What are you supposed to say when Chinese pay you compliments?

[Brandon263]

When someone says something like "Your Chinese is good," I often find it hard to respond. I usually end up saying "meiyou" and shaking my head in modesty, but I have a feeling that this is the incorrect response. "Nali nali" feels dated and just plain weird, while "Xie xie" doesn't have the proper qian xu element. What is the correct (i.e. modest and gracious) way to respond to compliments?

[aristotle1990]

还好吧

Modest but not overly modest.

[Meng Lelan]

I just kind of joke around and "say not as good as yours!" or "far from it!" I know some people are saying "xie xie" these days and it's gotten somewhat more acceptable in the last decade. Chinese language teachers used to go crazy if you tried to say "xie xie" to a compliment but not as much in the past several years.

[roddy]

Once or twice I've told people who are being complimentary to the point of being tiresome that they're 太见外了吧. I like to think this is kind of 'you're too polite. No, really, you're too polite. Stop it now please.' But I could be wrong.

[889]

The key is to lightly say something like 没什么好！then quickly move the conversation onto something else so you don't get bogged down in a back-and-forth on your language ability.

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, I really like the suggestion from 889.

[gougou]

I like to use 班门弄斧; it allows you to act modest while at the same time proving that your Chinese indeed rocks.

[Brandon263]

Wah, 班门弄斧 shows serious chengyu skills. (It is a chengyu right?) I might not be able to pull that or 太见外了吧 off since I'm only at intermediate/lower-advanced level. What does 太见外 mean?

I agree with Meng Lelan that 889's mei shenme hao sounds great, though. Is meiyou wrong, though?

[anonymoose]

I usually just say 哪里 哪里. It seems to be one of the phrases that all chinese people say allegedly (like 你吃了吗？ as a greeting) when in reality it seems hardly anyone says it, but it usually gets a few chuckles so it serves as a good response anyway.

[889]

It takes practice, but you also have to slightly cast your eyes down in a modest glance.

[Kenny同志]

A few lines you could consider:

哪里 or 哪里哪里（not that popular perhaps as it sounds 文雅, but personally I like it.）

（是）您过奖了 ( formal, but you could use it on certain occasions. I like this too)

马马虎虎（吧） not bad, passable, （common expression）

还行（吧） or 还凑合（吧） not bad, passable （commonly used, not so modest as 马马虎虎 to my ears though）

谢谢(seemingly kind of fashionable, but sounds a bit unnatural, especially when your Chinese is not so good and people just try to be nice or polite towards you. If I was in the same situation, I probably wouldn’t use it)

还差得远呢！(far from good or perfect) modest, and appropriate in most cases.

If the compliment is from a Chinese friend and you want to appear modest and humorous, you could probably say 哪里，跟你比我差远了.

BTW, 没什么好 sounds weird; no native speaker would say that. 太见外了 is not used by a native speaker in such a situation, or rarely at least.

[889]

"BTW, 没什么好 sounds weird; no native speaker would say that."

The point is to stop the compliments, not encourage them.

[roddy]

Rarely is good enough for me

[Kenny同志]

"BTW, 没什么好 sounds weird; no native speaker would say that."

The point is to stop the compliments, not encourage them.

I know your point, but it’s just weird. All these modest expressions are not intended to encourage further compliments, but to show you’re a modest person. And unless one’s Chinese is really, really good, in almost all cases, people will stop there, or they may add 你谦虚了, something like that。

[taylor04]

I always say meiyou meiyou, in fact its just an automatic response now. One time I was telling someone I studied at Zhejiang University, they proceeded to say it's a good university, naturally I thought they were going to compliment me so I automatically said meiyou meiyou. Felt really bad after that, but explained the reason why I said meiyou right after.

[Tianjin42]

I always thought that 过奖 (Guo Jiang) was good, and sounds fairly natural. My Chinese isn't yet great though - what do the more accomplished speakers think of this?

[cui ruide]

Yeah, now I mostly go with:

"没有,没有那么好." Which sounds pretty ordinary.

I used to say: "还是有缺点." Which is that modest way of deflecting a comment, but also signaling it's pretty good since 'quedian' is a more formal way of saying faults. That felt kinda lame after a while though, and it of course illicited more attention.

As far as 哪里，哪里 goes, I like the longer form I've heard: "哪里，哪里有xx," xx being what they're complimenting you on.

A sort of joke response for compliments I've picked up from young friends is "必需的，必需的."

[elliott50]

I often seem to say "你太客气"... is that wrong?

[Brandon263]

Thanks for an amazing post kenny2006woo. 还差得远呢 sounds great. Like taylor04, I usually use "meiyou, meiyou"; does it sound unnatural/is it plain-out wrong?

[Yang Rui]

I love 还差得远呢. In the old version of Practical Chinese Reader, this is what Gubo uses and I don't think it's gone out of date. Always seems nicely modest. Also, I might be wrong, but is KennyWoo the only native speaker who has replied? Might be best to go with his suggestions...