Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
Conversational scenarios, expression techniques, and pronunciation correction exercises—focused on practical Chinese speaking skills
Originally all words had one pronunciation each (一個蘿蔔一個坑 each radish has its hole, couldn’t resist that), but as the language evolved, characters took on different pronunciations for the sake of clarity. Or perhaps we should say, since the written language follows the spoken language, as language evolved, people started pronouncing words a bit different for … Read more
One of the challenges I faced learning Chinese was the way Chinese expresses things so much differently from English, my native language. An example is 不好意思 which means shy. But say I’m walking up the escalator in the Taipei MRT and somebody is standing on the left; the custom is to stand on the right. … Read more
2333. You might think it’s a random number unless you’ve spent a good chunk of time chatting with Chinese netizens or wading through the comments on Weibo. Well, put simply, 2333 is the Chinese equivalent of typing ‘haha’ or ‘lol’. It’s internet speak for laughter. But why this particular number, you ask? It comes from the Chinese … Read more
All I can really say is, I agree wholeheartedly. I am where I am today because I was utterly fascinated the first time I encountered Chinese characters, as a junior high school student. First, they are beautiful. They are elegant and balanced. They include a lot of interesting information. For example, the other day I … Read more
Wow, wow, the 3 existing answers written by people who do not speak Chinese. Like, I have no idea where you guys get your confidence. Seriously, I wish I had half of the confidence of a mediocre white dude who talks nonsense about a language they do not speak with such arrogance and authority. Sean, … Read more
This is a very interesting question. As a popular superpower, China is currently developing rapidly. The imperfect systems brought about by development have led to the emergence of “996”. “996” is a widely discussed term in Chinese work culture that refers to a working time pattern that typically means working 9 hours a day, 6 … Read more
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
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
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
Way back when, I saw Chinese characters up close for the first time. This was in Pasadena, near Los Angeles, back in the late 60s, when you couldn’t just turn on your computer and look things up or see new things, because ~ you guessed it ~ nobody had computers then. I was in junior … Read more