Why is 米国 a name for the US?
米国 (Beikoku) is an older name for the United States in Japanese. But the origins of 米国 — and the reason it ended up being …
chinesespeaking
How many characters does the average Chinese person know?
Some foreigner friends of mine think that Chinese characters are “impossible” to master. What? 50000 characters? The truth is, as other answers have stated, there …
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” …