Flowers and trees are closely related to people’s lives. Because of this, for thousands of years, the Chinese people have coined many plant-related words and expressions. For example, Chinese people often associate “美女”(méi nǚ, a pretty girl) with a “flower”,…
Before we start our topic today on Chinese homophones, let’s first look at the following two sentences: (1)一朵漂亮的花儿。(Yī duǒ piàoliàng de huār. ) (2)他今天花了一百元。(Tā zuátiān huā le yībǎi yuán.) We can see that both of these sentences have“花”, whose meanings…
You may be looking for a way to say “Because” or “So” in Mandarin Chinese. Or perhaps, you have learned how to say “Because” (“因为” yīnwèi), and “So” (“所以” suǒyǐ), but you still want to find other more interesting ways…
You may be wondering, as someone studying Mandarin, if there is any difference in the learning methods of beginners and advanced students? If we use the same methods from the beginning level and up, does it work? As a Chinese…
A real question many Chinese learners will encounter early is how to express future events. In Chinese, we have a series of time words to address that: “将来”(jiānglái), “未来”(wèilái), “以后”(yǐhòu) and “后来”(hòulái). These words are used frequently both in elementary,…
You may have hit a wall in the study of Function words in Chinese. Maybe you have mastered Function words like “着”, “了”, “过”, but the next step is to deal with the myriad words of Associated Constructions, such as…
You may have already learned the how to use the Directional Verbs “……起来” and “……下去”， but in some situations, how they are supposed to be used doesn’t work very well, for example: “唱起来(chànɡ qǐlái)” and “唱下去(chànɡ xiàqu)”. Of course, this…
What is a Chinese idiom/Chéngyǔ? Briefly speaking, Chengyu (成语, Chéngyǔ) are Chinese idioms that are normally made up of four Chinese characters. Chengyu are usually handed down from way back in Chinese history, and thus, over this long periodof time,…