'ni hao' is used as 'hi' or 'hello', although the literal translation is 'you good'. The 'ma' that you sometimes put on the end, is used to turn a sentence into a 'yes / no' question. Therefore 'ni hao ma' becomes a question like 'how're you doing?'. 'ni hao' is a very common greating for both people whom you know and people whom you have just met.
If “ni hao” means “you good”, then “ni hao ma?” simply means “are you good?”. To keep the conversation going, you can use this basic Chinese question after greeting. 4. Very good 很好 . Pronunciation: Hěn hǎo. You can respond with this basic phrase if someone says “ni hao ma?” to you. 5. Not so good 不太好
The vast majority of words in Mandarin have two syllables, and therefore, the most typical case of neutral tone is a two syllable word with the second syllable having a neutral tone. There are other combinations, but they are much rarer. There are no words with a neutral tone on the first syllable. Particles often have the neutral tone, such as "Ni hao ma" is not commonly used in common Chinese. In China,we just say hi(hai 嗨) among friends colleague. when your friend introduce you sb,you can say ni hao(你好) i think the (a 啊)is not needed. hehe,jin gong can kao(仅供参考) many people know the hello,even they could't speak english. SVNZDh4.