A little Chinese story/I am male

From Create Your Own Story

Great, so, 你是男人.

I guess before I move on, I should explain the word you see above that you haven't seen yet here: 你

While 我(wǒ), means "I" or "Me", 你(nǐ) actually means "You". As a CYOA, we will probably see 你(nǐ) more often than 我(wǒ).

So, at the current point, we have this in the story: 你是男人, or "You are male".

But, what is a CYOA without more options.

So, lets work on the character more. 你好不好?

Wait, wtf is 好不好?

Well, we learned 不(bù) very briefly in the introduction, but lets review. 不(bù) = no, or not.

好(hǎo) is simply good. If we put 好(hǎo) together with 不(bù), we get 不(bù)好(hǎo), or, "not good".

你(nǐ)好(hǎo)不(bù)好(hǎo)? What we see if we translate this directly is: You good not good?

In Chinese, sometimes we can just ask something like: 你(nǐ)好(hǎo)嗎(ma), or we can say 你(nǐ)好(hǎo)不(bù)好(hǎo). They both mean the same thing.

If you see the 嗎(ma), you will also see the one from the introduction page. This simply turns something into a question, and has no meaning by itself, so you are not stating "You are good.", but instead are asking "Are you good?", or literally "You are good?".

So, we see two different ways to ask the same question. When we use 好嗎 we are leaving it as "Are you good", in which it is more open ended. However, we create a closed "Are you doing good" question when we use 好不好.

For this, we will use the 好不好 options.

So, 男人, 你好不好?

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