Pinyin is the Romanization of the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase “Pin Yin” literally translates into “spell sound.” In other words, spelling out …

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Setting Concrete Goals Many people will start learning a new language with very general goals, such as, “I want to learn Chinese.” Unfortunately, this is not very helpful. In order to be most …

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How important is it to learn Mandarin Chinese? How useful will it be? Jie Wang, love ancient Chinese poems Last week I went to a Vietnamese restaurant. While I was waiting for my takeout, I …

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I’ve been responsible for teaching the introduction part of the Chinese course at Linköping university for several years now and one of the most frequent questions asked by absolute beginners is how …

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Modern Chinese characters have their roots in calligraphy, so stroke order is vital in writing Chinese. Having the wrong stroke order would cause ink to fall differently on the page and make Chinese …

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Even in today’s electronic age, it is still important to learn proper stroke order for handwriting Chinese characters. First and most importantly, writing Chinese characters by hand is absolutely …

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