Mandarin Grammar
Make a Phone Call
Learning Objectives
Learn how to talk about weather in Mandarin Chinese.
Learning Video
Additional Notes
When you are calling or answering a call over phone, what do you say in Mandarin?
You can say " 喂, wéi ", it means "Hello".
However, be careful you should pronounce " 喂, wéi " in an up tone. If you pronounce " 喂, wéi " in a down tone, it might make your phone-call receiver feels that you’re angry with your receiver.
After your phone call getting connected, you can say: "你在干嘛呢, nǐ zài gàn má ne?" (What are you doing?).
In Mandarin, you can say:
你在干嘛呢?
nǐ zài gàn má ne?
What are you doing?
"你在干嘛呢, nǐ zài gàn má ne?" is an informal but common way to say "What are you doing?"
" nǐ " means you
"在...呢, zài... ne" is a structure used to indicate an action is in progress
"干嘛, gàn má" is a verb-object form, literally means "do what".
How do you respond when a person says, " What are you doing ? ”
You can reply using "在...呢, zài... ne" phase.
A grammatical structure is as follows:
Subject + "在, zài" + verb-object form + "呢, ne"
(主语 + 在 + 动词宾语词组 + 呢)
In this structure, the Subject can be "我 (I)", "我们 (we)", "他 (he)", etc.
Let’s take more examples.
If you are watching TV while receiving a call, you can say
我在看电视呢。
wǒ zài kàn diàn shì ne。
If he is making a phone call, you can say
他在打电话呢。
tā zài dǎ diàn huà ne.
If we are eating Chinese food, you can say
我们在吃中国菜呢。
wǒ men zài chī zhōng guó cài ne.