Mandarin Weekly #70

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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New giveaway: One year of ChinesePod

Want to improve your vocabulary? Your grammar? Your pronunciation? And want to do it while you’re commuting to work, at lunch, or on the treadmill? ChinesePod is a great place to start; they’ve been producing Chinese lessons for many years, and continue to produce high-quality introductions to Chinese for all levels.

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Winners of our most recent giveaway, for six months of Yoyo Chinese, will be selected and notified later today. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all who participated!

Listening and speaking

Do you find that understanding spoken Chinese at native speed can be difficult? Here are some tips for improving your listening comprehension — and along the way, your other abilities in Chinese:

http://mandarin.about.com/od/How-to-learn-Mandarin-Chinese/fl/How-to-learn-to-understand-spoken-Chinese.htm

The different “can”s

There are three different ways to say “can” (or “may”) in Chinese; this video from BedroomChinese.com introduces them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beCC2m2hZtI

Twitter: @Chelseabubbly

Pinyin vs. characters

How many characters do you need to learn? And why is Pinyin not sufficient? In this video, ChineseFor.us addresses this common question, and introduces the basic patterns behind characters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7lx-TRYO4g

Twitter: @chinese4us

Asking questions

How can you ask questions in Chinese? This video introduces some of the basic question words, and how to use them:

http://blogs.transparent.com/chinese/asking-questions-in-chinese/

Twitter: @ChineseLanguage

Chengyu (phrases)

Here are two collections of four-character phrases that can help to make your Chinese more natural:

http://www.yoyochinese.com/blog/Learn-Chinese-Chengyu-Chinese-Idioms

Twitter: @YoYoChinese

More Chengyu (phrases)

Here are some more chengyu, in this video from ChinesePod:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-efir0aI1Sk

Twitter: @ChinesePod

Feeling the elephant

Have you ever heard the story of the blind men and the elephant? It’s well known in English, but is also the basis for a chengyu (four-character phrase) in Chinese, as demonstrated here by LearnChineseNow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1Rasu8BUE

Twitter: @LearnChineseNow

Wanna dance?

A fun Chinese song, with characters, Pinyin, and translation, to which you can can dance and learn new words at the same time:

http://chinesefor.us/new-pants-want-dance-english-translation/

Twitter: @chinese4us

Flattery will get you everywhere

A short introduction to flattering other people in Chinese

http://www.digmandarin.com/flattering-chinese.html

Twitter: @DigMandarin

Go away!

Is someone bothering you? Here are some words and phrases you can use to be left alone:

http://www.decodemandarinchinese.com/learn-better/when-you-hear-one-of-these-expressions-you-are-really-bothering-or-harassing-others

Twitter: @DecodeChinese

Very simple story

Just beginning to learn Chinese, and you want a very simple story? Here’s one to practice with:

http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-story-for-beginner-hsk-1-2-%e7%94%b5%e8%84%91%e9%87%8c%e7%9a%84%e5%a6%88%e5%a6%88-mom-in-the-computer-1/

Twitter: @graceJLC

Chinese keyboards

While not related to learning Chinese per se, this very interesting article talks about Chinese vs. English on computers, typewriters, and other communication equipment:

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/chinablog/time-get-qwerty-qa-tom-mullaney-alphabets-chinese-characters-computing/