The best way to tell a Chinese girl you like her..

[silphonica]

I've recently met a Chinese girl, shes fantastic and from Shanghai.

I want to know the best way to tell her I like her, but please no characters in roman alphabet only please.

I did some research but all I could find was wǒ xǐhuān nǐ.

Is this right? Or is there a better way, I want to do it right.

Thanks

[tboasis7]

If she knows you don't really know anything about the Chinese language, and you went this far to find out how to say it then I think you're good with that. It is the correct phrase, but I'm sure others on here will give you alternatives.

You get mega brownie points for using Chinese with her... but I'm sure you already know that haha

Good luck

[anonymoose]

ŋú huīxi nŏŋ

You'll bed her in one if you can pull this off.

[M.E.Townsend]

anonymoose, is that Shang Hai dialect?

[silphonica]

Anon - How is it pronouned and what does it translate to? I'm not actually trying to bed her in one, just let her know I want to spend more time with her.

[Dashu]

wǒ xǐhuān nǐ is the correct sentence, you can also go with "wǒ aì nǐ" to express love.

[Lu]

I'm not sure how strong an expression 'wo xihuan ni' is considered in Shanghai, in Taiwan it pretty much means 'I love you'. You might want to check this before using it, unless of course your feelings for her are this strong :-)

[gato]

How do people in Taiwan tell someone they like them if "like" is too strong?

[Lu]

Not sure... 'Wear something warm, it's raining outside', perhaps.

I can't be certain, but I also have the impression that Chinese people (in the broadest sense) can move from asking someone out to saying I love you much more quickly than Westerners. Perhaps they feel the same but express themselves differently, perhaps they express different feelings and therefore feel differently, I don't know. This stuff gets rather difficult when dating internationally, especially if you put great importance to language like I do.

[abcdefg]

I'm not sure how strong an expression 'wo xihuan ni' is considered in Shanghai, in Taiwan it pretty much means 'I love you'.

It does on the mainland too.

And, for what it's worth, I would never, ever say it like that. If I intended to go that far in expressing affection, I would do it by saying "Wo hen xihuan ni" or something similar. The adverb (hen = very much) is an essential part of the utterance unless you are speaking "textbook-ese."

[gato]

'Wear something warm, it's raining outside', perhaps.

Oh, that's what that means. Hehe.

[xiaocai]

I don't think there is a best way to tell a Chinese girl that you like her as Chinese girls are individuals very different from one another in a sense, and there are no set rules of how you express your affection to (one of) them most effectively. I guess wǒ xǐhuān nǐ, ŋú huīxi nŏŋ, Wo hen xihuan ni, etc, will all get the message across but the most important thing is the fact that you like her and want her to share your feeling, and the choice of word doesn't seem to matter that much to me after all.

[abcdefg]

I don't think there is a best way to tell a Chinese girl that you like her as Chinese girls are individuals very different from one another in a sense, and there are no set rules of how you express your affection to (one of) them most effectively... the most important thing is the fact that you like her and want her to share your feeling, and the choice of word doesn't seem to matter that much to me after all.

I agree with xiaocai. Well said. All the rest is quibbling over trivia.

[valikor]

Just make sure you practice the pronunciation first. I had a Chinese friend who told me that she watched CCTV news (in English) fairly regularly for 6 months before she realized that when the one foreign news anchor (the Australian guy?) was saying "Hello， 你好", at the beginning of every broadcast.

She said it was not recognizable to her as Chinese because the pronunciation was so bad, and she assumed he was simply using some English greeting that she was not familiar with.

Likewise, your lady friend will expect you to be speaking english, and if it's not pronounced well, she might not understand

[Meng Lelan]

I had a Chinese friend who told me that she watched CCTV news (in English) fairly regularly for 6 months before she realized that when the one foreign news anchor (the Australian guy?) was saying "Hello， 你好", at the beginning of every broadcast.

Are you sure he wasn't saying "G'day mate" instead of 你好, maybe he was speaking Australian not Chinese.

[roddy]

Tell you what. You tell us the best way to tell a non-Chinese girl you like her, and we'll help you work it out from there. Deal?

Not sure... 'Wear something warm, it's raining outside', perhaps

Oh, no, every Chinese woman of a certain age I've ever met . . . I've broken so many hearts . . .

[silphonica]

Sorry, I'm not asking on how to ask a girl out.

Roddy, what I mean is, when I get to the point of telling her I like her. I just want the literal translation of saying "I like you, and want to spend more time getting to know you", rather than sounding like "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you".

Just so I don't sound creepy.

[abcdefg]

Are you sure he wasn't saying "G'day mate" instead of 你好, maybe he was speaking Australian not Chinese.

No, I think it's probably Edwin Maher. And he does open his newscasts on CCTV-9 with an odd sounding "Nihao."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-anchor4dec04,1,1291538.story?page=1&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=la-headlines-world

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, no, every Chinese woman of a certain age I've ever met . . . I've broken so many hearts . . .

Are you alright?

[rezaf]

I don't know if your friend is a typical Shanghainese girl or not but for what it's worth I should tell you that Shanghainese girls are very 嗲 which means something between sweet and spoiled. The best way to say you like them is to be at their service and treat them like a princess like carrying their bags, cooking for them, washing the dishes, giving them foot massage and ... ;) Don't worry even if you don't know how to do these things they will eventually make you do them.