A radical is collection of brush strokes in Chinese that conveys a certain meaning. Radicals are combined to form characters, and recognizing a particular radical can often give you a clue as to that…
If you’ve ever learned even a little Chinese, you probably know the phrase “对不起(duì bù qǐ)”. In most textbooks, “对不起(duì bù qǐ)” is translated to mean “sorry,” or “I’m sorry.”…
Ever run out of cash at the worst possible time, and run into a business that won’t take your credit card? Want to buy things on Taobao (China’s excellent answer…
Having taught Chinese for a while, we’ve noticed a lot of common errors that English speakers make when learning Chinese. This is understandable, as Chinese has very different grammatical rules…
It seems like every day a new app comes out that promises to help you learn characters easily. With a growing pool of research in memory and memory competitions on…
I’ve been learning Chinese for over 10 years and one thing I’ve seen countless students struggle with is the tones. Why is it that so many Chinese language students struggle…
The Mandarin particle 就(jiù) is a very common word in Chinese with a ton of different uses. Depending on the context, it can be a verb, adverb, preposition, or even…
I don’t mean to scare you but the last quarter of 2015 is almost upon us. 2016 is approaching fast! This got me thinking about my Mandarin studies, and how…
No matter which textbooks you use to learn Chinese, the word “and-和(hé)” is always one of the first few words that you learned. It’s not a difficult word, so even…