Begin in Chinese
to begin · HSK 2
开始
- 开 to open
- 始 beginning
电影七点开始。 The movie starts at seven.
Other ways to say begin
More words with 开 or 始
How do you say begin in Chinese?
Begin in Chinese is 开始 (kāi shǐ). You can also say 开 (kāi), 起 (qǐ), 开头 (kāi tóu).
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.