Basic Mandarin for Beginners // Your First 100 Chinese Words and Phrases

Basic Mandarin for beginners comes down to about 100 high-frequency phrases covering greetings, numbers, directions, ordering food, and asking for help.

Learn them in pinyin (the romanised spelling system for Mandarin sounds) first, focus on the four tones, and you can hold real conversations within weeks, long before you tackle Chinese characters or the full 2,200 hours the US Foreign Service Institute estimates for professional proficiency.

Learning Mandarin may seem challenging, but a few key phrases can go a long way in making meaningful connections and navigating everyday situations.

Below you’ll find 100 essential Mandarin phrases, with characters, pinyin, and English, organised by situation. Greetings, numbers, directions, ordering food, asking for help: the phrases that actually come up in daily life.

Whether you’re asking for directions with 在哪里 (zài nǎlǐ), ordering local dishes in a restaurant, or seeking help in a tricky situation, this guide has got you covered.

Learn them out loud, a few at a time, and they’ll carry you through your first days in any Mandarin-speaking city.

💪 And if you’re looking to keep that momentum going in a structured environment, consider exploring longer-term study options in Beijing that balance practical use with deeper learning.

At LTL, we’ve been teaching Mandarin since 2007, in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and across Asia.

Our students hold a 98% HSK pass rate, and we’re accredited by IALC. We know what works for beginners, and it starts exactly here: real phrases, used in real situations.

Is Mandarin Hard to Learn?

Honestly? Yes, Mandarin is one of the more challenging languages for English speakers. The US Foreign Service Institute classifies it as a Category IV language, estimating around 2,200 class hours to reach professional proficiency.

But here’s what that number doesn’t tell you: you can hold a real conversation after a few weeks of focused study. You don’t need 2,200 hours before Mandarin becomes useful.

The four main hurdles beginners face are:

1. Tones. Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone. The same syllable means completely different things depending on how your pitch moves, so mā (妈) means ‘mother’ but mǎ (马) means ‘horse’. Getting them wrong is part of learning, everyone does it.
2. Characters. There’s no alphabet. Written Mandarin uses characters (汉字, hànzì). The good news: you don’t need characters to start speaking. Pinyin (the romanised phonetic system) gets you talking from day one.
3. No shared roots. Unlike French or Spanish, Mandarin shares almost no vocabulary with English. Every word is genuinely new.
4. Tones again. Seriously, tones. 😄

The neutral tone (轻声, qīngshēng) has no mark in pinyin. You’ll hear it on particles like 吗 in 你好吗 and on the second syllable of many everyday words: in normal speech 谢谢 sounds like xièxie. Hear every syllable in all four tones on our free pinyin chart.

The flip side: Mandarin grammar is remarkably logical. No verb conjugation, no gendered nouns, no plural endings. Once you know a word, it stays that word.

TIP💡 Start with pinyin and the 105 phrases in this guide. You’ll be surprised how quickly a few hours of practice builds real confidence.

Want to go deeper on the writing system? Check out our guide to Chinese characters and pinyin basics.

⬇️ Jump to the Basic Mandarin Quiz ⬇️

Basic Mandarin Phrases by Situation

Here are the words and phrases, grouped by the situations where you’ll actually use them. Each table gives you the characters, the pinyin and the English, so you can start speaking before you can read.

Basic Mandarin Greetings

TIP💡 In China, most foreigners adopt a Chinese name, teachers will give you one in your first class. Want to find yours now? Get your free Chinese name with our name generator 🎉

TIP💡 Want to sound more respectful? Swap 你 (nǐ) for 您 (nín), the polite ‘you’. Use 您好 (nín hǎo) with teachers, older people and clients, and you’ll hear hotel and shop staff greet you with it too.

Check out some alternate ways to say hello in Mandarin or some more about basic greetings in Chinese here.

Family and People in Chinese

Once you’ve said 我叫…, the next question is often about your family. Listen for the neutral tone: the second syllable of most family words is short and light.

Thanks and Related Phrases in Mandarin

Time-Related Phrases in Chinese

Asking Questions in Chinese

Basic Mandarin Numbers

TIP💡 Wondering how these phrases fit into the bigger picture? HSK 1 is the entry level of the official Mandarin proficiency exam. The old HSK 2.0 asks for 150 words, and the new HSK 3.0, which starts with the 13 December 2026 sitting, asks for 300.

Many words in this basic Mandarin guide, like 你, 好, 谢谢 and the numbers above, are HSK 1 vocabulary, so you’ve already made a start.

Test your HSK knowledge and see where you stand.

TIP💡 In Mandarin you can’t put a number straight in front of a noun. You need a measure word in between, and the all-purpose one is 个 (gè). It also follows 这 and 那, which is handy when you point at a menu, and with it ‘two’ becomes 两 (liǎng), not 二.

Ready for bigger numbers? Our guide to counting from 1 to 100 takes you all the way to a million.

Places in Chinese

TIP💡 These phrases will serve you across every Mandarin-speaking city, but the context changes. In Beijing you’ll hear 哪儿 (nǎr) instead of 哪里 (nǎlǐ) for ‘where.’ In Shanghai the local dialect bleeds into daily conversation.

In Chengdu, people speak a little slower, which many beginners find easier to follow. Want to study Mandarin across Chinese cities?

We run programs in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Xi’an, and more.

Vehicles in Chinese

Directions in Chinese

Learn the directions in Chinese here.

Likes and Dislikes in Chinese

TIP💡 One phrase people always ask about: 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ), ‘I love you.’ It’s direct and sincere in Mandarin, though in everyday speech many people show affection through actions rather than words. Still worth knowing 😊

Ordering in Chinese

TIP💡 Ordering food is where tones really matter. Getting the wrong tone on 要 (yào, ‘want/need’) or 炒 (chǎo, ‘stir-fried’) can cause real confusion.

TIP💡 Make sure you’re pronouncing your pinyin initials correctly, ‘x’, ‘zh’, ‘q’, and ‘c’ don’t sound like their English equivalents. Our Chinese Pronunciation Trainer is a great way to practise getting them right.

Food in Chinese

Basic Mandarin tip: Expressing that you are vegetarian or vegan can be difficult in China. A good way to be understood is to say you are Buddhist (佛教) fó jiào. Typically people will understand your diet if you say this.

How to Decode a Chinese Menu Like a Pro 🍜 Chinese Menus Explained + The Complete Cheat Sheet

Chinese Menus. How to read them, how to decode them? Not so easy right? Well with our FREE Chinese Menu cheat sheet and tips, you’ll have no problems!

Drinks in Chinese

PRO TIP || gānbēi (干杯) means “dry cup”, or to finish your drink. So be careful to use the term loosely.

Find out the most popular traditional Chinese dishes here.

Also when clinking glasses, be sure your glasses are at even level as high will indicate you believe yourself to be of higher status and lower will be interpreted as the opposite.

Misunderstandings in Chinese

🌍 Want to learn how to apologize in another language? Check out how to say Sorry in Japanese!

Help in Chinese

Fancy trying your hand at some other languages?

Check out our guide to the most basic Japanese phrases you need, useful Russian phrases and a beginners guide to Korean.

And what about Vietnamese? The popularity of the language is also growing quite fast. We teach you the absolute basics for Vietnamese here.

What Next? Build on These Basics

A phrase list is your starting point, not your finish line. Once these feel familiar, our essential phrases for beginners widen your range. If you want to move from memorised phrases to real fluency, immersion makes the biggest difference.

Studying in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu or another Mandarin-speaking city means you’re practising these phrases every single day: at the market, in taxis, at dinner. You live, breathe and dream the language.

Find your perfect Mandarin program, from one-week intensives to full semester courses across multiple cities.

Or if you’d rather start from home, our Flexi Classes platform offers live Mandarin lessons 24/7 with native-speaking teachers, in small groups or 1-on-1. Start your 7-Day Free Trial on Flexi Classes.

📥 Download the Chinese Beginner’s Ebook, free, practical, and written by our teachers.

📺 Learn Chinese with LTL on Youtube, short videos, pronunciation tips, and real classroom moments from our teachers across Asia.

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