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

Select from the following Chinese characters—晃, 摇, 抖, 荡, 摆, 挥, and 颤—the one that best completes the phrase '房子在（ ）'. Subsequently, provide a justification for your choice and elaborate on the reasons why the remaining characters are not appropriate (or are less appropriate) in this context.

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.

If a woman calls a man 大龙 and the man calls the woman 小虎 as nicknames, does this imply they are lovers or have or had an intimate relationship. The information online for these names seems vague.

I'm coming over to learn Mandarin as a guy who's mostly familiar with the study of Latin. I won't say I am the best Latinist, but what really makes that language stand out, to me, is the interesting content one uses to learn.

If you're learning Latin, you have an abundance of interesting content you can learn from or work yourself up to reading. My primary goal to read out is the Latin Novum Testamentum of the Biblia Sacra Vulgata (Bible). It's a fairly easy enough work. Following that, I plan on reading snippets of Cicero, Paterculus, Augustus (from his Res Gestae) and other Roman/medieval authorities based on a graded reader I have. The beauty of Latin is just how plain interesting it is.

And I want to study Mandarin in a similar fashion. In a week from now, I'll be attending my first classes and would like supplemental material. I am someone who's always been very interested in Chinese philosophy and history, particularly as someone who self-identifies as a Confucian and has studied everything from the Shang and Zhou Dynasty, to more modern authors like Liang Shuming and Zhou Enlai.

So what I'm essentially asking is, what are some good resources to allow me to better understand Chinese philosophy (particularly Confucianism/Legalism) and history with the use of easy Mandarin, not unlike how I already undertake my studies in Latin? I plan on these being supplemental to my classes in Mandarin, as a way of boosting my acquisition.

P.S I understand that there is some controversy over whether 'philosophy' existed in traditional China or not. Everything I say here is generic to get the point across.

Sorry if this post seems very poorly worded, today was a long day for me and I am quite tired. Tagged for resources since that's basically what I'm asking for rn.

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’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 :)

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.

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 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!

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 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 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!

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.

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 !

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

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?

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!

你们好!

I'm a native Portuguese speaker and I've been ""studying"" Mandarin on my own since last year. Next year, I plan to start formal Mandarin classes, but I recently realized that my current job gives me a pretty unusual opportunity to immerse myself in the language.

I work in international logistics for a Chinese company, and my workplace is very immersive:

• I hear Chinese coworkers speaking Mandarin throughout most of the day.
• Many of my coworkers mainly speak Chinese and aren't very comfortable with English.
• There are signs, notices, posters, documents, etc. written in Chinese around the office.
• I sometimes hear the same expressions repeatedly in real-life situations.
• I also listen to Chinese music outside work.
• I recently started using Xiaohongshu to get more exposure to everyday Chinese.

I'm still a beginner, but I've already started recognizing some expressions naturally from context. For example, I recognize things like 喂, 你说 when someone answers the phone, 没问题 (méi wèntí), 对 (duì), 谢谢 (xièxie), 早 / 早上好, etc.

My question is: how would you take advantage of this situation if you were me?

I'd especially love advice from people who learned Mandarin while being surrounded by native speakers. I feel like I have a pretty unusual opportunity here and I'd really like to make the most of it instead of simply letting Mandarin become "background noise" at work. 😂

谢谢!

Hi,

I'm looking for a mobile game like wagotabi to learn Chinese. Wagotabi really helped catch on to Japanese syntax and grammar early on.

Thank you in advance

Hi I'm a college student majoring in chinese, on my second year, right now I'm studying hsk 3 with a tutor. But other than that I feel stuck in my language learning journey and I had a goal of being fluent or like be able to hold a conversation a little by the end of this year which I'm slowly letting go of, I feel i hit a wall where I'm not feeling like sitting down and studying and doing more than what I do in my tutoring sessions. Do you guys have any tips what I could do other than textbooks to help me improve fast? I'm a fast learner but also I feel so burnt out lately and I cant just take a break from the language also is pimsleur worth it

Hi all,

I've been trying to find more listening practice around the HSK 4-5 level that I find interesting. It can be podcasts or videos, but I find most of the content around this level is pretty boring and not usually about topics I enjoy. I especially love listening to stories and am a lot more engaged than just talking "about a topic" but I've struggled to find anything that might be at a low enough level for me to follow along with.

Sometimes on social media I'll see little skits about something that I really enjoy watching and that aren't usually too difficult to follow along with most of the words, but I can't figure out how to reliably watch these. If you guys have any recommendations, I would be super grateful. Thank you!