5 Chinese expressions for negative emotions

Today, I’ll be talking about some Chinese expressions that people might find offensive and I will suggest some alternatives on what to say instead.

It’s really unfortunate if someone is offended by you when it wasn’t even your intention.

Language has its own charm, through the words you choose to use, people can feel your emotions and your opinions behind them.

Now let’s talk about 5 Chines expressions for negative emotions or underlying meanings.

Let’s get started!

1, The first one is 不可以. 

不可以 means “can’t”

In daily life, you would often hear people ask “可以吗？” and it means “Is it okay?”

I’ve personally asked this question to a foreign friend, and he replied “不可以”. When I saw the message I felt slightly slight, but I knew he just wanted to say he couldn’t.

So let me tell you where “不可以” is often used.

It’s often used when parents are talking to their children or even when dogs are being trained, and in both cases, it’s used to express that something is not allowed to be done.

So, usually in daily life, if someone gives you a request and you want to say no, you can say “不行”, it still sounds direct, but it’s much more acceptable than 不可以.

If you want to be indirect, you can just state the reason why you can’t do that thing.

2, Now let’s move on to the second one, 嗯.

In Chinese, we can use 嗯 to mean “Yes” or “Okay” and if you say this word in daily life with a polite tone. This is totally fine. But if you type this word when texting, like this: 

A: 明天要一起吃饭吗？(Tomorrow do you want to have a meal together?)

B: 嗯 (Yes)

A: 12点？(12 o’clock?)

B: 嗯 (Yes)

When texting, if you type 嗯 by itself as a response, it sounds pretty indifferent, so the other person might get upset.

So in texts, if you want to answer “yes”, you can type “对”.

And if you want to answer “okay”, you can type “好” or more formally and politely, “好的”.

But if you want to sound more casual and cheerful, you can type 好啊 or 好哇.

3, OK, the next one is 不要.

不要 means “to not want”, so when you don’t want to do something, you say「我不要……」, right?

要 is a strong word.

I guess you’ve learned that 要 and 想 can both mean “to want”, but 要 expresses a stronger will.

It’s okay to use 要 when you want something.

That’s totally fine. But when we give a negative answer to others, we try to be as polite as possible, so we usually don’t use 我不要 to express “I don’t want to ……” because it sounds too strong and kind of childish.

However, 我不想（I don’t want to……） sounds less direct.

So in daily life, we usually use “我不想……” to express “I don’t want to……”.

For instance:

我不想出门。(I don’t want to go out.)

我现在不想吃任何东西。(I don’t want to eat anything now.)

我现在不要吃任何东西。(I don’t want to eat anything now.) (Strong&direct expression)

But if someone asks you whether you need something, like, if you go to buy bubble tea, the clerk might ask you:

你要袋子吗？(Do you need a bag?)

You can reply “不用，谢谢！ (No, thanks”.)

“不用” means “no need”.

4, The fourth one is 呵呵.

You might see this word sometimes in online posts or in comments,

and it’s often translated into English as this: “hehe” but actually, this is not mischievous laughter.

呵呵 is to laugh coldly.

People use it to express contempt or to be sarcastic.

So if you use it, people might get offended. 

In the text, If you want mischievous laughter, you can type “嘿嘿”.

5, OK, the last one is 欸.

 欸 can be used to call others’ attention. It’s like “Hey” in English.

欸 is okay to be used among people that are close to you, but using this word to address people who are older than you, such as your teacher, it’s quite impolite.

So if you want to ask your teacher questions, the polite way is to say “老师，请问 + your question”.

OK, now let’s do a quick recap.

Today we’ve talked about 5 rude Chinese words.

The first one is 不可以, when someone asks you “可以吗 is it okay?”, don’t reply “不可以”.

The second one is 嗯, in text messages, don’t use this word by itself to reply to others as it might offend people.

The third one is 不要, when you want to say “I don’t want to……”, saying “我不要” sounds too strong and direct.

The fourth one is 呵呵, 呵呵 actually indicates malicious laughter, people use it on the internet to express contempt or sarcasm. So unless you want to irritate people, don’t use it!

The last one for today is 欸, using 欸 to address your close friends is totally fine, but don’t use it to talk to your teachers or people who are older than you.

OK, that’s all for today!