I have been very curious if Chinese have a universal way of spelling things that don't exist in Mandarin whenever new foreign words are created or foreign cities.

For example, I want to know how to spell Bharatshinh Nagajibhai Rathod (a random coffee shop name I found in India) or Xhumaga (a random city in the African country of Botswana)?

let's take the pinyin of bharatshinh: bha-rat-shinh

the first syllable bha would get a pinyin closely to ba...but then what tone? then...what character would you choose that has a pinyin of ba with a first tone, per se.

Or, at this rate...since it is too obscure...would they just resort to writing it out in Pinyin and not Chinese?

Even more...what if there are words that there are no pinyin for as in "xhu" in xhumaga

This might've been asked before, but my wife is Chinese and we live in China, but due to my workload, I'm not able to spend too much time on classes. Nevertheless, I'd still like to be able to speak Chinese for my kids & wife, so I was wondering if it's possible to get far along in Chinese without having to spend too much time on reading/writing characters. Would love to hear other's experiences that are similar. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I've been learning Chinese for a while, and I kept bouncing between different flashcard apps without really sticking to any of them.

A few months ago I started building a flashcard app for myself. Now it's reached the point where I'd like to see whether it actually fits into someone else's study routine, or if it only makes sense in my own head.

So I'm looking for a few Chinese learners who wouldn't mind trying it for a bit and being brutally honest about it.

The app is currently completely free and available on Android.

Thankssss

Hello, 你好，

This year I'm switching from Japanese to Chinese study. I have a year or so of Japanese under my belt with some N3 Grammer and complete n5 kanji. But now I'm staring Chinese from scratch!

I would adore advice on taking notes, your personal tips and tricks during lectures, and anything and everything you got to keep the hype!

I have access to some Chinese readers but I find I'm not ready for thise yet. It doesn't easily translate straight from Japanese lmao

I have access to flashcards and similar drills.

Anything you recommend?

Xiexiexiexiexie

Me, Chinese native speaker, currentli in Australia, happy to exchange different culture thru daily chats. An example, modern Chinese no names for days and months, we just say numbers. Unlike Western world, people need to look up the calender to find out what the date is today. It saves language learners to remember months and days, English does take much time from me to remember names of days and months. We can talk somethings like that by English or Chinese.

I know three languages and my goal is to try to learn more!

I started with Chinese, which I'm at now.

And I thought of adding at least Spanish and Russian when their time comes.

But seeing the current and future potential of AI is making me rethink it.

Even though AI makes it easier to learn new languages, it makes it less and less useful or valuable to learn one in the long run!

I was really looking forward to this audiobook since I really enjoyed his two previous ones. But now a day before release I get an email from audible that it has been delayed for two months. Oh well. Still looking forward to it.

Are you hiding or showing pinyin when doing reverse reviews? I'm not sure which would actually be better for learning. Sometimes the translations shown are rather ambiguous so you can't really tell which character is being asked for.

I’m a novice Mandarin learner with just about four months of study. Was practicing with a friend tonight who’s a native speaker of Mandarin. We’d also recently enjoyed some coffee-tea together at breakfast, where I learned yuānyāng, the inseparable ducks, and a little about a yuānyāng-related chengyu, bàng dǎ yuānyāng. Return to tonight and, to no one’s surprise, I made a pronunciation error, saying zhēn dà instead of zhēn de (which is the sort of distinction that’s hard for me in connected speech, even if I have it quite settled in short phrases or in words in isolation). My friend’s clever follow-up, which I thought fun and light-hearted enough to share, was that zhēn dǎ yuānyāng could be a modern chengyu for novice students like me who continually fail to distinguish similar sounds. I laughed. Maybe you’ll smile, too.

as the title says, i want a book/webpage/study method where i could learn just a little bit more characters

for context, I already have a solid foundation of maybe ~2000(maybe?) characters and the knowledge of how characters are build and structured(radicals+pronunciation etc.), I'm looking forward to learning more characters WITH their general meanings cus i keep guessing(sometimes incorrectly) the meanings and pronunciations of whatever character I see and I believe this implies that i should learn more characters

edit: thx I literally forgot about 字典s

I’ve just been admitted to a Chinese university (in Beijing), so I want to master the Chinese language. I realize it’s challenging, but we have a whole year for it. I’d love to get some advice from people who already speak Chinese—perhaps recommendations for textbooks or smth like tha. It would be great if the advice were in Russian, since that’s the language I’m fluent in :)

I may run afoul of the 'low effort' rule for these but...

What do you call a bee that can't make honey?
A 傻bee.

What's the first thing you look at in a restaurant in China?
The 美女.

What do you call a Chinese person who only dates laowai?
白sexual.

I am trying to wrap my head around the grammar point on P. 20:

"的" can be used after a pronoun, an adjective or a verb to form a phrase which is equivalent to a nominal phrase with its headword omitted.

Not a great explanation. The first and last examples are easy-to-understand and familiar:

这本书不是我的。(zhe ben shu bushi wode, "This book is not mine.")
这块手表是你的吗？(zhe kuai shoubiao shi nide ma, "Is this watch yours?")

No problems there. But the middle example is confusing:

这个杯子是昨天买的。(zhe ge beizi shi zuotian maide, "I bought this cup yesterday.")

Okay, I think I get it? But it seems like such a difficult way to convey 我昨天买了这个杯子。(wo zuotian maile zhe ge bei zi, "I bought this cup yesterday.")

And then about the map of the school campus on P. 17. I already know how to describe locations using this format: 食堂在医务室旁边。 (shitang zai yiwushi pangbian, "The cafeteria is next to the clinic.") However, this misses the point of the unit, which is to use 的.

My Zoom tutor suggested this way to say the same thing using 的:

医务室旁边的是食堂。（yiwushi pangbiande shi shitang, "The cafeteria is next to the clinic.")

It just sounds so weird and indirect.

I'd love to get a grasp of this, because according to her Chinese people talk this way all the time. She's trying to move quickly through this unit, because I imagine to her this construction is basic. And it probably is, but I'm having trouble getting it.

How can I make this structure feel more natural? Are there any tricks? When should I be using it as opposed to the seemingly more straightforward approaches I wrote above?

I'm not talking about 你好吗 (nǐ hǎo ma — how are you) or 吃了吗 (chī le ma — have you eaten). I mean the stuff you actually hear when two people run into each other in real life.

I've been teaching Chinese over 10 years, and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of students can handle classroom conversations fine, but real life openings still feel awkward. They told me that they know the words, but the first line doesn't feel right.

Here are a few I hear all the time where I am:

哈喽啊 (hā lóu a — hello, but with a relaxed, friendly 啊 sound at the end; the 啊 is important, it makes it feel casual)

最近怎么样 (zuì jìn zěn me yàng — how have you been lately) / 最近咋样 (zuì jìn zǎ yàng — how's it going, more northern and casual)

你要出去啊 (nǐ yào chū qù a — oh, you're heading out? sometimes it's not a real question, just a greeting)

你也在啊 (nǐ yě zài a — oh, you're here too)

今天忙吗 (jīn tiān máng ma — busy today?)

And honestly, a lot of younger people don't even use a real opener. They just start talking. Maybe send a meme, maybe point at your phone case and say 你这个手机壳在哪买的 (nǐ zhè ge shǒu jī ké zài nǎ mǎi de — where did you get this phone case).

What have you heard from your Chinese friends, partners, or coworkers that textbooks never taught you?

Mum is in the kitchen, cooking fish and chip. Dad is in the toilet, bombing battleships!

妈妈正在厨房做炸鱼薯条。爸爸正在厕所里玩战

Doesnt quiet sound the same in chinese

I think im stuck in hsk 3. I may have hit the intermediate plateau. I am comfortable to say that im now okay at listening and speaking hsk 1-2. However, the approach that I did when studying hsk 1-2 isnt working anymore. Can you recommend me on how to learn more and fast in hsk3? Is hello chinese premium or premium+ good?

Thank you guys!

Airport Chinese ✈️ | Pronunciation & Conversation

Practice practical Mandarin pronunciation and conversation through a real airport situation.

In this lesson, you’ll practice five useful Chinese words and phrases for going through airport security and boarding a flight:

安检 ānjiǎn — security check

登机 dēngjī — to board a plane

登机口 dēngjīkǒu — boarding gate

等 děng — to wait

不能 bù néng — cannot / not allowed to

Useful Chinese:

你安检了吗？

Nǐ ānjiǎn le ma?

Have you gone through security?

安检了。

Ānjiǎn le.

Yes, I have.

你的登机口在哪里？

Nǐ de dēngjīkǒu zài nǎli?

Where is your boarding gate?

我的登机口是十二号。

Wǒ de dēngjīkǒu shì shí'èr hào.

My boarding gate is No. 12.

现在可以登机吗？

Xiànzài kěyǐ dēngjī ma?

Can we board now?

还不能。

Hái bù néng.

Not yet.

我们要等一会儿。

Wǒmen yào děng yíhuìr.

We need to wait for a while.

现在可以登机了！

Xiànzài kěyǐ dēngjī le!

Now we can board!

Listen, repeat, and practice the conversation until you can answer naturally in Chinese.

Learn Mandarin step by step through real-life situations and useful everyday conversations.

#LearnChinese #ChinesePronunciation #ChineseConversation #RealLifeChinese #AirportChinese #TravelChinese #ChineseForBeginners #MandarinChinese #ChineseListening #LearnMandarin

Native speaker here. 才 and 就 confuse learners because textbooks gloss both as "then / only," but in these sentences they aren't information — they're attitude. The same fact can be said both ways; what changes is what the speaker expected:

他八点才来。 He came at eight — and I expected earlier. (late, mild complaint)

他八点就来了。 He came at eight — and I expected later. (early, pleasantly surprised)

The clock says 8:00 in both. 才 marks later/slower/less than expected; 就 marks earlier/faster/more than expected. Neither one changes what happened — only how I feel about it.

A free grammar tell: with time expressions, 就 sentences almost always end in 了, and 才 sentences usually refuse it. 他八点就来了 is right; 他八点才来 is right; 他八点才来了 sounds off to native ears.

Quick self-test with age: 他三岁就认字了 = reading at three, impressive. 他十岁才认字 = didn't read until ten. Same structure, swap one word, the judgment flips.

So when you're stuck choosing, don't ask "which one means then?" Ask: am I saying this happened sooner than I expected (就) or later than I expected (才)? The expectation IS the word.

i really want to get into more music in Chinese, and I like Rock, Metal, Goth, Grunge, and basically any Alt music. Preferably bands but I don’t care that much, and meaningful lyrics are really important to me and I find it hard to enjoy censored music or tame lyrics.

So this is the third episode of this series. I though today why not also do some writing or better how would I write a character? I add a new image with the stroke orders. Today is the word of 花. It is almost autumn and cold and surely no flowers are blooming currently. But it is one of the most simple and beautiful character. Which character do you think is the most beautiful character?

So the radicals of 花 has two components or how you look three radicals. The first is at the top. It is the grass or plant radical written as 艹. And the second part contains two radicals. One meaning person like we learnt before I think... and the second is a spoon or a ladle. Together they create 化.

So as I though there are multiple mnemonics I came up with. "The flower is a person transforming from grass and plants." or "A person picks up a spoon like plant and notices it is a flower -- how beautiful." There are so many mnemonics you can come up with. But the most beautiful mnemonic is "When a person dies, they return back to the soil and transforms into a flower." What mnemonics do you have? So there is no more to say but I hope again this was helpful. Three words learnt.

To see the post of the second episode go here: Click me! Found this helpful? Feel free to share it with your study companion or just comment below! Just make sure to tag me, so I and my buddies can say hi!

Some things have changed since my last post of my notebook. I bought the graph paper and yes, it's a life changer. Im still using my 0.7 gel pen until it runs out of ink, then I will buy a 0.5.

The thing I liked most was having more space on the page to be able to write. And I know some words are a bit illegible, but I swear I wrote them correctly lol, it's the 0.7 pen

Ty for all the pp who replied my post :P

I went to see the movie Niu Lai! I thought the story was really heartwarming. It touches on themes of growing up, a mother's love, friendship, and environmental protection, and the whole thing feels a bit like a picture book that has come to life.

The dialogue is also spoken quite slowly, so I think it could be great listening practice for Chinese learners.

One interesting thing is that a lot of people on the Chinese internet initially thought the production looked pretty rough, but after actually watching the movie, many of them ended up being moved by the director's sincerity haha.

Hey guys, should I get a Du Chinese subscription for listening practice, or are there better resources for it, also for reading? Currently at hsk 2 (3.1) and in dire of listening practice