Patience is a Virtue It is said that in the West everything is easy, but nothing is possible. Whereas in China nothing is easy, but everything is possible. Those who have been doing business in or with China understand this maxim well. They also understand that in Chinese society, the personal, professional and political [...]
You Call it Lurking, I Call it Web-Based Learning Note: This article is the second in a two-part series. If you haven't seen part 1, we suggest you read that first. Hopefully, we've convinced you that if you're learning Chinese, all that time you spend staring at pictures of other people's avocado toast [...]
Essential Chinese Phrases for the Social Media Addict Admit it: you checked your newsfeed this morning before you even got out of bed. You pick your meals based on how good you think they'll look on Instagram. And yes, you even browse Twitter when going number 2. If these symptoms sound familiar, your [...]
Making the City Your Classroom When you are moving to a new country to study in, there is a lot to think about. First and foremost, though, is where you want to live. Deciding on a city is the first step on the journey to studying abroad while at university. What Do You [...]
Don't Homophone It In Last week we introduced you to the occasionally frustrating but always fascinating world of Chinese homophones. This week we're back with five more funny, sassy and potentially embarrassing Chinese homophones you definitely need to know! And of course, our helpful suggestions for how to ensure you don't get them mixed [...]
Conquering your Homophone-phobia Let's face it, learning Chinese is a constant lesson in humility. While studying a foreign language is never easy, Chinese sometimes appears to have been specifically designed to trip up hapless foreigners. And when it comes to spoken Chinese, one of the most difficult aspects is undoubtedly homophones, or words that [...]
(Chinese) Words with Friends Welcome to the fourth and final week of our Chinese starter kit series. If you've been following along since the beginning, we'd like to congratulate you on your perseverance. You may have given up on your resolutions to drink less and exercise more, but at least you're making progress [...]
Grammarly, Chinese Edition Welcome back to our third week of the Chinese starter kit! If you’ve been following along with this series, you should now be familiar with the two of the more unique aspects of Chinese, namely pinyin, and tones. Now let’s take a look at how grammar functions in Chinese. Broadly [...]
What is Pinyin and do you know its importance? Pinyin is the foundation of Chinese learning. We know that pinyin is the official Romanization system for standard Chinese language learning in Mainland China. The Chinese language has 409 different sounds, and we can divide all these sounds into syllables. Each syllable has one of 4 [...]
Chinese Starter Kit: Introduction & Orientation Is your goal for 2018 to learn Chinese? This article is the first in our new "Chinese Starter Kit" mini-series that aims to give you the resources to start learning Chinese: all on your own and all from scratch. We've gathered the best free resources from around [...]
