Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
Conversational scenarios, expression techniques, and pronunciation correction exercises—focused on practical Chinese speaking skills
I use Zhuyin and this is part of the keyboard for my PC. As you can see ㄅㄆㄇㄈat the left of the picture where ㄆ shares the same key with Q. There are more than one way to switch between Zhuyin and English input.
No, alphabet based systems aren’t easier to write. It simply shifts the difficulty from one aspect of writing to another. Let’s take English for example. There are 26 Latin letters used in the language, and words are formed by placing one letter next to another, from left to right. But it is extremely difficult to … Read more
The dialects in the North are more closely related to each other because travel was a lot easier. The topography map below shows mountain elevations in China. Circled in purple is the Central Plains, and circled in blue is the Northeastern Plains. The presence of plains allows easy travel, which means people interact with each … Read more
The Han Chinese are a mix of many groups over time, and here are some of the likely groups: A proto-Chinese group in southern China, which likely also became the Vietnamese in current Vietnam; A group of Tibetan-related peoples from current Sichuan and Tibet (the Qin dynasty had its roots among a horse-breeding people in … Read more
Well, I’ll assume that you want to remember more than some cringe tourist level phrases to just get by. Usually, Cantonese is a spoken language and is rarely written but there are too many Chinese T shirts with words designed to insult tourists that can’t read Chinese, so I insist on adding written characters instead … Read more
Back in 1992, a group of villagers in Longyou county, China stumbled upon an astonishing discovery. The area near the village of Shiyan Beicun was home to several ponds or rocky pools that were believed to be “bottomless” with depths that seemed to go on forever. Some of the ponds were even void of fish. … Read more
Well, I am a Mandarin speaker, so I just offer my view about this topic with regard to Mandarin. Words or phrases in English are usually translated into Chinese. And the translated version of many words or phrases in English are used in the Chinese language. However, there is a category called acronym, whose some … Read more
You may wish to ask if Korean wish to remove Chinese characters and make it impossible for the main public to read older Korean literature but remain their names has Chinese characters? Okay, let me show you something. This is the dictionary we use in primary school. This is the dictionary that made in communist … Read more
Characters travel better than sounds. An undubbed Hollywood movie requires at least 20 sets of subtitle to sell in Europe, even though many European scripts are based on the Latin alphabet. Why? Spelled languages work on the principle of transcribing sounds on paper, and one becomes hopelessly lost going from spelled French to English. In … Read more
Well, in my humble opinion, I would say that the Chinese language is one of old written languages currently being used. I mean, Vedic Sanskrit, the earliest form of Sanskrit, appeared as early as 1500 BCE, whereas oracle bone script, the earliest Chinese inscription, appeared as early as 1250 BCE. And Sanskrit is also used … Read more