Since starting to work my way through the Heisig method for remembering the Hanzi, I’ve been amazed at how easy it is to remember some seemingly complex characters and so it struck me as strange to realise that some of the easier characters are the ones I am having most difficult memorising.
Relatively speaking, we had a rather quiet Chinese New Year celebration here in North West London. Not a single firecracker was heard (although I did see mention of fireworks in West Hampstead on Twitter).
We spent the evening making 饺子 (jiǎozi) or dumplings, a traditional new year’s dish in the North of China. Making dumplings is [...]
You’ve probably all heard the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” before, but if not, you probably have a good idea what it means. However, the following equivalent sayings in Chinese might require a little thought.
Mandarin (Simplified):
门门懂,样样瘟
mén méndǒng ,yàngyàng wēn
All trades known, all trades dull
Mandarin (Traditional):
樣樣通,樣樣鬆
yàngyàng tōng ,yàngyàng sōng
All trades known, all trades [...]
I came across this quote by Stuart, a British Born Chinese (BBC) in Race and ethnicity: culture, identity and representation By Steve Spencer. It reminded me of the saying, “Home is where the heart is.”
I was born in England in Leicester, spent most of my life
in the UK, went over to HK when I was [...]
Want a Google Wave invite? All you have to do is leave some thoughts in the comments on how Google Wave can be used to improve language learning on (or off) the web. There are bonus points for ideas that focus on learning Mandarin Chinese specifically. I’m genuinely intrigued to hear what people think. Is this another web fad that will pass within months, or is there great untapped potential buried in the Wave concept?
In my first ever guest post I attempt to recall how it was that I found myself learning Chinese.
I cannot remember the moment I decided to learn Chinese. It was not one of those decisive moments where I said to myself that I was going to learn a new language, it just kind of happened.
I [...]
Something I should have done a long time ago is to label everything in our flat in Chinese. Alicia was out quite a bit over the weekend and so I took the opportunity to run around the flat labelling everything in Chinese. She came back last night and just laughed: “You forgot 镜子 [jìngzi], mirror.”
Last Monday I tweeted the following sentence as part of my contribution to #MandarinMonday:
There are a number of mistakes in this sentence which were quickly corrected by @GraceLee0806 and others. At this point, I really should say a big thank you to all the native speakers and Mandarin teachers who help out on Twitter.
Many of [...]
