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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Chinese-learning strategy
How should you learn Chinese? It will take a while to become fluent, or even close to fluent — so you should plan accordingly. The strategy outlined in this post at Sensible Chinese strikes me as very reasonable, aiming to maximize motivation and a sense of accomplishment long before you’re fully fluent:
Twitter: @FluentChinese
https://sensiblechinese.com/how-to-learn-chinese/
Jump-starting your Chinese
In a similar vein to the above article about long-term Chinese-learning strategy, this blog post from Written Chinese provides a short-term strategy to give yourself a boost — learning characters, improving your vocabulary, and some tricks for improving your understanding:
Twitter: @WrittenChinese
http://www.writtenchinese.com/how-to-jumpstart-your-chinese-in-30-days/
Keeping up the learning motivation
And in yet another article that combines motivation with strategy, Chris from Fluent in Mandarin describes how he managed to work on his Chinese for nine years, and in so doing to become fluent:
Twitter: @FluentInMandarin
http://fluentinmandarin.com/content/6-ways-i-kept-up-the-motivation-to-learn-chinese/
Useful phrases for common situations
Michael at FluentU has put together a list of useful phrases for when you’re traveling to China or living there. Whether you’re in a restaurant or a train station, you’ll want to look through and practice these phrases:
Twitter: @FluentU
http://fluentu.com/chinese/blog/2015/11/02/important-chinese-phrases/
The two “twos” in Chinese
Why do we have two different ways of saying “two” in Chinese? Rita from Dig Mandarin explores the issue, and the use cases:
Twitter: @DigMandarin
http://digmandarin.com/the-major-differences-between-er-and-liang.html
War in Chinese
The character 战 (zhàn) means “war.” The history of this character, and the ways in which it can be used, are detailed in this long blog post at the World of Chinese:
Twitter: @WorldOfChinese
http://theworldofchinese.com/2015/11/on-the-character-%E6%88%98/
Using 场 as a measure word
Did you know that 场 has two pronunciations (cháng and chǎng), and that each pronunciation has a different meaning (and is used as a mirror word for two different types of noun)? This short chart from Decode Mandarin Chinese makes it clear:
Twitter: @DecodeChinese
http://www.decodemandarinchinese.com/blog/2015/11/4/how-to-use-
Hey there, good looking!
How can you say that someone is good looking in Chinese? The latest slang, according to Sarah at Speak Up Chinese, is to say 颜值高 (yán zhí gāo). More about this phrase, with examples, are in the post:
Twitter: @SpeakUpChinese
Learning tones with Morse Code
Tones are hard to learn — hard to hear, and hard to say. But Warp Speed Chinese has an interesting idea, thinking about Morse Code (you know, dots and dashes) to improve your tones and pronunciation. The first of this series is here:
Twitter: @WSChinese
http://warpspeedchinese.com/learn-chinese-tones-with-morse-code/
They learn how many?!?
How many characters do Chinese children learn to read in school? And at what age? This short anecdote, from Joel and Jessica about their six-year-old, certainly put me to shame:
Twitter: @ChinaHopeLive
http://chinahopelive.net/2015/11/02/chinese-characters-vs-english-sight-words
Addicted to phones
In China, as elsewhere, some people cannot go without checking their phones all of those time. Such people are known as 手机控 shǒu jī kòng, as described in this eChineseLearning blog post:
Twitter: @ECLSchool
http://www.echineselearning.com/blog/are-you-a-smartphone-addict-shoujikong-ditouzu
North American countries
You might know how to say “United States” in Chinese, but how about other country names? This list, from Sasha at Transparent Language, should help you to tell people where you’re from, or where you’ve never visited:
Twitter: @ChineseLanguage
http://blogs.transparent.com/chinese/north-american-countries-in-chinese/
Ways to build
Three different verbs — 盖 (gài) ,修 (xiū ),and 建 (jiàn) — can be used, in various ways, to describe building or fixing. How are they similar and different?
http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16449/difference-between-%E7%9B%96-%E4%BF%AE-%E5%BB%BA
Uses of 先 in a sentence
The word 先 can be used to mean “first,” but has a few other uses, as well:
Sitting in a chair, a grammatical exploration
How, in Chinese, can we say that someone is sitting in a chair? The discussion of which sentence is correct leads to a discussion of the 者 (zhe) construct, which (sort of) turns a Chinese verb into a gerund.
Established in …
How can an organization say that they were established in a certain year? A question with multiple answers.
http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16423/how-to-say-when-a-university-was-established
Studying by yourself
What’s the difference between 自习 (Zì xí) and 自学 (Zì xué)? Both involve self-learning ,but slightly different types:
Learning computer-related words
What are the best ways to learn computer-related words, so that you can use (or just talk about using) your computer in Chinese? This discussion points to several resources, as well as some of the differences between the vocabularies of different types of Chinese relating to computers and technology:
Nothing to lose
How would you say “I have nothing to lose” in Chinese? Some suggestions:
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/have-nothing-to-lose.3093565/
Using 了 to soften a sentence
Why was 了 added to the end of a sentence? To soften its impact somewhat:
Using 和 to link nouns
When you learn about 和 in Chinese, you hear that it’s not the same as “and” in English. This discussion explores the issue a bit: