Before in Chinese
before · HSK 3
面前
- 面 face
- 前 front
他站在我面前，一句话也没说。 He stood in front of me without saying a word.
Other ways to say before
More words with 面 or 前
How do you say before in Chinese?
Before in Chinese is 面前 (miàn qián). You can also say 以前 (yǐ qián), 之前 (zhī qián), 从前 (cóng qián), 先前 (xiān qián).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
The CC-CEDICT dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.