The ones you'll use every hour
- 你好 (nǐ hǎo) — hello. Works everywhere, with everyone.
- 謝謝 (xiè xie) — thank you. The single highest-value phrase on this page.
- 不好意思 (bù hǎo yì si) — excuse me / sorry. If Taiwan runs on one phrase, it's this: use it to get a server's attention, squeeze past someone on the MRT, open a question to a stranger, or apologize for a small bump. It's softer and far more common in Taiwan than a textbook 對不起 (duì bù qǐ), which is reserved for actual apologies.
- 請問 (qǐng wèn) — "may I ask…" The polite way to open any question: 請問 + the thing you want to know.
- 再見 (zài jiàn) — goodbye. Though listen around and you'll mostly hear the loanword 拜拜 (bāi bāi) — "bye-bye" — which is completely normal adult speech in Taiwan.
Night markets and food stalls
- 多少錢？ (duō shǎo qián?) — how much is it? Don't worry about catching the answer: vendors are used to visitors and will often just show you the number.
- 我要這個 (wǒ yào zhè ge) — I want this one. Pointing while saying it is not cheating; it's exactly what the phrase is for.
- 好吃！ (hǎo chī!) — delicious! Say it to the person who cooked your food and watch what happens.
- 不用了，謝謝 (bú yòng le, xiè xie) — no need, thanks. The gentle way to decline a bag, a sample, or an upsell.
Ordering drinks like a local
Taiwan invented bubble tea — 珍珠奶茶 (zhēn zhū nǎi chá), "pearl milk tea" — and every drink shop will ask you two questions: how much sugar, and how much ice. The answers are their own tiny vocabulary:
- 半糖 (bàn táng) — half sugar.
- 去冰 (qù bīng) — no ice.
- 半糖去冰 (bàn táng qù bīng) — half sugar, no ice: the classic combo, and possibly the most Taiwanese sentence a visitor can say.
Note the pair hiding in there: 糖 (táng, "sugar") rises, while 湯 (tāng, "soup") stays flat — one of the everyday word pairs where tones genuinely change what you've ordered.
Getting around
- 捷運 (jié yùn) — the MRT/metro. Taipei's and Kaohsiung's systems are bilingual and famously easy to use.
- 火車 (huǒ chē) — train; 高鐵 (gāo tiě) — the high-speed rail down the west coast; 車站 (chē zhàn) — station.
- 悠遊卡 (yōu yóu kǎ) — the EasyCard, the tap-to-pay transit card that also works in convenience stores. Buy one on day one.
- 廁所在哪裡？ (cè suǒ zài nǎ lǐ?) — where's the bathroom? The most important question in any language.
Small cultural notes that make the phrases land
- Tipping isn't part of everyday culture. Night-market stalls and taxis don't expect it; sit-down restaurants typically add a service charge to the bill instead. A warm 謝謝 (xiè xie) is the appreciated currency.
- Keep your receipts. Every printed receipt doubles as a ticket in Taiwan's uniform-invoice lottery (統一發票, tǒng yī fā piào), with drawings every two months — locals genuinely check theirs.
- Signs are in Traditional characters. Menus, streets, everything — one of the visible differences covered in Taiwanese Mandarin vs. Mainland Mandarin. Romanized spellings on street signs vary a lot between systems, so trust the characters (or the MRT's English) over the romanization.
If you want more than survival phrases
A phrase list gets you through a week. If Taiwan is more than a one-off trip — family, a longer stay, or you just fell for the place — the jump from "memorized sounds" to actually speaking comes from learning the words with their tones and characters from the start, in an order that builds. That's the whole design of CiaoSpeak: a travel-focused path is one of the goals you can pick on day one, and the curriculum teaches Taiwan-standard vocabulary — 半糖去冰 (bàn táng qù bīng) included — from lesson one.