This video is produced by Hutong School and explains the very basics of Chinese tones, suitable for the complete beginner or those that are thinking about learning Chinese and want to know a little... Read more.

youtube.com

The evolution of meanings behind the Chinese character 革, from the ancient meaning related to 'hunting', to it's main meaning of “to change”, and 'transformation', with an oftentimes usage on the t... Read more.

theworldofchinese.com

When it comes to the Chinese word for sex, or 性(Xìng), avoid it in daily speech like you are a proper “sir” from the Victoria era. Defenders of decency might be disappointed to learn the original m... Read more.

theworldofchinese.com

Ever wondered how words are sorted in Pinyin? Well, alphabetically is the first answer, but what about diacritic marks? What about tones? Read more.

pinyin.info

What's a dialect? What's a language? Are Mandarin, Cantonese and Wu different languages or are they dialects of the same language. The answer is that there is no answer, it depends. This is a short... Read more.

sinoglot.com

This post is about 马到成功, one of the idioms used to wish someone success in the year of the horse (it has other uses as well). John Pasden explains what it means and how to use it (and some things a... Read more.

sinosplice.com

The question of how to design flashcards is faced by all learners who use them. What should you put on the front? What should you put on the back? Should you add single characters or whole words? O... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

In this blog post, Carl Gene Fordham goes through a long list of ways of describing different ailments and illnesses in Chinese. This is excellent if you happen to fall ill in China, but it's also ... Read more.

carlgene.com

This is a review of Perry Link's book about Chinese. This passage sums it up pretty well, and although I haven't read the book (yet), it's high on my list of books to get my hands on: "In writin... Read more.

lareviewofbooks.org

For foreigners, learning to speak Chinese is a hard task. But learning to read the beautiful, often complex characters of the Chinese written language may be less difficult. ShaoLan walks through a... Read more.

ted.com