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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People characters
A number of characters can be used to indicate people. In this posting, we learn about six such characters, and what sorts of people they can be used to describe:
What are measure words?
One of the biggest surprises I encountered when starting to learn Chinese was “measure words,” the words that we use to count objects. What are these words, how do we use them, and which ones should we know?
http://www.fluentinmandarin.com/content/chinese-measure-words-easy-ultimate-guide/
Twitter: @Fluent_Mandarin
New Year money — for adults
You might have heard of the 红包 (hóng bāo), or red envelope, in which parents give their children money on Chinese New Year. It seems that some workplaces have a similar system for employees:
http://laowaichinese.net/lucky-money-for-big-kids.htm
Buying on Taobao
Taobao is the largest shopping site in China (and probably the world). How can you use it
http://www.duchinese.net/blog/18-buying-things-on-taobao
Twitter: @DuChinese
Journey toward Chinese
Olle Linge is famous for his “Hacking Chinese” site — but even he didn’t grow up speaking Chinese. How did he learn, and what can we learn from his path to fluency?
http://www.hackingchinese.com/how-i-learnt-chinese-part-2-foreign-language-learning-in-sweden/
Twitter: @HackingChinese
Have a good trip!
The chengyu (4-character expression) 一路平安 means, “boy voyage.” How and when can you use it?
One tone change
The number one, 一, is usually a first-tone character. But it can change to be a third or fourth tone in many cases. This video from LearnChineseNow introduces and demonstrates this tone change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBTGu04yBvw
Twitter: @LearnChineseNow
Visiting family
Emma, from ChineseWithEmma.com, is out with her niece in China. Watch the video, and learn a bunch of Chinese words and expressions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC_Vl42Wq7I
Twitter: @ChineseWithEmma
Complimenting male friends
If you want to give your male friend a compliment, what can you say? This post contains five suggestions for how to make your male colleagues and friends feel good about themselves:
Baby names
How do Chinese parents pick a name for their child?
http://blog.hellochinese.cc/2016/02/12/chinese-baby-names/
Color of sunlight
Another story (read out loud, with Pinyin and characters, as well as translation) — this time, about the color of sunlight:
http://chinese-at-ease.com/learn-chinese-online-the-color-of-sunlight/
Twitter: @ChineseAtEase
Chinese slang
What are the latest slang terms in Mandarin Chinese? This article introduces some of them — in many cases, words that you might already know, but with a new meaning attached:
http://www.fluentu.com/chinese/blog/2016/02/17/mandarin-slang/
Twitter: @FluentU
Collective nouns
You might have noticed that Chinese has a large number of collective nouns (e.g., “sheep” and “fish”). Why and how is that?
http://www.digmandarin.com/why-does-chinese-have-more-collective-nouns-than-english.html
Twitter: @DigMandarin
New Year guests
You should visit a Chinese family for their New Year celebration! Why, and what you can learn, is listed here:
https://www.writtenchinese.com/6-reasons-spend-new-year-chinese-family/
Twitter: @WrittenChinese
Pronouncing that “e”
English speakers often make the mistake of assuming that the pronunciation of “e” (or other letters) is similar to that of English — but it isn’t, as this discussion points out:
http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/17266/mandarin-pronunciation-for-hen-and-yuan
Languages vs dialects
We often hear that Mandarin is a “dialect” of Chinese. But what’s the difference between a dialect and a language?
Business origins
Why is the word for business 生意 (shēng yi), wihich includes the character for “life” or “grow”?
The sound of “x”
Pinyin has an “x” character, which sounds to Westerners like “sh,” but isn’t. How should it sound?
Lacking something
When should we use each of the characters help with 不 ,没 ,and 非?
Uses of 可 (kě)
We can use 可 (kě) in a few different ways, including ot express “so very ___” something is:
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/%E5%8F%AF-%E5%AF%82%E5%AF%9E%E4%BA%86.3138900/
When do we use 的 (de)?
One of the first words you learn in Chinese is 的. But when and how do you use it in a sentence?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/45w9lo/when_should_i_use_%E7%9A%84_in_a_sentence/