that significant anyways so ;3

This translates to “I am Chen Linong from [entertainment company]. You guys can call me Nong Nong.”

When you’re introducing your name, you should say something along the lines of:

Note: The words in blue are words that you would substitute for your own name. I’m just using Chen Linong as an example since his video was basically what this post was about.

我叫陈立农。[Wǒ jiào chénlìnóng]
This would literally be translated as “I am called Chen Linong” but it basically means “My name is Chen Linong”

我的名字是陈立农。[Wǒ de míngzì shì chénlìnóng]
This literally means “My name is Chen Linong”

我是陈立农。[Wǒ shì chénlìnóng]
I am Chen Linong.

Or if you want to get technical, Chinese people usually introduce their surnames first and then introduce their full name.

我姓陈，叫陈立农。[Wǒ xìng chén, jiào chénlìnóng]
My family name (surname) is Chen, my name is Chen Linong.

And if you want to get more technical, you can also introduce the characters in your Chinese name (if you have a Chinese name or want to just make one up if you ever visit China or something lol)

我姓陈，叫陈立农。立是立刻的立。农是农历的农。[wǒ xìng chén, jiào chénlìnóng.]
My family name (surname) is Chen, my name is Chen Linong. Li is the li as in immediately and nong is the nong as in lunar calendar.

As you can see there are a lot of ways you can introduce your name.

But what if you have a nickname?

Here’s something Chen Linong said that you can say too.

你们可以叫我农农。[Nǐmen kěyǐ jiào wǒ nóng nóng.]
You guys can call me Nong Nong.

Now, how do you say where you come from?

Chen Linong said “我是来自[insert entertainment company]的陈立农。” and while this is correct, I personally think there are better ways to phrase it in everyday conversation.

How to say where you are from:

我是来自America. [Wǒ shì láizì America.]
I am from America.

我来自America. [Wǒ láizì America.]
I am from America.

The two words 来自 are your main words when you are saying where you come from. It is typically used after the subject (I) and before where you come from.

If you are trying to say a specific place within America like Ohio, start with the bigger place and then slowly get more specific.

Example:

我是来自America的Ohio州。[Wǒ shì láizì America de Ohio zhōu]
I am from Ohio, USA.

Use the word 的 to state the more specific place within the generic place that you are from. Remember that Chinese typically goes from bigger to smaller when you are talking about location.

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Key Vocabulary in this Post

While I’m not going to be going over all of the specifics of each word, I do want to touch on each word’s meaning and pseudo-pronunciation. I highly recommend working out words on your own which includes looking at radicals, pronunciation, and remembering what each character is by practicing your writing.

老师 [lǎoshī]- Teacher
你好 [nǐ hǎo]- Hello, hi (remember that typically you can just use “好” to greet someone)
可以 [kěyǐ] – Can
叫 [jiào]- Call
来自 [láizì] – Come from
名字 [Míngzì]- Name
姓 [xìng]- Surname/family name
是 [shì]- Am

Vocabulary that you Should Know:

我 [wǒ] – I
的 [de] – This is a word that creates a possessive word. When you place this with a subject,  subject+的 means her/him, etc.
你们 [nǐmen] – You guys. When you add 们 to a subject, it changes the subject and makes the subject plural. This is only used when you are talking to a group of people or maybe even talking about a group of people like “them”.

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Putting it All Together | Sample Introductions

Try reading these through in your head to see if you can place every word and also see if you can read it out loud (given the earlier video clip). The bolded words are words that we did not learn, but you can learn them yourself.

1) 你们好，我叫Grace，来自美国的印第安啊州。

2) 你好，我姓陈，叫陈可。可是可以的可。我来自中国。你们可以叫我可可。

3) 老师好，我是张一来。我姓张，一是一二三的一，来是来自的来。我来自USA，请多多关照。

4) 你们好，我叫陈立农，来自台湾。

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More Links:

http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/how-to-introduce-yourself-in-chinese-business

• This link contains further information on how you can introduce yourself

https://blogs.transparent.com/chinese/introduce-yourself-in-chinese/

• Full sample introduction

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Related Shows:

Idol Producer was the show featured in this post. I think if you search it up on YouTube you may be able to find it. Produce 101 is a similar show, but their first season features girls.

Idol Producer (偶像练习生)

Produce 101 (创造101)

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I think that’s it for this post. Let me know if you liked this post and what I can do to improve! Thank you for reading.

If you would like me to teach you guys Chinese through a specific show, let me know in comments! I might try just “studying” one show with you guys if you guys want that (as in writing post over every 10-20 seconds of the show). If you guys want more in-depth explanations, I can also provide that as well. Let me know what you guys want, and I’ll basically tailor my posts to what helps you guys learn more. If there are enough people who want me to continue this column, I will probably just host a poll about which show I should be following with these columns.

I think in the meantime I’ll just be pulling from random shows like Happy Camp, Idol Producer, Produce 101 and other stuff that I watch that week, unless you guys want something different~

Farewellll and see you next week!