Animals and Pets - KS2 Mandarin - 麻豆官网首页入口 Bitesize

Some animals are very important within Chinese culture.

You can learn a bit about this in the story of the zodiac animals.

Talking about your pets in Mandarin

To tell someone what pet you have in Mandarin, you can use Wǒ yǒu (I have).

To say ‘I have a cat’ in Mandarin you would not simply say ‘ Wǒ yǒu 驳ǒ耻’ - this misses out the ‘a’.

In Mandarin, measure words (often called ‘classifiers’) are used to classify the type of object being discussed.

For animals, these are:

Measure Word	Use
yī zhī	For relatively small animals, eg dogs, cats and rabbits
yī tóu	For larger animals, eg cows, pigs and elephants
yī pǐ	For horses and wolves specifically
yī tiáo	For long, thin, wriggly or slithery animals, eg snakes and fish

So, to say ‘I have a cat’ in Mandarin you would say:

Wǒ yǒu yī zhī 尘ā辞 - I have a cat

When you want to say you have two of something in Mandarin, you don’t use è谤 (two).

Instead, you use the Mandarin word 濒颈ǎ苍驳, for example:

Wǒ yǒu 濒颈ǎ苍驳 zhī 驳ǒ耻 - I have two dogs

This only applies to the number ‘two’ - all other numbers stay the same.

As well as pets, here are some other animals you may want to talk about in Mandarin:

Some animals names translate very literally from Mandarin into English, for example: