"really?"

[stewie]

what do Chinese normally say when asking "really?", as in "is that so?"

would "cheng2 ma" do the job?

[Quest]

真的吗？ 是吗？是真的？是真的吗？有这么回事吗？

[889]

I'm not Chinese, but I'd simply say Shi ma? 是吗? And I'd really accentuate the falling tone in shi 是, starting it quite a bit higher than usual.

[Frank Tian]

really means in Chinese is 真的吗？zhen1de ma

cheng2ma means is it ok?

[semantic nuance]

All Quest and 889 said are right. In Taiwan, you can also use "是喔" to mean 'is that so'. But "是喔" is a bit to show surprise,disbelief, or sometimes to tease in a jocular way.

Hope it helps!

[jukebox]

I'm not Chinese, but I'd simply say Shi ma? 是吗? And I'd really accentuate the falling tone in shi 是, starting it quite a bit higher than usual.

I think people actually say '不是吧?' more frequently...

[dalaowai]

I agree with Quest,

to add on, I find it to be regional as to which expression people tend to use. For example, while living in Eastern Zhejiang, I found that most people would say "真的”whereas, in Jiangsu, they would often say “是吗”which led me to believe that I was being made fun of. However, that was not the case.

[chichi]

I believe when we are unwilling to believe it, we would say:"不是把？！”

but when we are not sure whether to believe it or not and would like to have the other's confirmation we would say"真的？/真的吗？”

and when we doubt it greatly we would say "是吗？”

ie. A: 他和***结婚了

B：不是吧！？（indicating that he is unwilling to believe the fact bec maybe ***is too ugly to match him:mrgreen: )

or B: 真的吗？（indicating he doesn't believe it at the first moment maybe bec it comes all of a sudden)

or B: 是吗？（ indicating he doesn't think it's likely)

But generally we don't distinguish them. you can just use at your own will but don't use " 不是吧” in front of people who are much elder or of higher social rank

[liuzhou]

Round these parts people just yell "真的!" with a suitable questioning tone of voice and appropriate facial expressions. When they calm down they may repeat the question and add "吗"as our text books tell us we should! But I wouldn't guarantee it.

[in_lab]

Another one is 真的假的? It sounds a little overly dramatic to me, but it's common.

[Lu]

Another one is 真的假的?

I was going to mention that one. Never heard it in Beijing but in Taiwan it's very common.

[stewie]

thanks all.

btw "真的" is kao4 nong4, no?

[skylee]

no.

it is zhen1 de.

[stewie]

oops, must have had the wrong encoding selected when copying the characters from this forum & pasting them into a translation site.

[stewie]

"zhen1 da" sounds nice and easy to remember. I couldn't find it though as one phrase at the talking dictionary, so I made this composite using the same website:

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~walstone/public/zhen-da.mp3

can someone confirm it sounds correct before I burn it to cd? (I'm making a cd of common phrases using that excellent website)

[semantic nuance]

Hi,

Yes, it's correct.

Hope it helps!