學習中文吧！学习中文吧！Learn Chinese!

[GrandPiano]

Is there any way to not have that interpreted as an italics tag without the spaces?

There is, I use this method:

Code: Select all

[size=100][[/size]i]

...which yields: [i].

Thanks! I tried something sort of similar:

Code: Select all

[[b][/b]i]

This worked on a different forum, but I guess this one automatically removes tags that don't have anything in them.

[clawgrip]

I'll be following your lessons as best I can. The consonants are not such a problem for me, and the tones are not so bad (I've practiced them a fair amount in the past). I'll just have to work on those vowels. I'm also looking forward to getting clarification on how Chinese seems to have both prepositions and postpositions, or something like that.

[GrandPiano]

I'm also looking forward to getting clarification on how Chinese seems to have both prepositions and postpositions, or something like that.

Yup, it does. 在图书馆 "at library" at the library, 桌子上 "table on" on the table. I think the general rule is that if it takes an object, it's a preposition, and if it doesn't, it's a postposition.

[Xing]

I think the general rule is that if it takes an object, it's a preposition, and if it doesn't, it's a postposition.

Why should we think of it as an adposition if it doesn't take an object? Would it be more like som kind of adverb in that case? Am I getting something wrong??

[GrandPiano]

I think the general rule is that if it takes an object, it's a preposition, and if it doesn't, it's a postposition.

Why should we think of it as an adposition if it doesn't take an object? Would it be more like som kind of adverb in that case? Am I getting something wrong??

Hm, you're right, I was thinking from my little English world of objects coming after adpositions. I forgot that 桌子 is the object of 上. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that prepositional phrases are dependent on verbs, while postpositional phrases aren't? 我在饭店吃 "I at restaurant eat" I eat at the restaurant, 桌子上有书 "table on has book" there is a book on the table. In the first one, the prepositional phrase 在饭店 at the restaurant is dependent on the verb 吃 eat because the sentence wouldn't make sense without the preposition 在. In the second sentence, you could remove the postposition 上 and it would just change the meaning to there's a book in the table.

[zyma]

Are you a native English speaker? If so, the key is to just pronounce the unaspirated stops as English voiced stops and the aspirated stops as English aspirated stops. You can fine tune your pronunciation later if you start seriously studying the language.

I am, and thanks, I'll try that. Hopefully I'll be able to push my perfectionism to the side.

(PS: If you ever feel that the thread has too many posts that don't exactly fit the topic of learning the basics of Mandarin, you can ask a Moderator to create a new thread by moving those posts elsewhere. However, if you feel the posts fit the topic, there's no problem with leaving them where they are.)

[GrandPiano]

(I think the posts are fine where they are; once I get a few more lessons done, I'll set up a table of contents in the OP)

Edit: The content of this post, which explained initials and finals, has been moved to the revised phonology lesson.

[clawgrip]

I think I can already understand Pinyin better because of your phonology post. The letter e seemed really weird to me in Pinyin, but I see the e vowel in your description has a number of different pronunciations.

[GrandPiano]

Yeah, most Pinyin vowel letters can have a few different pronunciations depending on the letters around them. It's pretty easy to get used to, though.

[GrandPiano]

Edit: The pinyin lesson that used to be here has been merged with the revised phonology lesson.

So, yeah, that's about it. Lesson #1 is coming up next!

[GrandPiano]

Lesson #1: Everyday Expressions
(第一課：日常生活用語/第一课：日常生活用语 Dì yī kè: Rìchángshēnghuó Yòngyǔ)

Alright, time to finally get this thing started! Rather than getting into grammar right away, this first lesson will just introduce some basic phrases and some other necessary concepts.

Let's start with two very basic and common words: Hello and goodbye.

Goodbye is simply 再見/再见 zàijiàn (remember that the <a> in <-ian> is pronounced [ɛ]). It is made up of 再 zài "again" and 見/见 jiàn "to see", so it is literally "again see" or "see (you) again".

What word to use for hello depends on the context. The two most common are 你好 nǐ hǎo (pronounced ní hǎo with tone sandhi), used with a single person, and 你們好/你们好 nǐmen hǎo (nǐ has a half third tone with tone sandhi), used with multiple people. The first one is composed of 你 nǐ, the second-person singular pronoun, and 好 hǎo "good" (literally "you good"). The second one is the same, except that the first word is 你們/你们 nǐmen, the second-person plural pronoun. When speaking to an elder or a superior, you should typically use neither of these but instead use 您好 nín hǎo. 您 nín is a formal second-person pronoun, typically used in both the singular and the plural. You can also use 大家好 dàjiā hǎo when speaking to a large group; 大家 dàjiā means "everyone" (from 大 dà "big" + 家 jiā "home, family"), so it basically means "hello, everyone". See below for the stroke orders of these characters.

Like English, Mandarin has greetings for specific time of day. They work slightly differently than English, though.

Mandarin divides the day into five periods of time:

• 早上 zǎoshang "early morning" (Don't forget that that first syllable has a half third tone due to tone sandhi!)
• 上午 shàngwǔ "late morning"
• 中午 zhōngwǔ "noon"
• 下午 xiàwǔ "afternoon"
• 晚上 wǎnshang "evening, night"

Notice how Mandarin does not make a distinction between evening and night, but it does make a distinction between early and late morning.

Time-specific greetings are kind of weird in English. You can say "good morning", "good afternoon", and "good evening" to greet someone during those periods of time, but you can't say "good noon", and you only say "good night" to someone when they or you are going to bed. In Mandarin, all five of the aforementioned time periods have corresponding greetings:

• During 早上, you greet someone with 早上好 zǎoshang hǎo or 早安 zǎo'ān (in Pinyin, an apostrophe is always used to separate two adjacent vowels in separate syllables, even if there is no ambiguity).
• During 上午, you greet someone with 上午好 shàngwǔ hǎo.
• During 中午, you greet someone with 中午好 zhōngwǔ hǎo.
• During 下午, you greet someone with 下午好 xiàwǔ hǎo or 午安 wǔ'ān.
• During 晚上, you greet someone with 晚上好 wǎnshang hǎo.

Additionally, when someone is going to sleep, you can say 晚安 wǎn'ān. This expression is equivalent to "good night" in English.

(Notice how there are two greetings you can use during 早上 (the early morning) and 下午 (the afternoon). I think which one you use varies by region, but I'll update this post when I get further confirmation.)

So, that's "hello" and "goodbye", but what about "how are you"?

The standard way to say "How are you?" in Mandarin is 你好嗎？/你好吗？ Nǐ hǎo ma? (notice how Mandarin punctuation marks are slightly different from English punctuation marks). If you've been paying attention to the characters, you'll recognize the first to as 你好 nǐ hǎo, the singular hello. 嗎/吗 ma is a question particle; it turns the preceding statement into a yes/no question. So 你好嗎？/你好吗？ literally means "Are you good?". When speaking to multiple people, you can use the plural 你們好嗎？/你们好吗？ Nǐmen hǎo ma?, and when speaking to someone of superior status, you can use the formal 您好嗎？/您好吗？ Nín hǎo ma?.

[second-person pronoun]好嗎/好吗？ is the standard way to say "How are you?", but a more colloquial expression is 你怎麼樣？/你怎么样？Nǐ zěnme yàng?. The literal translation of this would be something like "How is your manner?" or "How is your appearance?"; I suppose a more sensible translation might be "How do you fare?". In any case, it's better to just translate it as "How are you?". Because Mandarin is pro-drop, you can also leave the 你 out and just say 怎麼樣？/怎么样？ Zěnme yàng?. Another informal way to say "How are you?" is 你吃了嗎？/你吃了吗？ Nǐ chīle ma? (remember that <i> is [ʅ] after retroflex consonants). This one translates rather straightforwardly as "Have you eaten?"; I think this came from a time when food was scarce, so it made sense to ask a random stranger if they'd eaten. 吃 chī means "to eat", and 了 le is a particle that can have several different meanings, but in this case marks the perfect aspect.

There are a couple of ways to respond to these questions. The most common way to reply to 你好嗎？/你好吗？ or 你怎麼樣？/你怎么样？ would be to say 我很好 wǒ hěn hǎo "I'm fine" or "I'm good". 我 wǒ is the first-person singular pronoun; 很 hěn is usually translated as "very", but in this case, it's meaningless, and is only there because adjectives require adverbs in statements of the form "[subject] is [adjective]"; 好 hǎo means "good", as was said a few paragraphs back. You can also leave out 我 and just say 很好 hěn hǎo. Two other expressions you can use that basically mean the same thing are 還好/还好 hái hǎo "pretty good" and 不錯/不错 bú cuò "not bad".

In response to 你吃了嗎？/你吃了吗？, you can just say 吃了 chīle "(I) have eaten". However, if you want to confuse people, you could instead say 沒吃/没吃 méi chī "(I) have not eaten".

So, those are some basic expressions that you're likely to use in your daily life if you move to China. Here's a quick recap of the words and expressions we've learned (I know I'm throwing a lot at you at once, so the most important stuff is in green):

• 你好 nǐ hǎo "hello (singular, informal)"
• 你們好/你们好 nǐmen hǎo "hello (plural, informal)"
• 您好 nín hǎo "hello (formal)"
• 大家好 dàjiā hǎo "hello, everyone"
• 再見/再见 zàijiàn "goodbye"
• 早上 zǎoshang "early morning"
• 上午 shàngwǔ "late morning"
• 中午 zhōngwǔ "noon"
• 下午 xiàwǔ "afternoon"
• 晚上 wǎnshang "evening; night"
• 早上好 zǎoshang hǎo "good morning (early morning)"
• 早安 zǎo'ān "good morning (early morning)" (synonymous with 早上好)
• 上午好 shàngwǔ hǎo "good morning (late morning)"
• 中午好 zhōngwǔ hǎo "greeting used during noon ('good noon')"
• 下午好 xiàwǔ hǎo "good afternoon"
• 午安 wǔ'ān "good afternoon" (synonymous with 下午好)
• 晚上好 wǎnshang hǎo "good evening; greeting used during the evening and night"
• 晚安 wǎn'ān "good night"
• 你好嗎？/你好吗？ Nǐ hǎo ma? "How are you? (singular, informal)"
• 你們好嗎？/你们好吗？Nǐmen hǎo ma? "How are you? (plural, informal)"
• 您好嗎？/您好吗？ Nín hǎo ma? "How are you? (formal)"
• （你）怎麼樣？/（你）怎么样？ (Nǐ) zěnme yàng? "How are you? (colloquial)"
• （你）吃了嗎？/（你）吃了吗？(Nǐ) chīle ma? "How are you? (colloquial; lit. Have you eaten?)"
• （我）很好 (wǒ) hěn hǎo "I'm good; I'm fine"
• （我）還好/（我）还好 (wǒ) hái hǎo "I'm pretty good"
• （我）不錯/（我）不错 (wǒ) bú cuò
• （我）吃了 (wǒ) chīle "I've eaten; I'm good (in response to 你吃了嗎？/你吃了吗？)
• （我）沒吃/（我）没吃 (wǒ) méichī "I haven't eaten"

Edit: There used to be a spoiler here with images from MDBG showing the stroke orders for all the characters introduced in the lesson. However, since it takes a while to get the urls from all those images and paste them here, I've decided to replace that with instructions on how to find those images on MDBG yourself.

Spoiler:

1. Highlight the character you want to know the stroke order of and press Ctrl+C to copy it to your clipboard.
   
   
2. Go to http://mdbg.net/.
   
   
3. Click on the search box and press Ctrl+V to paste the character you copied, then press enter to do a search for that character.
   
   
   
   
   
   • Note: The search is set on simplified characters by default, but you can switch to traditional characters with a menu box above the search box (although this isn't necessary to search for traditional characters).
     
     
4. Click on the character you searched for in the results below. It should be the first result. If the character you're searching for is in the opposite character set of the one that the search is set on (traditional if it's set on simplified and vice versa), it will be one of the smaller characters on the right.
   
   
5. Click on the arrow next to the character in the box that pops up, then click on the brush. An image showing the character's stroke order will pop up.
   
   
   
   
6. That's it! You're done!

No exercises for this first lesson. Thanks for reading!

[clawgrip]

After reading this it really seems that pronunciation will be the biggest initial hurdle for me. I look at words written down, and I'm never quite sure on the pronunciation. I'll have to review the Pinyin lesson again.

[GrandPiano]

Yeah, I really wanted to have each new word link to a sound file with its pronunciation (or have such links for each syllable if that isn't available), but I can't find a good source for such sound files. If anyone knows of a resource like that, please let me know.

[GrandPiano]

Lesson #2: Basic Sentences (第二課：基本的句子/第二课：基本的句子 Dì Èr Kè: Jīběn de Jùzi)

Mandarin, like English, is primarily SVO. It is extremely analytic; all grammatical relations are expressed through word order or grammatical words such as particles and adpositions. The personal pronouns are:

• 我 wǒ - First person singular
• 我們/我们 wǒmen - First person plural
• 你 nǐ - Informal second person singular
• 你們/你们 nǐmen - Informal second person plural
• 您 nín - Formal second person
• 他 tā - Masculine third person singular
• 她 tā - Feminine third person singular
• 它 tā - Neuter third person singular
• 他们 tāmen - Masculine third person plural
• 她们 tāmen - Feminine third person plural
• 它们 tāmen - Neuter third person plural

Some of these were discussed briefly in the previous lesson. As you can see, 們/们 is a plural marker for pronouns (except for 您, which can be singular or plural). However, the number distinction only exists in pronouns; nouns are not marked for number*. You may have noticed that the three third-person pronouns 他, 她, and 它 are all pronounced the same: tā. This is not because of a historical merger; the characters 她 and 它 were introduced in the early 20th century under European influence. Like in English, 它 and 它们 are only used for animals and inanimate objects, so they can't be used as gender-neutral pronouns for humans. Instead (also like in English), 他 and 他们 are typically used for a person or people of unknown gender, or for a mixed-gender group of people.

*Actually, 們/们 can be used as a plural marker for human nouns (like 同學/同学 tóngxué "student", as in 同學們好/同学们好 tóngxuémen hǎo "hello, students"). However, this is completely optional.

Here's some basic vocabulary:

• 人 rén - person (n.)
• 狗 gǒu - dog (n.)
• 貓/猫 māo - cat (n.)
• 家 jiā - home, family (n.)
• 名字 míngzi - name
• 媽媽/妈妈 māma - mother (n.)
• 爸爸 bàba - father (n.)
• 中國/中国 Zhōngguó - China (n.)
• 美國/美国 Měiguó - USA (n.)
• 英國/英国 Yīngguó - Great Britain (n.)
• 中國人/中国人 Zhōngguórén - Chinese person (n.)*
• 美國人/美国人 Měiguórén - American person (n.)*
• 英國人/英国人 Yīngguórén - British person (n.)*
• 國家/国家 guójiā - country (n.)
• 是 shì to be (v.)
• 去 qù - to go (to) (v.) (remember that <u> is pronounced /y/ after alveolo-palatals!)
• 在 zài - to be at/on/in (v.) (this word can also be a preposition, which we will discuss in a later lesson)
• 叫 jiào - to be called (v.)
• 買/买 mǎi - to buy (v.)
• 賣/卖 mài - to sell (v.) (this is one case where using the right tone is very important!)
• 喜歡/喜欢 xǐhuan - to like (v.)
• 愛/爱 ài - to love (v.)
• 要 yào - to want (v.)
• 想 xiǎng - to want, to miss (v.)
• 什麼/什么 shénme - what (pr.) (this word can also be written 甚麼 when using traditional characters)
• 誰/谁 shuí, shéi - who (pr.) (although the standard pronunciation of this word is shuí, shéi is a very common alternate pronunciation)

*As a general rule, "person from [country]" is always "[country]人".

Mandarin does not have any tense distinction in its verbs. "我去中國/我去中国" could mean "I went to China", "I'm going to China", or "I will go to China", depending on the context. Aspect, however, is marked quite frequently, as we will discuss in later lessons.

要 and 想 both translate in English to "want". There is a difference between them, however. When the object is a noun, only 要 means "want"; 想 in this case means "to miss".

我要狗。
Wǒ yào gǒu.
I want a dog.

我想狗。
Wǒ xiǎng gǒu.
I miss the dog.

(Note that Mandarin does not have articles)

When the object is a verb phrase, the distinction is a bit more subtle. 要 is used when you have the intent of carrying out the desired action, while 想 is used when the desired action is something that you'd like to do but may or may not actually do. In other words, 要 more or less means "going to" (and in fact can often mean "going to" rather than "want to"), while 想 more or less means "would like to". Another word you can use is 想要 xiǎngyào, which has the meanings of both 想 and 要.

我要買狗。
我要买狗。
Wǒ yào mǎi gǒu.
I want to buy a dog. (e.g. talking to a pet store employee; this sentence could also mean "I'm going to buy a dog")

我想買狗。
我想买狗。
Wǒ xiǎng mǎi gǒu.
I want to buy a dog. (someday, anyway)

我想要買狗。
我想要买狗。
Wǒ xiǎngyào mǎi gǒu.
I want to buy a dog.

我想要狗。
Wǒ xiǎngyào gǒu.
I want a dog.

(A note about punctuation - The Chinese period, 。, can either be written in the middle of the line or on the bottom like in English. Your computer may display it either way depending on the font.)

Interrogative pronouns go in the same part of the sentence as any other noun or pronoun of the same syntactic role would:

她是誰？
她是谁？
Tā shì shéi?
Who is she?

她是麗麗。
她是丽丽。
Tā shì Lìlì.
She is Lili.

你叫什麼？
你叫什么？
Nǐ jiào shénme?
What's your name? (literally "What are you called?")

我叫李小龍。
我叫李小龙。
Wǒ jiào Lǐ Xiǎolóng.
My name is Bruce Lee. (literally "I am called Bruce Lee.")
(Note that in Mandarin, the surname is placed before the given name.)

什麼/什么 can be placed before a noun in the same way as English to mean "what [noun]":

你叫什麼名字？
你叫什么名字？
Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi?
What is your name? (literally "What name are you called?")

我叫習近平。
我叫习近平。
Wǒ jiào Xí Jìnpíng.
My name is Xi Jinping. (literally "I am called Xi Jinping.")

你家在什麼國家？
你家在什么国家？
Nǐ jiā zài shénme guójiā?
What country do you live in? (literally "Your home is in what country?")

我家在英國。
我家在英国。
Wǒ jiā zài Yīngguó.
I live in Great Britain. (literally "My home is in Great Britain.")

I used the possessive "your home" and "my home" in that last exchange. Although I won't go into the details of possession in this lesson, just know that it is normally done with a particle, but that particle can be omitted with certain words (such as 家).

Spoiler:

Let's talk about the etymologies of a few of the characters we talked about in this lesson! I've spoiler'd this part since it isn't an integral part of the lesson (so you can skip it if you want). We'll start with the third-person singular pronouns: 他, 她, and 它.

The left part of 他 is 亻, one of the most common radicals you'll see. It is a modified version of 人 (which, if you've forgotten, means "person"; it's pretty easy to remember, since it's basically a crudely drawn stick figure). The other part is 也 yě, an adverb meaning "also". As a component of 他, it has a slightly different but related meaning of "other/another". 人 "person" + 也 "another" = "another person".

The left part of 她 is 女 nǚ "female". 女 is also a relatively common radical, although it's not nearly as common as 亻 (you can see the same radical in 媽媽/妈妈). It's pretty easy to see how this character was devised; the left radical of 他 was replaced with 女 to create a feminine version of 她 (alternatively, you could see it as 女 "female" + 也 "another" = "another female (person)").

它 is a pictographic representation of its original meaning of "snake". At the time when the character was borrowed as a phonetic loan for the neuter third-person pronoun, it and 他 were homophones. The snake meaning is now represented with the character 蛇, and is pronounced shé.

Above, I said that 人 is a crudely drawn stick figure. That's not entirely true; it's just that over the course of the Chinese script's evolution, it has come to appear that way. The original oracle bone character looked like this:



As you can see, it appears to be more of a side view of a person kneeling, rather than a front view of a person with no arms.

And, that's a wrap! Below are the stroke orders for the characters introduced in this lesson and some exercises. (If you don't have a Chinese input system already installed on your computer, you can use this.)

Edit: I've replaced the stroke order images with instructions on how to find them yourself! See the first lesson.

Exercises with traditional characters:

Spoiler:

Translate the following into English:

1. 我買狗。
2. 貓愛我。
3. 她叫什麼名字？
4. 爸爸在美國。
5. 你家在中國。
6. 爸爸是英國人。
7. 貓去中國。
8. 你去什麼國家？
9. 我想去美國。
10. 我要去美國。

Translate the following into Mandarin:

1. British people like dogs.
2. I'm at my house.
3. I'm going to go to my house.
4. She is a person.
5. It is a cat.
6. I sold the dog.
7. What do you like?
8. Who do you love?
9. Mom will buy dad.
10. What country did dad sell?

Exercises with simplified characters:

Spoiler:

Translate the following into English:

1. 我买狗。
2. 猫爱我。
3. 她叫什么名字？
4. 爸爸在美国。
5. 你家在中国。
6. 爸爸是英国人。
7. 猫去中国。
8. 你去什么国家？
9. 我想去美国。
10. 我要去美国。

Translate the following into Mandarin:

1. British people like dogs.
2. I'm at my house.
3. I'm going to go to my house.
4. She is a person.
5. It is a cat.
6. I sold the dog.
7. What do you like?
8. Who do you love?
9. Mom will buy dad.
10. What country did dad sell?

[clawgrip]

Spoiler:

Translate the following into English:

1. 我買狗。 I bought a dog.
2. 貓愛我。 Cats love me.
3. 她叫什麼名字？ What's her name?
4. 爸爸在美國。 My father is in the United States. (Can 爸爸 be used to refer to anyone's father? I'm just defaulting to "my" in all the examples)
5. 你家在中國。 Your home (or family) is in China.
6. 爸爸是英國人。 My father is British.
7. 貓去中國。 The cat went to China.
8. 你去什麼國家？ What country did you go to?
9. 我想去美國。 I would like to go to the United States (someday).
10. 我要去美國。 I'm going to go to the United States.

Translate the following into Mandarin:

1. British people like dogs. 英國人喜歡狗。/英国人喜欢狗。 Yīngguórén xǐhuan gǒu.
2. I'm at my house. 我在家。 Wǒ zài jiā.
3. I'm going to go to my house. 我要去家。 Wǒ yào qù jiā.
4. She is a person. 她是人。 Tā shì rén.
5. It is a cat. 它是貓。/它是猫。 Tā shì māo.
6. I sold the dog. 我賣狗。/我卖狗。 Wǒ mài gǒu.
7. What do you like? 你(們)喜歡什麼?/你(们)喜欢什么? Nǐ(men) xǐhuan shénme?
8. Who do you love? 你(們)愛誰?/你(们)爱谁? Nǐ(men) ài shuí?
9. Mom will buy dad. 媽媽(要)買爸爸。/妈妈(要)买爸爸。Māma (yào) mǎi bàba.
10. What country did dad sell? 爸爸賣什麼國?/爸爸卖什么国 Bàba mài shénme guó?

I'm still lost on the pronunciation. This is something that really needs to be done in person out loud, I think!

[GrandPiano]

Spoiler:

Translate the following into English:

1. 我買狗。 I bought a dog.
2. 貓愛我。 Cats love me.
3. 她叫什麼名字？ What's her name?
4. 爸爸在美國。 My father is in the United States. (Can 爸爸 be used to refer to anyone's father? I'm just defaulting to "my" in all the examples)
5. 你家在中國。 Your home (or family) is in China.
6. 爸爸是英國人。 My father is British.
7. 貓去中國。 The cat went to China.
8. 你去什麼國家？ What country did you go to?
9. 我想去美國。 I would like to go to the United States (someday).
10. 我要去美國。 I'm going to go to the United States.

Translate the following into Mandarin:

1. British people like dogs. 英國人喜歡狗。/英国人喜欢狗。 Yīngguórén xǐhuan gǒu.
2. I'm at my house. 我在家。 Wǒ zài jiā.
3. I'm going to go to my house. 我要去家。 Wǒ yào qù jiā.
4. She is a person. 她是人。 Tā shì rén.
5. It is a cat. 它是貓。/它是猫。 Tā shì māo.
6. I sold the dog. 我賣狗。/我卖狗。 Wǒ mài gǒu.
7. What do you like? 你(們)喜歡什麼?/你(们)喜欢什么? Nǐ(men) xǐhuan shénme?
8. Who do you love? 你(們)愛誰?/你(们)爱谁? Nǐ(men) ài shuí?
9. Mom will buy dad. 媽媽(要)買爸爸。/妈妈(要)买爸爸。Māma (yào) mǎi bàba.
10. What country did dad sell? 爸爸賣什麼國?/爸爸卖什么国 Bàba mài shénme guó?

I'm still lost on the pronunciation. This is something that really needs to be done in person out loud, I think!

Those are all correct, except:

Spoiler:

爸爸在美國。 My father is in the United States. (Can 爸爸 be used to refer to anyone's father? I'm just defaulting to "my" in all the examples)

I'm not entirely sure, but I would guess that it would be like in English, where just saying "爸爸" without specifying whose father you're talking about means "my father". Because of this, I think it would be better to just translate "爸爸" as "father" rather than "my father".

我想去美國。 I would like to go to the United States (someday).

This one isn't really incorrect, but in the lesson, I only added "(someday, anyway)" when translating "我想買狗/我想买狗" to emphasize the difference between 想 and 要; in any other translation, "would like to" alone does the trick.

What country did dad sell? 爸爸賣什麼國家?/爸爸卖什么国家 Bàba mài shénme guójiā?

A note about 想 and 要 - I was a bit unclear about the difference myself when I wrote the lesson, but I've done a bit more research and I think I have a better understanding of it now, so let me clarify: When talking about the "to want [verb phrase]" meanings of the two words, the big difference is that 要 implies an intention to do the desired action, while 想 does not. You could also say "我要買狗/我要买狗" if you were trying to decide what animal to buy as a pet next week, and finally decided "I want to buy a dog!". 想要 can have the meaning of either 想 or 要 (I think), but you have to be careful - in my research, I discovered that, depending on the context, 想要 can also imply sexual desire! Don't be too worried about that, though; if someone asks you if you want an apple and you say "我想要", you probablly won't be misunderstood.

[clawgrip]

Thanks for the comments and corrections.

depending on the context, 想要 can also imply sexual desire! Don't be too worried about that, though; if someone asks you if you want an apple and you say "我想要", you probablly won't be misunderstood.

I guess you probably don't have to worry too much, since "want" in English can also imply sexual desire.

[GrandPiano]

depending on the context, 想要 can also imply sexual desire! Don't be too worried about that, though; if someone asks you if you want an apple and you say "我想要", you probablly won't be misunderstood.

I guess you probably don't have to worry too much, since "want" in English can also imply sexual desire.

True.

[kanejam]

Spoiler:

Translate the following into English:
我买狗。I'm buying a dog.
猫爱我。The cat loves me.
她叫什么名字? What's her name?
爸爸在美国。Dad is in America.
你家在中国。Your family is in China.
爸爸是英国人。Dad is an Englishman.
猫去中国。The cat is going to China.
你去什么国家？Which country are you going to?
我想去美国。I'd like to go to America.
我要去美国。I'm going to go to America.
Translate the following into Mandarin:
British people like dogs. 英国人喜欢狗。
I'm at my house. 我在我家。
I'm going to go to my house. 我要去在我家。
She is a person. 她是人。
It is a cat. （它）是猫。
I sold the dog. 我卖了狗。
What do you like? 你喜欢什么？
Who do you love? 你爱谁？
Mom will buy dad. 妈妈要买爸爸。
What country did dad sell? 爸爸卖了什么国家？

Wow I've forgotten so much! Agh! This course will be a great refresher. I've thrown in a few 了's in the exercise, pretty sure they're okay although I think the sentences would be fine without it.

[GrandPiano]

@kanejam: All correct, except:

Spoiler:

I'm going to go to my house. 我要去在我家。

The 在 is ungrammatical here; prepositional phrases are never the object of a verb (in any case, I didn't cover prepositional phrases in the lesson, so I wouldn't make the answer to an exercise require one). Just "我要去我家" will suffice. (Technically, it can be grammatical, but for it to work, 在 would have to be the main verb, giving it a meaning of "I want to go and be at my home").

It is a cat. （它）是猫。

The 它 here isn't any more subject to pro-drop than any of the other pronouns. Since all of the exercises are assumed to be without any context other than what's given, the 它 is required (also, pro-drop is another thing that I haven't covered yet).

I've thrown in a few 了's in the exercise, pretty sure they're okay although I think the sentences would be fine without it.

They all look good to me, although I still have some difficulties with 了 myself.