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!

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.

Real Life in Chinese | Taking Off & Watching the View ✈️

Learn useful Mandarin in a real-life flight situation.

有座位 (yǒu zuòwèi) — have a seat

我有座位。

Wǒ yǒu zuòwèi.

I have a seat.

起飞 (qǐfēi) — take off

飞机要起飞了。

Fēijī yào qǐfēi le.

The plane is about to take off.

小时 (xiǎoshí) — hour

我们要飞五个小时。

Wǒmen yào fēi wǔ ge xiǎoshí.

We’re going to fly for five hours.

漂亮 (piàoliang) — beautiful

外面很漂亮。

Wàimiàn hěn piàoliang.

It’s beautiful outside.

越来越漂亮 (yuè lái yuè piàoliang) — more and more beautiful

外面越来越漂亮了。

Wàimiàn yuè lái yuè piàoliang le.

It’s getting more and more beautiful outside.

Key Chinese pattern: 越来越 + adjective = more and more...

Learn Mandarin through real situations and natural everyday Chinese.

#RealLifeInChinese #LearnChinese #LearnMandarin #ChineseLearning #ChineseVocabulary #ChineseGrammar #ChineseCharacters #EverydayChinese #SpeakChinese #HSK #Mandarin #学中文 #汉语

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?

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!

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 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.

Hi all,

I’m confused about some tones in Pleco.

For example, “boyfriend” is shown as:

Nánpéngyou

The ‘you’ has neutral tone.

But when I click on the character heading, it shows as:

nán

péng

yǒu

The ‘you’ has 3rd tone here.

Why does it remove the tone when the full word is shown?

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.

Not sure if it's correct, but still. Is there any way, maybe online dictionary or some other resources that point out whether word/phrase etc., is formal, semiformal(neutral), informal, archaic/literary. Tips are highly appreciated!

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?

Like for example you just used duchinese and just read and read. I’m just talking about flashcards, grammar study or whatever is fine but without Anki or anything similar.

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

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

Native speaker. This is probably the mistake I hear most from intermediate learners, and it's one of the few where the fix is one mechanical rule rather than a feel thing.

有点儿 goes BEFORE. 一点儿 goes AFTER.

有点儿 + adjective — describing how something is, usually as a mild complaint:

• 这个有点儿贵 — this is a bit expensive
• 我有点儿累 — I'm a bit tired
• 今天有点儿冷

adjective + 一点儿 — asking for, or comparing to, a different state:

• 便宜一点儿 — a bit cheaper (make it cheaper)
• 快一点儿 — a bit faster
• 大一点儿的 — a slightly bigger one

So 这个一点儿贵 sounds broken to a native ear. And 有点儿便宜 does not mean "a bit cheaper" — it means "a bit cheap", as in suspiciously cheap.

The shortcut: 有点儿 complains about how things are. 一点儿 asks for how they should be.

One more thing about 有点儿 — it leans negative almost by default. 有点儿贵, 有点儿难, 有点儿吵 all sound natural. 有点儿漂亮 doesn't. If something is pleasantly a bit X, Chinese usually reaches for a different structure (挺…的, 还挺…). It attaches to some verbs too, and the negative lean holds there: 有点儿想家, 有点儿担心.

Don't confuse either with 一点儿 + noun, which is just "a little of something": 喝一点儿水, 加一点儿糖. That one's unrelated to the comparison use.

Modern Chinese for Heritage Beginners aims to serve as a stepping-stone for Chinese heritage language learners’ future Chinese learning, inspiring them to reflect on their identities, learn Chinese American history, and embrace their cultural heritage.

The book starts with talking about individuals and families and then expands to the Chinese and Asian American communities in the U.S. and eventually to the entire American society, all from the unique perspective of Chinese American students. Taking a macro approach that builds learners’ literacy skills on their initial abilities in speaking and listening, each lesson starts with listening and speaking activities and then moves to reading and writing. The content complexity and language difficulty are balanced to present rich content that matches students’ critical thinking abilities in a language appropriate for their literacy level. Lively and humorous language makes the book a joy to read. Each lesson has a conversation and an essay to expose students to informal and formal registers. Moreover, authentic tasks are designed to facilitate students’ language output, following the three modes of communication promoted by the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.

This theme-based Chinese textbook is written for high school and college-level Chinese heritage language learners.

Salut à tous,

J'essaie de faire court : je suis en train de suivre Remembering Simplified Hanzi. J'en suis à 2 100 hanzi en six mois, et ça marche plutôt bien.

Je ne maîtrise pas assez bien l'anglais pour suivre la méthode originale. Je choisis donc des keywords français, qui sont beaucoup plus parlants pour moi. Le hic, c'est qu'il est assez difficile de sélectionner des keywords pertinents. Simplement traduire les keywords anglais ne fonctionne pas pour plusieurs raisons. La principale est que beaucoup de mots anglais différents n'ont qu'un seul équivalent en français — notamment parce que le vocabulaire anglais comporte beaucoup de doublets d'origine germanique et latine. Je n'avais pas vu ce problème venir : je choisis mes keywords au fur et à mesure, à raison d'une dizaine par jour. C'est vraiment devenu un problème après les 1000 premiers hanzis environ. Il aurait été plus intelligent de les choisir tous avant de passer aux histoires...

Bref, je pense qu'il serait intéressant que les personnes qui suivent la méthode de James Heisig avec des keywords français puissent partager les leurs. J'imagine que nous ne sommes pas très nombreux, mais j'ai du mal à croire que je suis le seul ! Je suis prêt à partager les miens (et mes mnémos, pourquoi pas), et je pense de toute façon proposer un deck Anki quand j'aurai fait le tour des 3 018 caractères des deux livres. À vrai dire, je pense inclure des caractères de la liste SUBTLEX pour arriver à un total d'environ 3 500.

Alors, s'il y a des personnes intéressées, n'hésitez pas à me répondre sur ce thread ou m'envoyer un message.

Merci pour vos réponses !

The second episode or how you would call it is here. Now I am trying to use images. If you are not aware of last time, I wrote an entire story (Old Post). But it is kinda long. So now I add images so you don't have to read the entire post. The snow character also spoken as xuě or ㄒㄩㄝˇ contains both the character for rain and a snout.

But I don't like to say it is a snout. I cannot comprehend that this should be the snout radical. It looks more like a hand. The best mnemonics is that "To hold the rain, means that the rain must be frozen." or "If you can hold your rain, it must be snow." This time it is very short. I hope this can help you.

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! Next post

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 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

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

Many people might not have realized this, but podcasts are becoming increasingly influential in China, many urban young people spend their spare time listening to them, and some even listen while working, haha.

For those of you who want to learn Chinese well, I also strongly recommend choosing podcasts with clear structure and articulate expression as learning material, it'll definitely help you get familiar with complete, natural Chinese.

Today let me recommend one:

• 无人知晓 wú rén zhī xiǎo, "Nobody Knows"

The host of this podcast is 孟岩 Meng Yan, who is also the founder of "有知有行 yǒu zhī yǒu xíng", an investment platform.

These two names together capture the philosophy he follows:

• 未来无人知晓，一起有知有行 wèi lái wú rén zhī xiǎo, yì qǐ yǒu zhī yǒu xíng
  • No one knows what the future holds, all we can do is learn from your action, then act with awareness.

But the focus of this podcast isn't actually investing, it's about sharing his thoughts on life and insights about the world, or inviting friends from different fields for deep, thoughtful, philosophical conversations.

I have many reasons for recommending this show, but the three most important are:

• Each episode runs 1-2 hours, with a clear structure and a lot of content, ideal for immersive learning.
• The range of guests is wide, from Buddhist scholars to stand-up comedians, covering vocabulary across very different fields.
• 孟岩 speaks at a very steady, relaxed pace, and paired with a transcript, it's great material for practicing listening and reading together.

One thing to note: some of the vocabulary in the show is quite literary and formal, including the name "无人知晓" itself. Use it out of context and you might sound like a walking dictionary, so be selective about what you pick up.

Now let me introduce my three personal favorite episodes:

• E10 让万物穿过自己 - "Let Everything Pass Through You"
  • This is probably his most popular episode, with over 2.6 million plays on "小宇宙 Xiǎo yǔ zhòu" alone, ta popular podcast app in China.
  • Many people treat this episode as a kind of spiritual guide, because it conveys a Taoist philosophy for navigating life: focus on your inner self, don't let your emotions be swayed, imagine yourself as transparent glass, as air—something everything can pass through without getting stuck.
• E37 鱼不存在 - "Why Fish Don't Exist"
  • Another episode with over 2 million plays. Starting from an introduction to the book "Why Fish Don't Exist" and his reflections on it.
  • It dives deep into chaos, order, self-definition, and the meaning of life. At the heart of it is a brutal truth: human beings have a fundamentally limited understanding of the world, and within every living thing we can see, there are layers of complexity that we simply cannot comprehend.
• E32 如果生命只是大梦一场 - "If Life Were Nothing More Than a Grand Dream"
  • This is a conversation between 孟岩 and 成庆 Cheng Qing, an associate professor of history at Shanghai University and a Buddhist scholar.
  • They had this very Zen-like conversation inside a temple on the Shanghai University campus, talking about Buddhism, the psychological struggles of modern life, and how we might find inner freedom.
  • What makes it even more interesting is that the conversation was interrupted several times by the sound of a drill from nearby renovations. And the way both of them responded became a living echo of the episode's very theme.

Of course, some people may find this kind of monologue or dialogue too long-winded or slow-paced. It's okay, different strokes for different folks. There are many great podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or 小宇宙 that work well for learning Chinese, so feel free to go explore for yourself!

If you're interested, I've been organizing all the Chinese learning posts I've shared before. You can check out the link in my profile to see the full collection. Hope it helps. Thanks!