First in Chinese
first · HSK 3
先
Other ways to say first
More words with 先
How do you say first in Chinese?
First in Chinese is 先 (xiān). You can also say 首先 (shǒu xiān), 甲 (jiǎ), 元 (yuán), 首 (shǒu).
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.