Yes, that’s perfectly normal and it’s taught in most textbooks as well!

My Chinese mother-in-law always says 不是，pronounced in very strong accented Sichuan version (buse), and she seems to use it as a sort of universal “no”. Did not hear others to use it so much as her, though.

Good point! This, I think, qualifies as something relatively common that is actually incorrect (as you say). As a teacher, I think the reason you stress that a question word or particle is needed is because trying to teach intonation and tones at the same time is really, really hard. I mean, it’s hard enough for most students to grasp tones, and then when you mix in intonation… well, that’s just not something you want to do with beginners. Since it’s much easier to stay with question words or particles, that’s what teachers do. I do the same! Well-meant and reasonable obfuscation, in other words. 🙂

Yes, the 谢谢 thing is similar, but not the same. Note that what I’m complaining about here is that 你好 is incorrectly presented to students, which is not the case for 谢谢. It’s not that 你好 is used less than you’d think, it’s that it doesn’t mean what it says it means, so the basic definition is incorrect. For 谢谢, there’s nothing wrong with how it’s described, but you’re right that there is a cultural difference which results in much fewer 谢谢s being uttered in families, at least compared to what I would expect (not sure how Sweden compares to the US, for example).

As an aside, I think these cultural differences are very interesting, because they give rise to fairly difficult question. I mean, if you interact with the general public in a country, I think you’re expected to follow the norms in that culture. But that’s not really true for family. I mean, the fewer people are involved, the more each might compromise. You can’t expect a billion Chinese to change their ways because of you, but you can kind of expect one Chinese person to do so and meet you half way (or one third or whatever). For example, I say 谢谢 to my wife quite often, although perhaps less than I would to my parents or siblings. She says 谢谢 to me too, but probably less than I do, but still more than she’s used to. Interesting!

(I fixed the typo, thanks!)

(A typo in the 2nd para: ‘reigned’ should be ‘reined’.)

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it’s fine when all students are new, but it gets weird sometimes when I teach a course where some of the students have actually studied some Chinese before. I prefer to not even mention the dipping for a while, but it’s kind of unavoidable because they think you’re just incompetent if you don’t, since your way of teaching clashes with what they already know.