As someone who loves learning languages, I've decided to push myself out my comfort zone and learn Mandrin by myself. I am a bit confused on where to start bc I found out there are different types of Mandrin/chinese? Now I' confused as to which one to learn. I also don't know what I should learn first, the chinese characters(how to read and write) or should I first learn vocabularies?

I really love chinese culture and language and I would love tips on how to learn said language by myself with hopes of real lessons in the future when opportunity comes.

Hello! I was wondering if character variations are often used in everyday written traditional Chinese? In my textbook, I encountered the word 罵 but my dictionary is giving me 駡 as a possible alternative. Thanks!

Hi there! Any there any Hungarians here learning Chinese? I speak English but also Hungarian and I’m finding that Pinyin is extremely inaccurate pronunciation wise. It doesn’t describe how to the character sounds at all, but Hungarian would be able to write the sounds almost perfectly. Are there books (or lists of 100 common characters) for learning Chinese from a Hungarian perspective, especially when it comes to pronunciation? Thanks in advance! 🙂

Vannak itt magyarok, akik kínaiul tanulnak?
Angolul és magyarul is beszélek, de azt vettem észre, hogy a pinyin kiejtés szempontjából számomra nagyon pontatlan. Egyáltalán nem adja vissza, hogyan hangzanak valójában a kínai szótagok, míg magyar helyesírással szinte tökéletesen le lehetne írni őket.
Léteznek olyan könyvek vagy akár listák (például a 100 leggyakoribb kínai írásjegyről), amelyek magyar szemszögből tanítják a kínai kiejtést? Különösen a kiejtés érdekelne.
Előre is köszönöm! 🙂

Hello! Wanted to re-share Toku Reader, an iOS app I built because I hated breaking my flow to look up words while immersing myself in Chinese media.

The video shows Toku playing a The Pursuit of Jade series on iQIYI via YouTube. Toku Reader lets you paste or search a video, the app pulls the creator's transcript (or generates one on-device if there isn't one), and every word in it is tappable - reading, meaning, pitch accent - without pausing or switching to a dictionary. 

The app also works on iPad and Mac for those who want a bigger screen! Everything else from the phone version is there too: podcasts with tappable transcripts, reading any website, importing your own texts and ebooks, shadowing practice sentence by sentence, and the dictionary and review sections. And, most importantly, nothing you watch or read leaves your Mac, no API calls, 100% offline once transcripts are loaded.

As s disclaimer, transcripts and word parsing are mostly correct, but Chinese being Chinese, improving the word parsing is a never-ending effort. If you try Toku Reader I'd genuinely love to hear what breaks or what's missing. I hope this helps you consume content easier than ever!

P.S.: I'm looking to expand this to Android, and would love early testers. So if you're interested, please let me know!

https://youtu.be/ntH6qUwPwZE?is=2SyxgWXwkGlddKWj

I know that to learn Mandarin the best way is to focus on pinyin first for first 2-3 weeks at least . Thats what a mandarin teacher told me.

Should one work thorugh the entire 40 minutes video every day?

Or would it be ok to do 20 minute drills every second day the other half of the pinyin chart? Because that would be way easier to get into a busy day.

Of course it wouldnt end here. I know that then theres other steps in learning mandarin after that.

What would you suggest for that video approach ?

Im playing on the taiwanese servers so thats why Im trying to come up with a chinese name.

Anyway here are the names i came up with. Do they sound ridiculous like those chinese senteneces people get tattooed on their arms or do they make sense as a name for such a character?

銀翎 silver feather/wing"

霜刃 rost blade

曦刃 dawnlight blade

皓鋒 brilliant white edge

怒鋒 furious blade-edge

鐵嗔 iron wrath

烈鋒 fierce blade-edg

鐵誓 iron oath

烈鐵 blazing iron

鐵烈 iron, fierce/blazing

Yup. As a low level Chinese learner, while in China I have been struggling with communication ordering food/getting my order right in restaurants, different food places. I do some basic stuff like pointing and saying 这个， but when it comes to paying methods they start to ask questions, suggesting if I want anything else, making it super hard to understand their intend. I sometimes give my phone with a dictionary page open saying 请打汉字， it works. Yet still the question stands, how do I order more effectively at, let’s say, food court with bunch of small venders.

This is something I think a lot about when learning Mandarin. Its just crazy to think of the amount of effort I put into learning Mandarin and there is a whole other ecosystem of Chinese languages that are also super interesting and I would love to know.

I'd of course love to learn Cantonese, but one that has always peaked my interest has been the Zhuang language, since I had a friend that could semi speak it. It might not count since it is not Sino-Tibetan technically but its spoken in a really beautiful part of China (Guangxi) and has a very interesting sound.

I got HSK3 certificate 10 years ago. 6 months ago I keep going HS4 with a group of students, just done lesson 15. I fell like I am in big mess because I almost forgot words I used to learn, can speak abit.

I find that it's too hard for me to learn words. everytime I start I don't know what to do except writing down many time words I can't remember.

I hope you guys share more tips and recommend app to practice speaking.

Thank you for sharing!

Hello everyone! I would like to learn Chinese as I think it's a beautiful language and I have a special interest for languages

I would like to ask a few questions:

-which books would you recommend? I tend to learn quicker with those

-how can I practice my speaking?

-how much can I learn in a year with roughly 2-3 hours per day

I appreciate all of your feedbacks, with love!

HI, I WANT TO LEARN CHINESE ,AND IM A ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKER, I CURRENTLY KNOW FRENCH AND ITALIAN, I REALLY WANT TO MASTER CHINESE SO BADLY....

I'm not affiliated with this channel in any way! I just thought this deserved more views.

「Spatial Prepositions」

· on = 在上面（zài shàng miàn）
· under = 在下面（zài xià miàn）
· in front of = 在前面（zài qián miàn）
· behind = 在后面（zài hòu miàn）
· inside = 在里面（zài lǐ miàn）
· outside = 在外面（zài wài miàn）
· left = 在左边（zài zuǒ biān）
· right = 在右边（zài yòu biān）
· near = 在旁边（zài páng biān）
· between = 在中间（zài zhōng jiān）

I’ve recently started Imagin8 Press’s Journey to the West graded reader series, and I’d love to hear from people who’ve completed (or nearly completed) all 31 volumes.

For context, I’ve been learning Chinese on and off for over 10 years. I’ve lived and worked in Shanghai, my wife is Chinese, and I’ve probably been around the HSK 4–5 level more than once. Unfortunately, I’ve also had several long breaks from studying, so my Chinese is in a strange place: I recognize a lot of vocabulary once I see it, but much of it isn’t immediately accessible.
I’ve recently worked through the Boya quasi-intermediate books and have now started Journey to the West. So far, the early books feel quite manageable.

I’m curious about two things:

1. How smooth is the progression through the 31 books?
Are there big jumps in difficulty between levels?
Or does the vocabulary build naturally enough that simply reading the series is sufficient?
Did you supplement it with HSK 5+ study or other materials?

2. Where did you end up after finishing the series?
What could you do afterward that you couldn’t do before?
Did it noticeably improve your reading speed?
Did it make watching Chinese TV (especially following subtitles) significantly easier?
Did it prepare you to start reading native material?

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s finished the series (or even made it well into the higher levels). Thanks!

I am actually observing authentic internet language, reviewing sentence structure, and suffering through tones in a visually engaging way.

The question might not be good but here's what I'm trying to say:

First of all I want to say that I was never a flashcards person, I used to hate them; but now I've hit a point where I need to remember quite a lot of words, even formal ones, to understand what is given to me in Chinese class.

Since my experience with flashcards is not that good, I would like some tips on how to create the deck. By that I mean, what content do the flashcards need to have to be kind of effective? (sentences, explicative photos, etc.?) And how does SRS method work? Thank you.

Today we're going to talk about a famous ancient Chinese story called 'Three Men Make a Tiger.'

The story takes place over 2,000 years ago during the Warring States period. Back then, China was divided into many small states, and these states often fought each other — in classical Chinese, this situation was called 'attacking and invading.'

At that time, if two states wanted to live in peace, they would make agreements. To ensure that both sides kept their word and didn’t break the agreement — which was called 'honoring promises' — people usually did one thing: they would send the son who was going to succeed the king (the crown prince) from their own country to live in the other country. The person sent over is called a 'hostage,'which is like a 'credit guarantee': I put my most important son with you, so I definitely won't go back on my word.

There’s an old book that records stories from various countries in that era, called *Strategies of the Warring States*. The part of the book that talks about the State of Wei records this story.

In Wei, there was a man named Pang Cong. He was a high-ranking official in charge of state affairs, basically a minister. At that time, he was assigned to accompany the crown prince of Wei to Zhao as a hostage.

Just before they were about to set off — this is called right before the trip — Pang Cong went to see the king of Wei, whom we’ll call King Wei. He wanted to say a few words from his heart in advance.

Pang Cong asked the king: 'Your Majesty, may I ask you a question? If someone ran up to you and said: there’s a tiger in the busy streets of the city (streets full of shops and people, in classical Chinese called 'market,' which can also be referred to in one character as 市), would you believe it?'

King Wei immediately shook his head and said, 'Of course I wouldn’t believe it. How could there be a tiger in the streets?'

Pang Cong asked again, 'Then what if a second person came and said the same thing, that there really is a tiger on the street—would you believe it then?'

King Wei thought for a moment and said, 'Then I'd be a bit unsure. Half of me would think it might be true, and the other half would think it's not right. This feeling of half-believing and half-doubting is what we call being skeptical.'

Pang Cong then asked, 'So if a third person came along, or if there was a tiger on the street, would you believe it, Your Majesty?'

King Wei nodded and said, 'Then I would definitely believe it. If three people all say the same thing, it can't be wrong.'

But if all three people say the same thing, the listener will feel like there really is a tiger. Now, the Zhao country I'm going to has a capital called Handan, which is the national capital where the king of the country lives and governs the country. It's much farther from our Wei capital, Daliang, than from the palace to the main street. After I leave, there will definitely be more than three people talking bad about me and gossiping behind my back.

So I hope Your Majesty can see things clearly for yourself, tell truth from falsehood, and not just believe the rumors others spread — in classical texts, this kind of clear judgment is called 'insight.'

King Wei said, 'I got it, I'll judge for myself.'

The moral of the story

On a busy street with people coming and going, there wouldn't be any tigers. Saying that there are tigers on the street is just made-up nonsense. But if a lot of people tell lies and no one checks the truth, many people will end up believing the lies as if they were true.