名字 in Context

CONGRATULATIONS! 

A NEW WORD HAS BEEN UNLOCKED 

名字

Usage 1 - "name, one's given name": 

*Sentence：

你叫什么名字？

English:

What’s your name?

Top-Down Words:

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Sentence：

我的名字很好听。

English:

My name sounds lovely.

Top-Down Words: 

好听 hǎotīng - pleasant to hear, in this case, it means it's a good name and sounds good

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*Sentence：

不过我只记得有些人的名字，另外一些人的就不记得了。

English:

But I only remember the names of some people. I can't remember the others.

Top-Down Words: 

另外 lìngwài - another, other
就 jiù - (expressing condition “then”) 

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*Sentence：

中国人的名字差不多都是三个字的，也有两个字的。

English:

Almost all Chinese names are 3 characters and some are two characters.

Top-Down Words: 

差不多 chàbuduō - about, approximately
都 dōu - all, every

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Need a Reminder?

The Six Steps to Learning Words

Understanding Chinese Words - Morphemes

3 Questions About Words

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Member Comments from 2019-mid-2020

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Dom Thomson

Quite fun to finally see '你叫什么名字?'

When I tried a Coursera course from Peking University, this was lesson one. It was just listen and repeat and the characters were completely alien. It was also extremely boring and I gave up very quickly.

I imagine '你叫什么名字?' appears in Chapter One of every Mandarin textbook, yet here we are at character 289. MBM works so differently to every other method I've come across.

It seems crazy that I can read whole paragraphs now and haven't yet learnt how to write the number 5, but it's working!

Building a solid foundation > endless recitation of the HSK 1 vocab list

MB Team

Here's the link to where Phil & Luke talked about this comment in the Mandarin Blueprint Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-W2Q6u0F2Y&t=444s

 

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Della Fuller

Yes, "你叫什么名字?" was definitely in the first chapter of my Chinese textbook at the University of British Columbia, but after a year, I could probably write less than ten characters. As soon as the quiz was over, they just went out of my head...nothing to hang on to. Now I just think of samurai swords and Rolling Stones mouths and it all comes back to me...well, not all, but I'm working on it...

MB Team

Here's the link to where Phil & Luke talked about this comment in the Mandarin Blueprint Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTyzKONer7o&t=2913s