Stop Playing with My Phone

About

There are moments of frustration in learning Chinese. Like the time you were crossing customs and the

border agent asked for your Nexus One and refused to give it back. Or to be fair, he said he was looking

for one and a more accurate description might be "played with it for about five minutes," all to the point

you would have suspected industrial espionage if three of those minutes weren't spent on Snake.

Our own bad experiences aside, our lesson today is designed for all of you who have yet to learn a single

word of Chinese. The is one of the easiest lessons you'll find on Popup Chinese. In it, we introduce a

very simple dialogue that will have you saying "this one" and "that one" and then asking others to give

you things. Whether you're demanding electronics back from overzealous state employees, picking food

off a menu or sourcing high-end commodity electronics from bazaars in Shenzhen, this is Chinese you

can use right away. So dig in!

Sentences

给我那个。

gěi wǒ nà ge 。

Give me that.

什么?

shénme ?

What?

那个,我的手机。

nà ge , wǒ de shǒujī 。

That... my phone.

哦,给你。

ò , gěi nǐ 。

Oh, here you are.

Vocabulary

给

gěi

to give

verb

我

wǒ

me

pronoun

你

nǐ

you

pronoun

那个

nèi ge

that (one)

phrase

这个

zhèi ge

this (one)

phrase

什么

shénme

what

question

手机

shǒujī

mobile phone

noun