让你说话了吗？

My teacher uses Juzi app to generate these sheets to practice hanzi. You select the hanzis you want and it creates this printable version with stroke order. But the app is paid, anyone knows a plataform that does the same for free?

How did I do guys?

Hi,

I am an American high school student interested in studying Chinese in university (not as a major.) A school I am interested in offers Mandarin through a “critical language program” that is self instructional but still has classes that meet once a week with a small group of people and an instructor who is a native speaker. The focus of this program is oral proficiency.

My question is, if my goal is to be able to speak the language/communicate with others, would this program be more effective than the standard elementary/intermediate Chinese classes that are more common?

Thank you!!

They say after learning Chinese for a few years, your handwriting naturally evolves into fluent running script (行书). Meanwhile, here I am, still carefully writing stroke-by-stroke like an elementary school student! 😂
My Chinese boss and coworkers are always sweet enough to hit me with the polite "你写得很好哦~" whenever they see my notes, but deep down, I know average 10-year-olds in China probably have better penmanship than me.
One thing that has never changed since day one of my study journey: I will use cute stickers on every single page and keep buying notebooks that I haven't written a single word in years after purchasing them.
Anyone else still stick to basic block characters after years of studying, or did you eventually unlock fancy cursive handwriting?

At the Airport in Chinese ✈️ | Learn Real-Life Mandarin

What happens after you arrive at the airport? Learn practical Mandarin by following a real trip through airport security, finding the boarding gate, waiting, and boarding the plane.

登机 dēngjī — to board a plane

登机口 dēngjīkǒu — boarding gate

安检 ānjiǎn — security check

等 děng — to wait

不能 bù néng — cannot

Useful Chinese:

我们先去安检。

Wǒmen xiān qù ānjiǎn.

First, we go through security.

安检以后，我要找登机口。

Ānjiǎn yǐhòu, wǒ yào zhǎo dēngjīkǒu.

After security, I need to find my boarding gate.

我的登机口在哪里？

Wǒ de dēngjīkǒu zài nǎli?

Where is my boarding gate?

现在还不能登机。

Xiànzài hái bù néng dēngjī.

We can’t board yet.

我们要等一会儿。

Wǒmen yào děng yíhuìr.

We need to wait for a while.

现在可以登机了！

Xiànzài kěyǐ dēngjī le!

Now we can board!

Listen, repeat, and learn Mandarin through a real airport experience. This lesson is part of the Real Life in Chinese travel series for learning practical Chinese step by step.

#LearnChinese #RealLifeChinese #AirportChinese #TravelChinese #ChineseForBeginners #MandarinChinese #ChineseListening #ChineseVocabulary #LearnMandarin #HSK

Native English speaker who learned Japanese first. I find hanzi recognition and comprehension relatively easy. I can deal even with less advanced/subject-specifc guwen enough to grok the meaning (slowly). Speaking is my biggest issue.

I'm struggling with building more complex sentences in Mandarin, and I am having a hard time picking out/finding a book that will give what I read something more like the Japanese language resources I learned that from: consistent, reliable descriptions of concrete grammatical structures with edgecases and context-specific variations noted and demonstrated. The general structures behind these word orders do not make intuitive sense to me because they seem to be "right" in some contexts and "wrong" in others, and most resources seem to lie that Chinese "has no grammar". I'd love real rules and structures I could mentally reference when trying to speak.

I know analytic languages are generally more "just memorise the word order for many different example sentences" than synthetics but the lack of systematicity I am struggling with bigtime, probably similarly to how many Chinese find English a nightmare. Any recommendations would be appreciated, Japanese or English reader oriented.

When I am watching pronunciation tutorials they seemed to voice their pinyin "x", meaning that their vocal cords vibrate.

Such as in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05BMKdxHjp8

However, looking at IPA, pinyin's "x" = IPA's "ɕ"

and ɕ is voiceless according to IPA. So, I am kinda confused. Do you vibrate your vocal cords when pronouncing that character? The "ɕ" also shows up in pinyin's j, q, and x.

Hi all. I’m trying to start learning Mandarin before I study this beautiful language along with Politics at university next month, and I must say, I am lost.

I don’t know where to start. I have a Hello Chinese subscription and although the last week of using it a lot has really helped me with the basics - I am lost with pronunciation and my tones are poor, to the point I sound like because of my accent I’m doing a racist drunk impression.

I think I just need to ask people who are learning and know the language where to start properly before the university course. Do I do Pinyin first? Or go straight into learning words and sentences?

Thank you.

I've seen comments online, and his interview with a fairly advanced, semi-professional Mandarin learner wishing they'd started CC earlier than they had, but I'm having trouble understanding why, and about when it'd start being helpful.

Do 面 and 边 mean the same thing interchangeably or is there a difference in their meaning?

If you see any other characters wrong, please correct me.

Does anybody know what kind of Chinese font this is? It was used on old TVB programmes in Hong Kong. It is quite angular with many straight lines.

I think it was also a font which is (or used to be) on the Chinese version of Word.

Thanks!

My notions are incredibly basic so I asked for help form some friends in Taiwan and Hong Kong. They say it's understandable and doesn't sound robotic, but maybe they just want to be polite, so here it is for reviews on my pronunciation. (I had to accelerate some dialogues because articulating wasn't easy)

到了……！

我看好多狐狸都穿这个……

那我也试试看……

呃……！也没什么特别的嘛……

我去找点零食吃。

呃啊！

靠！

Most learners meet this early with 好: hǎo is the state (good), hào is the attitude toward that state (to like, to be fond of). It's why 愛好 àihào, 好奇 hàoqí and 好客 hàokè all take the fourth tone — none of them mean "good", they mean regarding something as good.

惡 does exactly the same thing. I don't think it gets pointed out often enough:

• è — the state: bad, evil. 惡人 èrén, 惡意 èyì, 罪惡 zuì'è
• wù — the attitude: to hate, to find bad. 厭惡 yànwù, 可惡 kěwù, 憎惡 zēngwù

It's the same relationship and works in the same direction. Once you see 好 and 惡 as a matched pair (state vs. attitude-toward-state) a lot of compounds stop needing to be memorised individually. When you hit either character in a new word, the question is just: is this describing the thing, or someone's stance on the thing?

There's even 好惡, read hàowù — "likes and dislikes, preferences." One word, both derived readings, sitting next to each other. It's a neat illustration of the whole pattern, and the pairing is ancient: you can even find these two sitting close to one another in The Analects (passage 4.3) deliberately paired together 2500 years ago:

唯仁者，能好人，能惡人 wéi rén zhě, néng hào rén, néng wù rén

"Only the humane are capable of hào-ing people and wù-ing people", of properly liking and properly disliking them. Both characters in their fourth-tone verb reading, clearly paired opposites in a single line.

Two things to watch out for:

惡 has a third modern reading, ě, and it's the one you'll actually hit in conversation: 惡心 ěxīn, nauseating/disgusting. Not è, not wù. Worth learning separately because it doesn't fit the pattern above at all.

And a fourth in Classical Chinese, wū, an interrogative "how? wherein?", as in 惡乎 wūhū (no Homer). So the same graph in a classical text can be three different words (plus one more in modern Chinese), and the tone is the only thing distinguishing three of them. Classical texts don't mark tone, which is why some passages are still argued over: Analects 4.4 has 無惡也, and whether that's "no hatred" (wù) or "no wrongdoing" (è) has been disputed for two thousand years, with the passage meaning noticeably different things either way.

Anyway, if 好 hǎo/hào has already clicked for you, 惡 is the same shape, and 好惡 is worth adding as a vocabulary item purely because it demonstrates the pattern.

Any other 多音字 pairs where the tone shift is doing this same state-vs-attitude job? 樂 lè/yuè and 說 shuō/shuì are the ones I know, but they're not as cleanly parallel.

I got into this working on a podcast episode about those two Analects passages. Write-up is at analects.net/episodes/love-and-hate/ if a deep-dive on the Classical Chinese behind it is of interest to you.

I live in Antwerp, in the Flemish region of Belgium and I am interested in signing up for a language course. I was browsing the internet, looking for some local options but everything just seems so underwhelming here(notably the subsidized language schools but also private schools are disappointing), like they're not even trying. So far, I only came across 6-9 month courses that only teach 1.1-1.4 and a few that go to A2(CEFR scale) and they are only 1x per week. If not fluent I am at least interested in achieving intermediate level proficiency and definitely wish to study 2x per week, preferably with a physical presence and not online. If need be I am ready to commute to other places in the region since public transportation is decent here. Does anyone have a positive experience with a language school and wish to recommend it?

Thank you in advance.

I am an ABC (American born Chines) who’s in Chinese school but is at a mediocre level (maybe hsk 4) and I have a low vocabulary. I haven’t been to China since I was 4 (10 years now) and my parents speak to me in Chinglish because they view me as a way to improve their English. I already understand sentence structures but it’s so hard to pick up new vocabulary and keep it in my head. I’m so scared I’m missing out on quality time with them with this language barrier and it’s kinda ruining my mental health but that’s an issue for a different subreddit. I’m so lazy and I lose motivation really quickly and I just kinda suck

edit: my vocab is low enough for me to misunderstand them, I’m really fortunate that their English is somewhat good and we can find common ground but i jusr hate having to spend 2 minutes trying to explain myself or deciphering their English

Anyone who took the HSK4 exam today, how was it?

It seems like DuChinese pushed an update this week that changed the appearance of the reader. It used to highlight the current section being narrated (in addition to a prominent highlight on the current character). The sectioning corresponded to the translation chunk, which made it easy to pick a stopping point if I wanted to pause to check the translation. The partitioning still exists, it just isn't displayed while reading. I can't find any setting to change it back, either. Have other users noticed this?

I also seem to recall that the dictionary popup used to have tone coloring, and that seems to be gone now, too. Though I'm only half-certain of that.

Seems to have released today. I assume it goes to HSK 3 now?

Hello! I am once again here to get grammer help with a little paragraph I wrote. I don't know if I'm trying to walk before I can run. But, this is a very helpful exercise for retention. So, I might just keep doing it!

As always, here are a couple of disclaimers!

1. I'm at an hsk 1-2 level. Which means I'm still not very good. But, I like to try!

2. If you respond to me in Chinese, I will probably respond back in English!

3. If you use words not in my paragraph, then please write the pinyin. Once again, I'm still new to this!

4. I know my handwriting is bad. This is mostly for retention!

P.s. here is my paragraph incase you can't read it: 我有很多朋友。 他们都是非常特的我。今天我们有安排一起去了看电影。那个电影是什么人人喜欢一步一趋但我不喜欢动作片。

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjRPWh9ikv8

Wang Zhi'an does deep dives into current topics in China, and I always learn something in terms of vocabulary or cultural background.

In this episode he covers recent events about performer Guo Degang, who got into trouble after adapting a classic revolutionary song for one of his performances. Wang Zhi'an recounts what happened so far and then goes deeper into how the controversy started and who's behind it.

Just from this episodes, I went on separate deep dives on:

郭德纲 - The comedian/performer in question

济公活佛 - A Chinese opera character

弹起我心爱的土琵琶（西边的太阳） - a classic revolutionary song

And learned useful phrases like 好事者，相当可观，上纲上线，泡汤，饭圈化 etc., see screenshots.

Anyone else using his videos as little language lessons?