Personal Info — age, origin, languages

The three questions everyone asks in the first five minutes

Once the handshake is out of the way, the next three questions are almost scripted: how old are you, where are you from, what languages do you speak. A taxi driver, a new colleague, a curious neighbor — all three will cycle through these within the first few minutes. Each has a formality dial and a tight answer template; learn the dials and you can run the exchange on autopilot while you pay attention to what the other person actually said.

// The first-five-minutes API.
interface PersonalInfo {
    askAge(them: Person, formality: Formality): string;
    askOrigin(them: Person, scope?: "country" | "city"): string;
    askLanguages(them: Person): string;
    selfIntroduce(details: Profile): Paragraph;
}

type Formality = "child" | "peer" | "polite" | "veryFormal";

1. askAge(them)

Chinese has four ways to ask someone's age, calibrated to who you're talking to. Using the wrong one isn't catastrophic, but it's immediately audible — like calling a stranger "buddy" in English.

Answer templates:

2. askOrigin(them)

"Where are you from" is the most frequent small-talk question a foreigner will field in China. Two flavors: country-scope ("what nationality") and place-scope ("what city"). Both wrap the same noun-centric pattern — Chinese phrases this as "you are what-place person," not "where are you from."

Answer templates:

Country names — most end in 国 ("country"):

Cities work the same way — attach 人 to the city: 我是北京人 ("I'm Beijingese"), 我是上海人 ("I'm Shanghainese"). For hometowns specifically: 我老家在四川 ("my hometown is in Sichuan"; 老家 = ancestral home).

3. askLanguages(them)

The language question arrives right after origin — and if you're visibly foreign, often before it. Chinese verbs for "can speak" center on 会 (huì, "to know how"), the modal for learned skills.

Answer templates:

Language names:

4. selfIntroduce(details)

Put the three answers together and you have the canonical "introduce yourself" paragraph — the one every Chinese textbook asks you to recite in week two.

A worked example — a 30-year-old Canadian software engineer:

5. Sample dialogs

6. Edge cases

岁 vs 年纪 vs 高寿 — the formality scale

All three words mean "age," at different points on the register dial:

• 岁 (suì) — the neutral counter. Every adult answer uses this.
• 年纪 (nián jì) — "age" as a polite noun. Used in respectful questions: 您多大年纪？
• 高寿 (gāo shòu) — "honorable longevity." Ceremonial; for seniors or literary contexts.

Rule of thumb: if you can call the person 您, you can reach for 年纪. Over 70 and you want to show deference? 高寿 is a warm move.

中文 vs 汉语 vs 普通话 — all "Chinese"

• 中文 — most general. "Chinese, the language." Covers written and spoken, any dialect. Your 90% word.
• 汉语 — "Han-language," academic. The word used in textbooks and HSK exam names.
• 普通话 — "common speech." Mandarin specifically, as opposed to dialects. Use this when contrasting with Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc.

In Hong Kong, 你会说中文吗？ is ambiguous between Mandarin and Cantonese — 普通话 is the precise word.

Why 哪里人 instead of "where from"

English asks "where are you from" — a locative question with a prepositional answer. Chinese reframes the same thing as an identity claim: 你是哪里人？ literally "you are what-place person?" The expected answer is a noun phrase — "I am a Beijing person" — not a prepositional phrase.

This noun-centric shape is pervasive. Chinese prefers X is a Y constructions over X does Y from Z wherever possible. It's why job titles, hometowns, zodiacs, and group memberships all fit the same 我是 … 人 template.

The "what do you do" follow-up

Origin and languages usually trigger a work-or-study question as the fourth turn:

• 你做什么工作？ (nǐ zuò shén me gōng zuò?) — "What work do you do?" For working adults.
• 你学什么？ (nǐ xué shén me?) — "What do you study?" For students. Answer with a subject: 我学计算机 ("I study computer science").

These are the gateway to the Work & Office phrasebook, where the full vocabulary of jobs, companies, and titles lives.

7. Next steps

• Next phrasebook: Work & Office — jobs, companies, meetings
• Previous: Greetings & Introductions — the handshake protocol
• Browse personal-info vocabulary — filtered by tag
• Module 1: The Runtime — the word-order theory behind 我是X人

Once the three-question block is automatic, most first conversations coast for another five minutes on nothing but family, food, and travel. Each is its own phrasebook — but they all rely on the same 我是 … 人 template you just learned.