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How to say “No” in Chinese?
In video 1.6 we learned a commonly used negative word“bù”(no, not). You can use it independently to answer a question. For example, audio
- Nǐ è ma？—— bù。 （Are you hungry?——No.)
- Nǐ pà ma?—— bù。 （Are you scared?——No.)
You can also use it before an adjective to indicate the negative meaning“not…”. For example,
- Wǒ bú è。 （I’m not hungry.）
- Wǒ bú pà。 (I’m not scared.)
“bù”has two tones. As you can see, we read it in the second tone or fourth tone depending on the tone of syllable after it. We will learn the rules of modified tones in Week 2, Step 2.13.
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