Tips and Tricks for Learning Chinese with ChatGPT
I began learning Mandarin seven years ago, at a time when online resources for learning Chinese were – relative to today – still lagging behind in the stone age. The…
Comprehensible Input for Mandarin Chinese: Develop an Accelerated Learning Plan
‘Comprehensible Input’ has become one of the biggest language learning buzzwords in recent years. It pops up in reference to YouTube videos, podcasts, articles, web novels, and even TikToks! But…
Chinese Grammar Survival Guide: A Comprehensive Overview of Chinese Prepositions
In Mandarin Chinese and many other languages, prepositions are small but mighty words that help us understand when, where, and why things happen in a sentence. For some learners, these…
Mastering the Suffix 儿: A Guide to “Erhua” in Mandarin Chinese
Picture yourself as a keen-eyed observer, noticing the subtle variations in expressions like “here” or “there,” your interest piqued by the dual forms of 这里/这儿(zhè lǐ/zhèr) and 那里/那儿(nà lǐ/nàr). This…
Commonly Used Chinese Grammar Particles – Aspect, Structural, and Modal Particles
Many people believe that Mandarin Chinese has no grammar, but this is a misconception. While it lacks some features typically found in European languages, Chinese still has a highly structured…
Meat is not always meat – The most common expressions with “肉” in Chinese
In Chinese, you will frequently encounter words that contain the character “肉” (ròu). This is because food plays a significant role in people’s daily lives, and “肉” is an important…
The Uses of “Door” in Chinese – All about “门”
We all know that “门”(a door) represents an entrance, and therefore it plays an important role in our lives. The traditional Chinese character for door is written as 門 (mén),…
Responding with ‘好的’(hǎo de), ‘好啊’(hǎo a), ‘好吧’(hǎo ba), ‘好嘛’(hǎo ma), ‘好啦’(hǎo la)
好(hǎo) is one of the first characters that you’ll encounter when you start studying Chinese, and anyone can tell you that it means ‘good.’ But there’s a little more to…
Your Essential Guide to the Chinese Particle 了
Learning Chinese as an English speaker comes with many unique challenges: vocabulary, syntax, and tense to name a few. The auxiliary particle 了(le) is a common point of confusion for…