My last Digmandarin article “Tones Prefer Company!“ generated a lot of interest, prompting me to pen this follow-up. The idea that tones should not be studied in isolation, and the…
When you hear someone discuss the basics of Mandarin pronunciation, they usually start with the four tones, and give an example like the famous (mā má mǎ mà). To be…
As a student of the Chinese language, I constantly find myself searching for metaphors to describe the learning process. Metaphors — ok, similes in this case, technically speaking — not only serve as a…