Mandarin Weekly #37, a curated digest of online resources for students of Mandarin Chinese

大家好! (Hi, everyone!) Welcome to the latest Mandarin Weekly, with yet more links and information for those of us learning Chinese.

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Blogs

Mid-Autumn Festival

September 27th of this week was the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, 中秋節 (zhōng qiū jié). What are the origins of this festival? What do Chinese people do to celebrate? What are mooncakes, and how do you make them? And what are some good vocabulary words for understanding it? A number of blogs wrote about it this week:

Reading through pictures

Chinese characters aren’t pictures, but learning to pick out radicals and components, and use them to create a picture of meaning, can be helpful. Ollie Linge (Twitter: @HackingChinese) writes about how to (and not to) use pictures to improve your reading ability:

http://www.hackingchinese.com/learning-chinese-characters-through-pictures/

The tree radical (木)

The tree radical 木 (mù) appears in many characters; identifying it allows you to remember and read many additional characters. This post from Written Chinese (Twitter: @WrittenChinese) lists a number of the more common such characters:

http://www.writtenchinese.com/tree-radical/

Terms for business presentations

I spent much of my time in China lecturing, and was thus particularly happy to find a list of vocabulary words for business presentations, written by Qiu Gui Su:

http://mandarin.about.com/od/situationalvocabulary/a/presentations.htm

More radicals

All About Chinese (Twitter: @AllAboutChinese) has additional word lists for common radicals:

Does stroke order matter?

I write all of my Chinese using a computer, which means that I’m typing in Pinyin (i.e., Latin characters). But Chinese characters are traditionally written with a pen or brush, with a particular order to the strokes. How important is this order? Ollie Linge (Twitter: @HackingChinese) writes about this in the Skritter blog (Twitter: @SkritterHQ):

http://blog2.skritter.com/2015/09/which-stroke-order-is-correct-does-it.html

How are things?

The phrase 怎么样 (zěn me yàng) can be used in a few different ways. Sarah Soulie (Twitter: @suxiaoya), writing for SpeakUp Chinese (Twitter: @SpeakUpChinese), summarizes these ways, with some useful examples:

http://speakupchinese.tumblr.com/post/129718143901/

Q&A

Using 了 (le) correctly

了 (le) is definitely a sticking point for me in learning Chinese; I’m getting better at it, but I can see why it’s tricky for so many. This discussion started with someone asking for a run-down of where and how to use 了, which I believe provided a helpful categorization:

http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16048/to-%E4%BA%86-or-not-to-%E4%BA%86

Expressing opinions

What verb should you use to express an opinion in Chinese? A short but useful way to distinguish between several distinct, but similar, verbs:

http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16041/expressing-opinion-in-chinese

Tense vs. time

For people coming from many languages, Chinese is odd, in that it doesn’t have tenses. But this doesn’t mean that it lacks a sense of time, or of when things happened. This discussion contains several answers that expand upon this point:

http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16072/how-to-make-a-tenseless-sentence

Different types of “for”

Someone asked about the differences between 为, 给, and 向. An interesting discussion ensued:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/3lqfb2/%E4%B8%BA_vs_%E7%BB%99_vs_%E5%90%91/

How do you say “meme” in Chinese?

Beyond the interesting answers that people proposed, there were several interesting insights into how words come into being, and what aspects of a word should (or can) be translated:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/3makiq/i_know_this_may_sound_weird_but_how_do_you_say/

Mandarin Weekly #36, a curated digest of online resources for students of Mandarin Chinese

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Blogs

Using 和 (hé) correctly

I’ve often heard that 和 (hé) means “and,” but only between two nouns — not between two verbs. This article by Vera Zhang on DigMandarin (Twitter: @DigMandarin) describes the issues, and the alternatives:

http://www.digmandarin.com/how-to-use-and-in-chinese.html

Birthday celebrations in Chinese

Sure, you might know that you say “happy birthday” with 生日快乐 — but beyond that, how much do you know about Chinese birthdays? Hollie, at Written Chinese (Twitter: @WrittenChinese), has this in-depth explanation and vocabulary list:

 Learning to distinguish between similar characters

As you learn more and more Chinese characters, it becomes harder and harder to keep them separate. Olle Linge (Twitter: @HackingChinese) has some suggested techniques for keeping them separate:

Pronunciation videos

Chris Parker (Twitter: @FluentInMandarin) released several more videos this week, helping us to pronounce Chinese and recognize tones:

Ordering at Subway

Before going to a Subway in China, you should know what you’re going to order, and how you’re going to order it. Vera Zhang at Tea Break Chinese describes what you can order, and how, including an extensive vocabulary list:

Radicals

Radicals are an important part of learning to read Chinese characters; understanding them had dramatically improved my reading ability. This week, All About Chinese (Twitter: @allaboutchinese) has lists of characters with the 日 (rì, sun) and 立 (lì, stand) radicals:

Computer words

As a computer consultant, I’m always trying to improve my professional vocabulary in Chinese. Here are two lists, written by Rubén López of the Chinese YCT & HSK blog (Twitter: @ChineseHSKApps), which will help me:

Opposite words

Sasha, at Transparent Language’s Chinese blog, introduces many pairs of opposite words and phrases we can use in Chinese:

Literal US state names

Take the names of the 50 states in the United States. Now take their Chinese translations. Now translate them back into English. You’ll find some rather amusing names, none of which have anything to do with their English originals, in this blog post from Joan Pittman (Twitter: @jkpittman):

Q&A

Retail help

You’re working at a retail store. Some Chinese-speaking customers walk in. How do you welcome them, and offer them help?

Go straight

In Chinese, how do you tell someone to keep going straight? It turns out there are several different ways, each with its own (slightly) different connotation:

Work in progress

In English, we say something is a “work in progress” when it’s still under development, and needs improvement before it’s considered final or ready. How can we say something similar in Chinese, particularly about our own language progress?  Here are some suggestions:

More than

What does it mean to say 上千? it turns out, this is one way to say “more than” a number — in this case, one thousand — if the number is large:

Chinese weeks

It turns out that Chinese and Japanese use totally different characters for indicating the days of the week. I found the description and background on this subject fascinating, if perhaps not directly related to learning Chinese:

Mandarin Weekly #35: Digest and resources for students of Mandarin Chinese

Issue #35 of Mandarin Weekly, a digest of links and resources for people learning Mandarin Chinese, is available at http://archive.aweber.com/awlist3707181/2015/09.

You can follow us at @MandarinWeekly on Twitter — or get it sent to your mailbox by registering at http://MandarinWeekly.com.

Enjoy Mandarin Weekly? Please share it with your friends, colleagues, students, teachers, and others you know who are studying Chinese.

This week’s topics:

  • The “earth” radical, 土 (tǔ)
  • Pronunciation
  • Zzzzzzzz
  • Compound words
  • Tomato power!
  • What is your favorite Chinese city?
  • Post office vocabulary
  • Body parts
  • Mooncakes are on their way
  • Tone introduction
  • The 王 (wáng), king, radical
  • There’s always a first time
  • You’re amazing!
  • You’ve got a friend
  • Difference between 得 and 地
  • 对 vs. 是
  • Experiences

The 20 most popular links from Mandarin Weekly

Earlier this week, I published issue #34 of Mandarin Weekly, containing the best new blog posts, questions, and resources for students of Chinese. All told, I have collected and publicized more than 400 such links since January 2015.

I did some analysis of these first issues, and found which links were most popular among Mandarin Weekly subscribers. I’ve collected the top 20, and put them in a single document, which you can download at this link.

If you’re learning Chinese, then you’ll likely find some links here that will improve your comprehension, pronunciation, or vocabulary. See what others thought were popular! I’ll put together a similar report every few months, as well.

Again, you can download the list of top links here.

Mandarin Weekly #34: Digest and resources for students of Mandarin Chinese

Issue #34 of Mandarin Weekly, a digest of links and resources for people learning Mandarin Chinese, is available at http://archive.aweber.com/awlist3707181/MaC_H/h/Mandarin_Weekly_34_a.htm.

You can follow us at @MandarinWeekly on Twitter — or get it sent to your mailbox by registering at http://MandarinWeekly.com.

Enjoy Mandarin Weekly? Please share it with your friends, colleagues, students, teachers, and others you know who are studying Chinese.

  • Talking about characters in Mandarin
  • Rain, rain
  • Describing actions
  • Dieting in Chinese
  • Addressing men
  • Improving your Chinese
  • Popular Chinese dishes
  • Relative calculator
  • Visiting Beijing
  • Accepting a compliment in Chinese
  • Can (should) you call someone 小姐 (xiǎo jiě)?