Sorry in Chinese
sorry · HSK 1
对不起
- 对 right
- 不 not
- 起 to rise
Other ways to say sorry
More words with 对 or 不 or 起
How do you say sorry in Chinese?
Sorry in Chinese is 对不起 (duì bu qǐ). You can also say 不好意思 (bù hǎo yì si), 抱歉 (bào qiàn).
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.