How to say it in Chinese

Language in Chinese

language · HSK 3

语言 yǔ yán

  1. 语 yǔ language
  2. 言 yán words

Counted with 种: 一种语言 yì zhǒng yǔyán

他会说三种语言。 He can speak three languages.

Hear 语言 and see more sentences

Other ways to say language

More words with 语 or 言

How do you say language in Chinese?

Language in Chinese is 语言 (yǔ yán). You can also say 言语 (yán yǔ).

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.