How can mainland Chinese still recognize traditional Chinese characters?

This is the Xinhua Dictionary of 1953, its main role was to promote national literacy,The traditional Chinese characters are in brackets. This is the Xinhua Dictionary of 2020, which is a literacy reference book for primary school students, still have traditional Chinese characters. You will find that only part of Chinese characters have different between … Read more

What is the derisive Chinese name for an outsider, a westerner, a European, an American, or a white person?

I believe the words you’re searching for are:   鬼佬, or gweilo. Otherwise known as “white devil” or “ghost.” 鬼子, gweizi. Mandarin slang. 海人, gaijin. It means “outsider,” “alien,” “sea dwelling human.” 老外, laowai . It means “old foreigner” literally. It is slang and loosely impolite. Bonus one, from the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia: … Read more

If the Chinese language has around 6000 characters, how are they even able to write at all and memorize all of that?

It doesn’t work that way. A chinese character is composed of radicals combined in a block. There are ~200 radicals in total. These are the analogue of alphabets in phonetic or spelled languages, except the radicals convey meaning, rather than sound. Many characters can be decomposed from their radicals to extract the meaning. For example, … Read more

New generations of mainland China can’t read traditional Chinese characters, right?

It’s totally wrong.Most of Chinese mainland’s primary school have calligraphy class,the teachers teach kids to learn brush handwriting with traditional Chinese characters.For me,I can read traditional Chinese characters with no barriers nearly. 給大家看看我今天謄寫的宋詞《憶蓬萊》(我沒有完全按照原文抄,畢竟主要是為了練字而非寫字),我已經有將近八年不練字了,最近剛拾起來,字有些醜 真的太醜了,醜的我都不忍直視。

What do you think of Mandarin?

Originally, I hated learning that language. I despised it. I looked down on it. I ridiculed it. And I finally learned it (oh, and when it comes to Chinese, you never master it). To make a long story short, I have been told to learn that language. I wanted to follow the trail of my tutor and do exactly as he did, which was going to … Read more