Private Mnemonics for Remembering Chinese Characters
To avoid confusing 左/右 as a beginner, I associated the falling fourth tone of 右 yòu / yow and the very last falling stroke of 口 with the meaning “right”: …
Did Chinese people use 我, 你, and 他 before the New Culture Movement?
This is an interesting question, from the perspective of non-Mandarin speakers prior to the advent of Modern Standard Chinese. This is a page from the …
Why is the Chinese language (sometimes) called Mandarin in English?
Ok, I’ll try to unpack this as best as I can but please bear in mind that we are talking about 5,000 years of human …
Can Chinese people write Chinese as fast as people do in English?
A lot of answers here are excellent already. I’m just here to summarize: – It’s true that Chinese characters can be more cumbersome to write, …
Which are the 7 most splendid Chinese characters according to you?
I have to make a little clever remark here! To some extent this is a pseudo-question. Zhao Mengfu’s Huangting Jing — every single character in it is …
Is it possible to type “々” on a Chinese Pinyin keyboard?
The symbol “々” represents the repetition of the previous character in both Chinese and Japanese. Back in the days when writing was done entirely by …
Is there a reason why Chinese characters are written vertically?
When I was young, there were books with characters printed vertically. One of my classmates told me that he enjoyed the vertically printed books because …
What is the Chinese character 寅?
The original meaning of this character is “respect.” However, this meaning is rarely used today. Nowadays, it’s mainly used for recording time and divination. “寅” …
If 读 means to read，why is 看 used so often instead?
The cause of your confusion stems from the behavioral change in reading Chinese during the past centuries. The dominant modern reading behavior is a silent …
How many Chinese characters do I need to know to know Chinese?
As a language, Chinese is largely monosyllabic and doesn’t have a fixed grammar, so learning it is really quite easy — easier than English. If …