I move to China in a couple of days. What are some useful phrases?

'bu yao' = do not want

"qu ni ma de" - A (very formal) way of saying 'nice to meet you.'

• 请问，洗手间在哪里？ Qǐngwèn, xǐshǒujiān zài Nǎlǐ (Let me ask, where is the bathroom?)

• 不好意思，我不会讲普通话。 Bùhǎoyìsī, wǒ búhuì jiǎng pǔtōnghuà. (Excuse me, I can't speak Chinese.)

• 我来自新西兰。 Wǒ láizì Xīnxīlán (I'm from New Zealand.)

For grammar and word order: Subject + verb + object

Qǐngwèn (Let me ask), Xǐshǒujiān (bathroom) zài (at) Nǎlǐ? (where)?

Bùhǎoyìsī (Excuse me), wǒ (I) búhuì (cannot) jiǎng (speak) Pǔtōnghuà (Mandarin).

Wǒ (I) láizì (come from) Xīnxīlán (New Zealand).

Qǐngwèn is useful for any time you want to begin the process of asking a stranger a question. They'll probably be happy to help you simply because you're a foreigner though.

And this one is just practical:

不不。 真的。 我不操羊！ 我有的时候比较喜欢人。

I seriously suggest you familiarise yourself with how to pronounce pinyin and tones. Without that base, you'll have trouble being understood, and if you can't read chinese characters, then you'll need to read and write everything in pinyin, until you can.

Tones are very important, and it's frustratingly easy for an english speaker to accidentally raise the tone at the end of a sentence when asking a question, and thus turning the last word into a mandarin second tone.

Google translate is reasonable for producing samples of words so you can hear what they sound like, but you really need a native speaker to tell you if you're actually copying them correctly.

Once you have the base knowledge of tones and pinyin, you can work on improving your vocabularly, then learning grammar, then more vocabulary, then learning weird grammar, and that will get you to the point where you can express some simple stuff on demand, but you'll probably find it very difficut to understand native speakers talking amongst themselves, and you'll probably get frustrated with yourself when you've put in all that work and you're still not being understood.

Also, you'll probably find that people appear to understand what you're saying quite early on, and then appear to get confused and no longer understand after you've been getting better for several months. I've put this down to what I call 'foreigner effect', where someone speaks the language so badly that people go out of their way to try and work out what they said. Once you get better, to the point where native speakers think you can actually speak a language, they actually become less tolerant of mistakes, and it feels like you've taken 100 steps back. Imagine someone just learning English and asking "toilet where ?" (chinese word order), compared with the same person asking six months later "where toilet ?" (english word order, actually an improvement, but sounds worse for some reason)

And written chinese.. well, that's another matter all together.

But don't despair.. it does take time, and you'll get the hang of it eventually.

Edit:

As for your questions:

"where is the toilet" : Cè suǒ zài nǎ ?
'zài nǎ' means 'where', and goes at the end of a sentence. The toilet is 'Cè suǒ'. The pinyin 'c' is pronounced like a 'ts' sound, and it's a 4th (falling) tone. A pinyin 'e' vowel is pronounced somewhere between 'er' and 'or', so the whole word is similar to 'tsor' For me, pronoucing Cè was one of the more difficult sounds to get right (to the point where a native speaker knew what I was saying). The word suǒ - the vowel is 'uo', which is prounouced as two sounds - uu-oor, so the word like 'sue-or', and is 3rd tone, so falls and then rises again. Zai is 4th tone, easy to say, and na is 3rd tone, falling and rising. I hope you can see from this just why learning to pronounce pinyin first is so damn important.

For the taxi question - although you could embellish the question and make it clear you want to hire a taxi, you can also just use the structure above and ask where a taxi is - "Chū zū chē zài nǎ ?". "<noun> zài nǎ ?" is a useful structure to remember. In this case, "chu zu" is the taxi, "che" (pronounced "cher") is a vehicle (car), and zai na I explained above.

"I don't speak mandarin" - Wǒ(I) bù huì (can't) shuō (speak) zhōngwén (chinese).
Wǒ (pronounced more like 'war', 3rd tone) "bù" is a modifier that negates the following word, similar to 'not' in english.
bù huì (pronounced 'boo hway' with as aspirated h)
shuō - remember the double vowel as in 'suo' above - this sounds like 'shoe-or'
zhongwen - a 'zh' in pinyin is like a j in english, so zhong sounds like 'joong', wen sounds as written.

"I'm from New Zealand" - easier to remember the structure for 'I'm a New Zealander', which is 'Wǒ shì xīnxīlán rén'
'Wǒ - you know from above (war)
shì - the verb 'to be', so this means "is" or "am" xīnxīlán - xīn means 'new', prounouned like 'sin', but not quite.. you have to hear it, and xīlán is a phonetically similar sound to 'zealand'. Note that outside of mainland china, they often use the word "Niǔ xī lán"
rén (person) - pinyin 'r' sounds like a french j, as in 'je ne', sort of half like an r and half like a j.

I don't know - Wǒ bù zhīdào
zhi - pronounced like "jur" as in "jury"
dao - as written.

Yes -Shì de (as in 'shirt' with out the rt')
No - Bù Shì

Also useful - Nǐ huì shuō yīngyǔ ma? (do you speak english ?). While it might seem silly to ask someone in chinese whether they speak english, it may be that they don't speak it, but know someone who does. You'll generally find that anyone under the age of 30 in major cities will have a reasonable grasp. People over the age of 50 probably won't speak a word of it.

Repeat exactly as you read "gay-woe-E-ga-pee-joe" in english "please give me a beer". Only phrase I knew first coming to China and has been the best gateway to general life over here. Have fun!

"ma la" -- means "numb spicy", sorry, that's all I know but it's what I love -- will be doing a similar trip and hope to learn some useful phrases too from this thread!

wei sheng jian zai naer = where is the bathroom wo cong lai New Zealand = I'm from New Zealand Wo bu hui shuo zhong wen = I can't speak Chinese Bu = no They don't have a word for yes like we do in English. It depends on the question asked. Also the phrases above require tones which I left out and an understanding of how to read pin yin. Sorry It's really hard to write it out for you without using pin yin.

*你好 ni hao - hello *谢谢你 xie xie ni - Thank you *对不起 dui bu qi - Sorry *我是新西兰人 wo shi(sounds like 'sure') xin xi lan ren - I am a New Zealander *我听不懂 wo ting bu dong - I don't understand *我不会说中文 wo bu hui shuo zhongwen - I can't speak Chinese (weird to say in Chinese and they probably won't believe you) *我不要 wo bu yao - I don't want (People try to sell you everything wherever you go, just say this like 5 times and they should leave you alone) *洗手间在哪儿？ xi shou jian zai nar? Where is the bathroom?

Everything will be a shock when you first get there. I studied for an entire year before I entered China and was still overwhelmed with the language. The key is to not get discouraged and be confident to speak what you know. Good luck and happy travels!

Edit: formatting Nevermind, don't understand

Since everyone's either posting in Pinyin or their own method, here's a standardized table you can listen to for a feel of how syllables are pronounced.

zai lai yi bei! = Give me another glass! (all drinks... including the most important: beer!)

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Honestly, I'd suggest getting a 1 month subscription to Chinesepod ASAP (chinesepod.com- a month is pretty cheap, something like $14, and you can download/save as many lessons as you want) and start listening to the Newbie lessons, starting with the lessons on pronouncing things in pinyin and about the 5 tones. Listen to those few lessons over and over (REALLY important-- I'll bet the way you're hearing "Shi de" and "xie xie" in your head is nothing like how it actually sounds) and then move on to the how are you/airport/bathroom/restaurant dialoges. They do a really great job with the dialogues.

Pronounciation and tones are so important that depending on the tones you use to say "yi wan shui jiao duo shao qian?" it either means "how much for a bowl of dumplings?" OR "How much for one night's sleep?"

Best phrases are:

Ting bu dong

&

Bu zhi dao

These phrases were my best mates in my first year in China.

di tie = subway, mai dan = check please (resturaunt)

Dang I could of helped but I'm a Cantonese speaker :l - Just remember this though: Don't get ran over by crazy drivers, nearly got killed once by maniacal taxi man.

美女，打飞机，and 口交。say the first one to the taxi driver and the next two to whoever you meet after ;D

Sha bi- Use it as a compliment for someone you really like.

Ex: Ni hen sha bi.

EDIT: Also interchangeable with zhuang bi.