An attempt in a "Introduce Yourself" paragraph in Chinese.

[brandonwee]

我 叫黄奕生。 我从菲律宾,三宝颜来。我住在马尼拉因为去大学。我常常穿着白色的t恤衫在学。我学习电机工程。我是二十一岁。我爱开自行车和在跑步。我吃三明治在早，我不喝咖啡。在晚我吃一碗米饭和一碗肉。

My name is 黄奕生. I come from Zamboanga City, Philippines, I currently live in Manila to go to college. I usually wear white shirts to school (I wanted to add "because it removes the need to decide what to wear" but I don't know how to). I am studying Electronics Engineering. I am 21 years old. I like to go biking and running. I usually eat sandwiches for breakfast but I never drink coffee. I eat a bowl of rice and a bowl of meat at night.

Please point out the mistakes and give me tips. I am also aware that this is an odd paragraph.

[Demonic_Duck]

Disclaimer: non-native intermediate level speaker offering advice, I can't claim any great expertise.

我叫黄奕生。 我从菲律宾三宝颜来。我住在为了上大学现在住在马尼拉因为去大学。我在学校常常穿着白色的T恤衫。我学习电机工程。我是二十一岁了。我爱开骑自行车和、跑步。早饭我吃三明治在早，我不喝咖啡。在晚晚上我吃一碗米饭和一碗肉。

I'm not certain about how to translate "I eat [smt] for breakfast", so my correction there might not be perfect. I'm also not exactly sure what you mean by 一碗肉, meat doesn't usually come in bowls...

Also a couple of suggestions:

"T-shirt" is T恤衫, but "shirt" is 衬衫.

"I don't drink coffee" is 我不喝咖啡, whereas "but I never drink coffee" would be 但是我从来不喝咖啡.

"Often" is 常常. whereas "usually" would be 一般 or 平时 .

[biito_takeshi]

Generally,it's pretty well.There is no doubt that a chinese people can understand what you are saying.

I just changed some part of it ,so it sounds more like chinese.

我 叫黄奕生,今年21岁，来自菲律宾的三宝颜。

My name is 黄奕生. I am 21 years old.I come from Zamboanga City, Philippines,

现在在马尼拉上大学，学习电子工程。我经常穿着白衬衫去上学，因为不知道穿嘛好。

I currently live in Manila to go to college.I am studying Electronics Engineering.I usually wear white shirts to school (I wanted to add "because it removes the need to decide what to wear" but I don't know how to).

爱好是骑车和跑步。

I like to go biking and running.

我早饭一般吃三明治，不喝咖啡。晚上则是一碗肉加一碗饭。

I usually eat sandwiches for breakfast but I never drink coffee. I eat a bowl of rice and a bowl of meat at night.

[skylee]

穿嘛好

This does not sound right.

学习电子工程

Do people in China really use 學習 to describe a student going to a university to study a subject? Don't they simply say 念/讀/主修電子工程? I always find the use of 學習 in such context very odd.

[NiveaTango]

我 叫黄奕生。 我从菲律宾,三宝颜来。我住在马尼拉因为去大学。我常常穿着白色的t恤衫在学。我学习电机工程。我是二十一岁。我爱开自行车和在跑步。我吃三明治在早，我不喝咖啡。在晚我吃一碗米饭和一碗肉。

我叫，我来自费率并的三宝颜。我为了上大学住在马尼拉。我喜欢在学校一般穿白色的衬衫，这样我每天不会在决定穿什么衣服浪费时间 (this way, I won't waste time everyday deciding what to wear)。我在大学专修电机工程。我喜欢骑自行车, 跑步。我早餐一般吃三明治，但是我从来不喝咖啡。晚餐我吃米饭和肉。

[Scoobyqueen]

Try not to start each sentence with "I" or at least try and put something in front of "I". To me that does not sound good in any language :-)

(but if your level is really beginner this is probably acceptable early on but then you probably only want people to point you in the direction of very basic things).

[brandonwee]

Try not to start each sentence with "I" or at least try and put something in front of "I"

I was thinking about that last time, but not sure how to go about it :\

[Scoobyqueen]

A simple way of doing this is the same way you would do it in English and a number of other languages. For example you can swop sentences around: because xxx , I. " also this order: "Currently, I live xxx ". The latter example is more restricting in Mandarin given the word order you have to maintain but you can still place some temporal adverbs in front of the personal pronoun to make it more varied. Also: "electronics engineering is my major." ( I am not going to rewrite it for you. You can learn more by doing this yourself. Do not underestimate the value of having gone through that)

It would be useful to know your level. It is possible to change/correct your introduction to a much higher level but if that does not correspond to your current level it makes little sense

[lingo-ling]

I've never heard "T-shirt" being called T恤衫. I've only heard T恤. At least here in Taiwan, your neighbor to the north.

[XiongNu]

我叫黄奕生，来自菲律宾的三宝颜。我因上大学，而住在马尼拉。我在学校常常穿着白色的t恤。我学习电机工程。我二十一岁。我喜欢骑自行车，跑步。我早餐吃三明治，不喝咖啡。晚餐我吃一碗米饭和一碗肉。

Seems like a fairly clean introduction.

[Demonic_Duck]

I've never heard "T-shirt" being called T恤衫. I've only heard T恤. At least here in Taiwan, your neighbor to the north.

I learnt it as T恤衫 when I was learning back in England, and my teacher there was Taiwanese.

[jade-]

@skylee：穿嘛好 is a slang used in Northern China, especially around 天津, it is actually widely used, 嘛 here means 什么, fourth tone.

Also, yes, in mainland, we generally use 学习 when mentioning what one majors in, I guess you can say 我主修电子工程，it is understandable but more sounds like someone who is 港台同胞。

黄奕生 is a good name.

By the way, how do I reply each individual post? The forums have been changed a lot and I haven't been here for a while.

[skylee]

I see. So the OP should decide if he wants to use a slang in his self introduction. At least one person here (me) did not understand that slang.

[lingo-ling]

Plus (in Taiwan, at least), 主修 is not necessarily identical to the Western concept of a "major"; it can also indicate general, vaguely defined and undeclared focuses of study.

To the question "請問你主修什麼?", I've received responses ranging from an exhaustive list of courses taken over the years to "I don't know".

[brandonwee]

黄奕生 is a good name.

I think my grandfather gave me my name, no idea if it means anything though.

It would be useful to know your level. It is possible to change/correct your introduction to a much higher level but if that does not correspond to your current level it makes little sense

I'd put myself as beginner (The paragraph I wrote contains everything I know), I just started studying mandarin, but progress is slow. Haven't had any time to study the past 2 weeks because I'm busy with school work.

[OneEye]

I learnt it as T恤衫 when I was learning back in England, and my teacher there was Taiwanese.

I was also taught T恤衫 here in Taiwan, but have never heard it used, only T恤. I've found that what I'm taught in class (i.e. what the textbooks contain) doesn't always have much to do with how people actually speak in real life.