Articles for Learning

Hello everybody, 大家好! Welcome back to our series on Learning Chinese through Funny Movies. I am writing this article on Thanksgiving, 感恩节gǎn ēn jié. Wish your Thanksgiving is filled with blessings, joy and turkeys! Today we look at the last part of the small talk between Mr. Fan and Qin Fen. You will learn some very useful phrases and expressions in the Chinese language from this scene.

大家好！又在这里见面了。历史上罕见的暴风雪正在席卷美国东北部。注意安全和保暖噢！ (dà jiā hǎo ！yòu zài zhè lǐ jiàn miàn le 。lì shǐ shàng hǎn jiàn de bào fēng xuě zhèng zài xí juàn měi guó dōng běi bù 。zhù yì ān quán hé bǎo nuǎn ō ！) How are you, everybody. Today we talk about how to greet in Chinese on different occasions. The above is a good example when you meet a group of people.

While riding from point A to point B in a taxi, you will spend roughly 20% of the time actually driving. For the rest of the time in a cab, you’ll spend, 15% beeping the horn, 40% changing lanes, 15% driving on the sidewalk, and 10% driving in the wrong lane. This is just one of the many jokes about Chinese taxi drivers.

Hello, everyone! Thank you for following our blog and your interest in Chinese language and culture. In an earlier article, I mentioned that in China there is a large variety of dialects方言(fāng yán). Today we dig deeper into the dialects of China, how many of them there actually are and also how different each one can be. The Chinese language has both spoken and written forms.

Today we follow Peter on a shopping adventure in a department store in Beijing. Peter is studying in a Masters program for Chinese at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He arrived at Beijing last November with only winter clothes. Now it is May, and he needs to get new clothes for the summer. His Chinese friends recommended Xidan Department Store, 西单商场 (xī dān shāng chǎng).

Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK, or Chinese Proficiency Test) is an international standardized exam, administered by Hanban, that assesses and rates proficiency in Mandarin. The HSK focuses on listening, reading, and writing, without an emphasis on grammar, and can be taken either as a written exam or as a computer-based test.

Hey, everybody! Welcome back to our series on Learning Chinese through Funny Movies! Last article we started with the small talk between Mr. Fan and Qin Fen. Since then I hope you had the opportunity to watch more of the movie. Today, we will explain further what happens in the opening scene.

Watching movies is one of the best ways to learn a native language. Today we look at the comedy titled: “If You Are the One 非诚勿扰(fēi chéng wù rǎo).” If You Are the One is a 2008 highly successful Chinese romantic comedy film directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Ge You and Shu Qi. It earned over ￥364 million (US$53.7 million) at the box office. The movie is about Mr. Qin Fen秦奋 (qín fèn，homophone of the word diligence勤奋 ) who is now in his late 40s.

One of the difficulties of learning Chinese (as well as other languages) comes from word pairs that have similar meanings (synonyms). For Chinese learners, it is always hard to figure out which word to use under the situation that both words from the pair appear to be applicable. Here, we would like to give out five typical examples.

There are many good reasons to listen to Chinese popular songs. You can improve pronunciation, learn Chinese vocabulary, develop grammar structure and beautiful expressions in Chinese, and learn more about Chinese culture, which is fun! In this article, we are going to listen to a sweet love song 小酒窝(xiǎo jiǔ wō) by 林俊杰(lín2 jùn jié) and 蔡卓妍(cài zhuó yán).

Popular Chinese Idioms Everyone realizes that learning idioms of a foreign language is an interesting way to sound “native-like”. For English as second language learners, UrbanDictionary is an awesome place to check out interesting popular English idioms. However, it is a pity that there is no such a counterpart the Chinese language as of yet.

When searching the Apple store, you will be amazed by the amount and variety of Chinese learning apps. This article will give a brief introduction to 10 categories of them and recommend handy apps for all Chinese learners. 1. Flash Card l  Fun Chinese (Listening practice)  Recommend: Yes ★★★

Vowels are the most indispensible component of a syllable. Mandarin has three types of finals composed by three types of vowel: simple vowels, nasal vowels and compound vowels. This article will focus on finals, to examine English speakers’ difficulties and give tips to improve pronunciation. There are 35 finals in Mandarin.

Pronunciation is of vital importance especially in mandarin. Initials, finals, and tones are combined in fixed ways to produce a total of 1,600 possible distinct syllable sounds in Chinese (compare to 16,000 for English and 100 for Japanese). As long as you pronounce one syllable sound wrong, you can get a completely different word.

Many Chinese learners complain about the difficulty in writing Chinese characters.  People have no clue about how and where to put the first stroke, or what order should be followed when writing the Chinese characters. Actually all characters are composed by simple strokes, and there are only a few rules when writing them. 

BUSINESS CHINESE 经贸汉语 Part VII Hills Learning is very happy to introduce you its multi-part series on business Chinese.  A piece of advice for those who are still hesitating whether they should start learning one of the world’s most difficult languages: it is always a good idea to start the learning process as early as possible. Try to focus on both spoken and written parts from the very beginning.

经贸汉语 Part VI Hills Learning is happy to help our readers to develop their competence in Chinese in a business context. Do not forget to focus on both oral and written skills. Every time you learn a new word or expression, practice writing characters as well. You will not be able to master Chinese if you neglect the written part.

CHINESE GRAMMAR PART III Chinese grammar is an important part of Chinese learning. As you begin to learn Chinese, you should learn Chinese grammar in a systematic way. In this section, you can learn different Chinese grammar patterns that will help you to build the sentences and express your mind in Chinese.

BUSINESS CHINESE 经贸汉语 Part V At the office Hills Learning continues its periodic series on business Chinese. The following vocabulary is relatively simple, and it is a good thing, because we want you to learn everything by heart, as these expressions are most frequently used in the corporate environment.   1)      安排会议 (an1pai2 hui4yi4) – to set up a meeting, to arrange a meeting Definition: To prepare a plan for a gathering of people, as for a business or social ...

Watch out! One criticism that many Westerns have about Chinese is that everything sounds the same. There is some truth in that complaint given that “shì” (one of the most common sounds in Chinese) takes up 41 pages in a standard Chinese dictionary. Chinese is a very contextually dependent language.