Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Start speaking Chinese in minutes and grasp the language, culture and customs in just minutes more with Chinese survival phrases, a completely new way to master the basics of Chinese. To get more Chinese lessons and for free, go to chineseclass101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account. Signing up takes less than a minute and you will find more great lessons just like this one. To get more free Chinese lessons, go to chineseclass101.com
Hi guys, today we are going to go over explaining to a pharmacist or a doctor the symptoms you have when you are sick. Before we talked about getting an ambulance and going to the hospital. Once you get to the hospital, you need to tell them what’s wrong with you. If you are bleeding from your head, it’s going to be a pretty obvious what was wrong and they will know what to do but if you are throwing up, if your stomach feels awful, how do you tell them this, how do they know what’s wrong with you. The same is true for the pharmacy. You go to the pharmacy, you want to buy some medicine but you don’t know what kind of medicine to buy. It’s all in Chinese. So you need to tell them what’s wrong with you and then they will tell you what medicine to take. So let’s say you get into the pharmacy and your stomach hurts a lot. How do you say this? The first phrase today is, my stomach hurts. In Chinese this is, 我肚子疼(Wǒ dùzi téng.) So you come into the pharmacy, you wait in line maybe and then when you are trying to talk to the pharmacist, you hold your stomach and you say 我肚子疼(Wǒ dùzi téng.) She will understand this means my stomach hurts and she should be able to recommend medicine. Let’s go over this phrase. The tones are 我(wǒ) third tone, falling rising tone, 我(wǒ).肚(dù) fourth tone, falling tone, 肚(dù). 子(zi) has no tone, 子(zi). 疼(téng) is the second tone, the rising tone, 我肚子疼(Wǒ dùzi téng.). Literally component by component, this is 我(wǒ) I or me, 肚子(dù zi) means belly, stomach or intestines and 疼(téng) means to hurt. To be in pain. So altogether I stomach hurt or my stomach hurts, 我肚子疼(Wǒ dùzi téng.) Now like most of the phrases we learned you can just substitute other nouns into this phrase. This 疼(téng) or 我疼(wǒ téng) So you can switch out 肚子(dù zi) and put in 头(tóu) which means head. So you can say 我头疼(Wǒ tóu téng.) and that means my head hurts. 头(tóu) second tone, the rising tone,头(tóu), 我头疼(Wǒ tóu téng.), my head hurts. Another symptom is a fever. So let’s do that one. Fever is 发烧(fā shāo), you can say I have a fever, 我发烧了(Wǒ fā shāo le.) The tones are, third tone 我(wǒ), first tone 发(fā), first tone again, 烧(shāo) and then 了(le) at the end has no tone. The meaning for this is 我(wǒ) I, 发烧(fā shāo) fever and 了(le) indicates this is a new thing, that this is a change of situation. You didn’t have a fever before but now you do. 我发烧了(Wǒ fā shāo le.) And now the most common and probably most talked about symptom in China, diarrhea. So the way you say diarrhea in Chinese is 拉肚子(lā dùzi le.) The tones are first tone 拉(lā), then fourth tone 肚(dù) and then remember 子(zi) has no tone, 拉肚子(lā dùzi). 拉(lā) means to pull and 肚子(dùzi) like we said before is stomach. So technically it means pull stomach but it is the common word for diarrhea. You know when you have really bad diarrhea, it feels like people are pulling on your intestines, 拉肚子(lā dùzi). So if you want to say I have diarrhea, you say 我拉肚子了(Wǒ lā dùzi le.). 我(wǒ) is I and 了(le) put at the end indicates this is a change of situation. You didn’t have diarrhea before but now you do. 我拉肚子了(Wǒ lā dùzi le.) Now in America, we never talk about diarrhea. Most people never even use the word diarrhea. It feels kind of strange for me to say it right now in fact. In China, they talk about diarrhea, they talk about going to the bathroom all the time. It is dinner table conversation. It may come up in very strange situations. You may find that when you meet people for the first time, they will ask you, I have to warn you, it can come up in very strange, it can come up very often. So be prepared and try to be open to different cultures. Oh and one last thing before I forget. There is a good way to use the 疼(téng) phrase, the one it hurts. You can just point at a part of your body and say 这儿疼(Zhèr téng). 这儿(zhèr) is fourth tone, the falling tone, 这儿(zhèr) has an R at the end, pay attention to that. 这儿(zhèr) means here. So 这儿疼(Zhèr téng) means here hurts. Basically it means it hurts here. So if you don’t know the word for the part of your body that hurts, you can just point to that part of your body and say 这儿疼(Zhèr téng). This is really useful guys because I mean I don’t know all the parts of the body and I don’t expect you to either. 这儿疼(Zhèr téng).
All right, to close our today’s lesson, we’d like you to practice what we’ve just learned. I will provide you with the English equivalent of a phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out loud. You will have a few seconds before I give you the answer. So 加油(Jiā yóu!) My stomach hurts, 我肚子疼(Wǒ dùzi téng.) I have a fever, 我发烧了(Wǒ fā shāo le.) I have diarrhea, 我拉肚子了(Wǒ lā dùzi le.) It hurts here, 这儿疼(Zhèr téng).
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