Chinese Language

刺激 (cìji) exciting

公路 (gōnglù) highway

超 (chāo) to exceed

闭嘴 (bìzuǐ) to shut up

过来 (guòlái) to come over

晚 (wǎn) late

刚刚 (gāng gāng) just; just now

超过 (chāoguò) to leave behind

停 (tíng) to stop

嚣张 (xiāozhāng) arrogant

动 (dòng) to move

待 (dāi) to stay

情感 (qíng gǎn) emotions

快乐 (kuàilè) happy

悲伤 (bēishāng) sad

兴奋 (xīng èn) excited

惊讶 (jīngyà) surprised

无聊 (wúliáo) bored

惊恐 (jīngkōng) scared

愤怒 (fèn nù) angry

困惑 (kùnhuò) confused

忧虑 (yōulú) worried

紧张 (jīnzhāng) nervous

自豪 (zìháo) proud

自信 (zìxìn) confident

尴尬 (gāngà) embarrassed

Inspired by some posts which I will link later bc I’m too lazy right now. Pls enjoy.

Coffee 咖啡 (kāfēi) Tea 茶 (chá) Hot chocolate 热可可 (rèkêkê) Water 水 (shuî) Milk 牛奶 (niúnâi) Lemonade 柠檬水 (níngméngshuî) Milkshake 奶昔 (nâixī) Ice tea 冰茶 (bīngchá) Juice 果汁 (guôzhī) Coke (可口)可乐 (kêkôu kêlè) Beer 啤酒 (píjiû) Wine 酒 (jiû) Alcohol 醇 (chún) Beverage 饮料/饮品 (yînliào/pîn) to drink 喝 (hē)

ALL ESSENTIAL PHRASES WHEN YOU ARE MEETING SOMEONE NEW!

Interactive - with TOP quality audio. 

Lesson 1.1 - Grammar

1.       The verb 姓

a. 姓 is both a noun and a verb. When it is used as a verb, it must be followed by an object.

Q. 你姓什么？What is your family name?

A. 我姓李。My family name is Li.

b. 姓 is usually negated with 不 （bù）。

Q. 你姓李吗？Is your family name Li?

A. 我不姓李。My family name is not Li. 【X 我不姓】

c. The polite way to ask for ang give a family name is as follows:

Q. 你贵姓？What is your family name? （Lit. Your honorable family name is…?）【X 你贵姓什么？】

 Remember to drop the honorific 贵 when you reply.

A. 我姓王。My family name is Wang. 【X 我贵姓王】

You can also respond to 你贵姓 by saying 免贵姓王。(Lit. Dispense with “honorable.” [My] family name is Wang.)

2.       Questions ending with 呢

a. 呢 often follows a noun or pronoun to form a question when the content of the question is already clear from the context.

Q. 请问，你贵姓？What’s your family name, please?

A. 我姓李，你呢？My family name is Li. How about you?

b. When 呢 is used in this way, there must be some context.

3.       The verb 叫

a. While 叫 has several meanings, it means ‘to be called’ in this lesson. Like 姓， it must be followed by an object, which can either be a full name or a given name, but seldom a given name that consists only of one syllable.

Q. 你叫什么名字？What is your name?

A. 我叫王小朋。My name is Wang XiaoPeng.

b. 叫 is usually negated with 不。

Q. 你叫李生吗？ Is your name Li Sheng?

A. 我不叫李生。My name is not Li Sheng.

4.       Subject + verb + object

a. The basic word order is Chinese is subject + verb + object.

Hey I’ve finally got some time to actually make some original content again, but still like zero ideas (can you guys pls give me some?!) so here’s kind of a random list abt flowers. Idk, maybe some of you are Chinese-learning flower enthusiasts. No idea. But here’s this.

花 (huā) flower 鲜花 (xiānhuā) fresh flowers 花束 (huāshù) bouquet 香呋 (xiāngwèi) fragrance, sweet smell 花商 (huāshāng) florist (shop) 花园 (huāyuán) flower garden 开花 (kāihuā) to bloom, to blossom 玫瑰 (méigui) rose 百合 (bâihé) lily 水仙 (shuîxiān) daffodil 雏菊 (chújú) daisy 郁金香 (yùjīnxiāng) tulip 杜鹃 (dùjuān) azalea 蒲公英 (púgōngyīng) dandelion 葵花 (kuíhuā) sunflower 毛莨 (máogèn) buttercup 罂粟 (yīngsù) poppy 康乃馨 (kāngnâixīn) carnation 大丽花 (dàlìhuā) dahlia 勿忘草 (wùwàngcâo) forget-me-not 鸢尾 (yuānwêi) iris

家  jiā - home, family

妈妈  mā ma - mom

母亲  mǔ qin - mother

爸爸  bàba - dad

父亲  fù qīn - father  

兄弟姐妹  xiōng dì jiě mèi -siblings

弟弟 dìdi - younger brother

哥哥  gē ge - older brother

妹妹 mèi mei - younger sister

姐姐  jiě jie - older sister

祖父母  zǔ fù mǔ - grandparents

外婆  wài pó - maternal grandmother

奶奶 nǎi nai - paternal grandmother

爷爷  yé ye - paternal grandfather

外公  wài gōng - maternal grandfather

伯伯  bó bo - father’s older brother

叔叔  shū shu - father’s younger brother

舅舅  jiù jiu - mother’s brother

叔叔 shū shu - uncle (general meaning)

阿姨  Ā yí - aunt (general meaning)  

姑姑  gū gu - father’s sister

姨妈  yí mā - mother’s sister

孩子  hái zi - children

儿子  Ér zi - son

#Chinese#business Chinese#learn Chinese#

If you have interest in taking Chinese online class and wanna know more follow this link:

https://www.hanbridgemandarin.com/freetrial-request

A recent question inspired me to write this post! So I hope it’s helpful! 

 I’ve been studying Chinese for a couple years in what feels like an uphill battle to keep up. There are thousands of characters to learn and no alphabet to use to help except for Pinyin, but no book is written in Pinyin and no one is writing anything in pinyin. So aside from learning pronunciation, pinyin is worthless. You’re just going to have to straight up memorize of thousands of difficult characters. This is a drastically different system compared to English and is very hard for a learner at any stage to learn and then retain. However, over the years I have come up with a system that has worked absolute wonders for helping me memorize characters and actually retain them. The downside, it takes A LOT more time than simply putting a character down on a flash card. As you’ll learn, Chinese requires a certain level of blood, sweat and tears to learn thoroughly so if you’re new to Chinese, get used to putting in a lot more time learning basic stuff than your peers learning romance languages. Take frequent breaks if you need to, space out your studying, and make sure you give yourself enough time to study. You’ll learn how long it typically takes for you to study as you go. What’s also important about learning characters is your attitude. You must try to have a good attitude about learning and say whatever you have to to yourself to get yourself to be at least somewhat enthusiastic about the prospect of learning around 8000 characters. Otherwise, your negativity will delay your study process and even disincentivize you from studying at all. With that in mind, here is the best way I have found to study Chinese characters laid out from start to finish. 

1. Read Whole Vocabulary List

First thing you need to do before you begin memorizing anything is to simply go down the list of vocabulary and read them aloud both the Chinese pronunciation and the English definition. Mark the vocabulary you don’t quite understand the meaning of so that you can do additional research a bit later. 

2. Assign Colors to Represent Tones

You will only need to do this once in your Chinese studies, but it’s very very important. It’s important to remove your dependence on pinyin ASAP. It’s very helpful for beginners to help them learn to pronounce things, but as soon as you get comfortable with pronunciation in about the intermediate level you’ll want to remove the pinyin from your studies completely. Pinyin after a while becomes more of a problem than a help if you become over reliant on it. How do you remove pinyin? Well you use colors! For the tones at least. For each tone, assign a different color and then write each character in that color to help you memorize the tone without the pinyin. I personally use blue for the first tone, yellow for the second tone, green for the third and red for the fourth. Now for the actual pinyin, bad news is, you’re just going to have to omit it from your notes and flashcards. The only exception is If you’re a beginner. If you are, please write out the pinyin in your notebook and in your flashcards because you’ll need the pinyin in your early stages. But as you advance in Chinese (starting at the intermediate level), DO NOT study with the pinyin. 

3. Take Apart the Characters 

Now that you have your colors ready to go, on to the important part. This is a very important part of your memorization process and that’s using radicals. Radicals are your best friend and act as a guide to help you distinguish the meaning of a word. So if you encounter to the animal radical ( 犭) in your studies, you’ll know from then on that whatever the word is has something to do with an animal. So yeah, they’re important. With your first vocabulary word, before you write it down, stick your vocab word into The Written Dictionary and take a look at the radicals. This will require you to have a Chinese keyboard either on your phone or on your computer. Go ahead and enable that in your control panel. Then keep the page up because you’re going to write them down write below the vocabulary word in your notes. 

4. Write Down the Character and the Radicals Below 

Now you can finally write down the vocab word! Get your colored pen out so you can write the vocab words according to their tones. And then right below them, write their radicals. It should look something like this:

1. 顺利 - (both characters in red to mark the fourth tone) 

顺 = 川  river +  页 page/leaf

利 =  禾 grain +刂    knife

Okay, so you see how this method takes a while, but let me tell you, if you do this, you will remember SO MANY characters. 

5. On a Separate Page, Practice Writing Vocab 10 Times Each And Read Aloud (Optional)

This part you can skip if you’re short on time, but I highly recommend making time to do it anyway. In grade school, Chinese students must repeat each character 10-12 times a day. It helps really cement the knowledge into your brain. The key here is that you are only writing the characters and then saying the word. It completely leaves out pinyin, which is GREAT! You want to establish a connection between the character and the word, not the word and the pinyin. 

6. Plug Vocab Words into Online Flashcards

I recommend either using Cram or Study Blue to study with but go ahead and plug in all your vocab words into some flash cards with or without the radicals. Whichever is better for you. I put the character on one side and the radicals on the other with no pinyin whatsoever, but I do have colors to help me differentiate the tones like I mentioned above. Again, if you’re a beginner PUT THE PINYIN IN YOUR FLASHCARDS. If you are intermediate or above, take ‘em out! 

7. Review Flashcards Every Week or Every Other Week 

Make sure to go back to your flashcards in a week or two so that you can review them. 

Whew, and that’s it. I know it’s a lot but believe me it will save you time in the long run because you’ll actually memorize characters instead of those who will probably promptly forget them after learning them and then have to go back and re-learn them all over again. That would really suck. So do yourself a favor and learn them really well first and then just review them when needed and you’ll be golden. It isn’t easy at all, but no one said learning Chinese would be easy! I’m sure you’ve got the ambition, no you just need to put it to work! You got this!

Chinese Boost grammar: This page has a list of different levels of Mandarin grammar for you to explore. What you do is choose your level and then pick a grammar pattern from the articles under that level. Each article is clearly written and gives multiple examples to help you understand what you’re learning.

a folder of many many mandarin resources

Just Learn Chinese: This website has so many things. There’s vocab/idiom explanations, grammar, and best of all stories/novels. The stories are divided into different levels of difficulty and, when reading the actual stories, have a popup dictionary when you hover over a word. The website is run by a native Mandarin speaker.

Carl Gene: Carl Gene is a professional translator and this is his blog. I’d say the stuff he posts is a little more advanced but it’s certainly worth looking around. He posts about Chinese language and history, as well as his experience working as a translator and interpreter. Really interesting stuff.

中外对话 China Dialogue: China Dialogue is a website dedicated to stories about China’s environmental issues and the articles can be read in either Mandarin or English. This is a much more advanced reading source and it is not divided into levels of difficulty. 

The Chairman’s Bao: This is an online newspaper that has stories for each HSK level. When you go to an article, you can highlight words you don’t understand and the definition will appear to the right of the text. There’s a wide range of topics covered in their articles so you’re bound to find something you like.

Read 漫画 Manhua Online: All of the manhua are written by native speakers (at least i think they are) and they’re free to read. The whole website is in Mandarin so it might that a little bit of legwork to figure out how to find what you want. I just leaf through the manhua that are at the top of the page.

Read Chinese: This website offers a huge number of texts for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners in both traditional and simplified characters. After reading each passage there are a few questions you answer to test your comprehension of what you just read. Each passage also has pinyin, but rather than putting it with the characters it is put underneath the passage so you are forced to focus just on the characters while reading.

Hanzi Grids: Here you can make your own printable grids for practicing hanzi. To get started you just have to quickly make a free account on the website using your email. After doing so you can start working on your grid. There are some features that you have to pay for but you can still make a basic grid without the subscription. 

Easy Mandarin Books to Read: This is just a short list of suggestions for simple books to read in Mandarin. Most of them are children’s books or books of tales.

Mandarin Weekly: Mandarin Weekly is a weekly newsletter that includes loads of resources for Mandarin for all levels. The weekly emails include resources for vocab, grammar, culture, and much more. 10/10 would recommend subscribing especially since it’s free.

Ninchanese: This is a fun little website full of games and an entertaining story to help you learn basic Mandarin. There’s also an app for it so you can play both on your phone and on your computer.

Phonetic Sets of Characters: As the name suggests, this is a list of characters that have similar pronunciations. In this list they cover characters that have the same pronunciation for everything including tones and characters that have the same initials and finals but different tones. There are two other categories of similarity, but this list only covers the two.

BONUS:

this was inspired by a post i saw by @talen-en-regendagen

雨 yû rain

大雨 dàyû heavy rain

雨天 yûtiān rainy day

雨季 yûjì rainy season

水 shuî water

雨滴 yûdī raindrop

雨丝 yûsī drizzle

毛毛雨 máomáoyû drizzle

水坑 shuîkēng puddle

雾 wù fog, mist

雷 léi thunder

雷雨／雷暴 léiyû/léibào thunderstorm 

闪电 shândiàn lightning

冰雹 bīngbáo hail stone

风 fēng wind

彩虹 câihóng rainbow

雨伞 yûsân umbrella (can also just say 伞)

雨衣 yûyī raincoat

雨靴 yûxuē rain boots 

下雨 xiàyû to rain

下雹 xiàbáo to hail

大风 dàfēng windy

淋雨 línyû to get wet in the rain

满城风雨 mân chéng fēng yû lit. wind and rain through the town; fig. a big scandal, the talk of the town

雨后春笋 yû hòu chūn sûn lit. after rain the spring bamboo; fig. rapid new growth, many new things emerge in rapid succession 

雨过天晴 yû guò tiān qíng lit. sky clears after rain; new hopes after a disastrous period, every cloud has a silver lining (also written 雨过天青 with 青 qīng)

梨花带雨 lí huā dài yû lit. like raindrops on a pear blossom; fig. the tearstained face of a beauty 

Yeah I know this is cutting it a bit close, but here’s a New Years vocab list in mandarin. It’s probably been done already, but y'know, it can always be done again. (Based off of @krstudy ’s Korean list.)

恭贺新禧! (gōnghè xīnxî) happy new year!

新年好! (xīnnián hâo) happy new year! [alternative]

新年 (xīnnián) new year

决议 (juéyì) resolution

派对 (pàiduì) party

半夜 (bànyè) midnight

爆竹 (bàozhú) firecracker

烟火 (yānhuo) fireworks

干杯 (gānbēi) cheers! [also: to drink a toast]

香槟 (xiāngbīn) champagne

日历 (rìlì) calendar

倒计时 (dàojìshí) countdown

开始 (kāishî) to begin, to start

跳舞 (tiàowû) to dance

吻 (wên) to kiss

喝酒 (hējiû) to drink [alcohol]

盼望 (pànwàng) to hope

帖子// tiězi // post

文字 // wénzì // text

图片 // túpiàn // photo

引用 // yǐnyòng // quote

链接 // liànjiē // link

对话 // duìhuà // chat

音频 // yīnpín // audio

视频 // shìpín // video

热度 // rèdù // notes

粉丝 // fěnsī // followers

通知 // tōngzhī // activity

草稿 // cǎogǎo // drafts

队列 // duìliè // queue

转发 // zhuǎn fā // reblog

喜欢 // xǐhuān // like

关注 // guānzhù // to follow

搜索 // sōusuǒ // to search

本源 // běnyuán // source

匿名 // nìmíng // anon

昆虫 kūnchóng insect

蚂蚁 mǎyǐ ant

白蚁 báiyǐ termite

蜜蜂 mìfēng bee

蜂蜜 fēngmì honey

黄蜂 huángfēng wasp

甲壳虫 jiǎkéchóng beetle

蛾 é moth

蝴蝶 húdié butterfly

茧 jiǎn cocoon 

毛毛虫 máomáochóng caterpillar （毛虫 is also okay）

蟋蟀 xīshuài cricket

蚱蜢 zhàměng grasshopper 

螳螂 tángláng praying mantis

蟑螂zhāngláng cockroach 

小强 xiǎoqiáng cockroach (slang)

蜈蚣 wúgōng centipede

蜻蜓 qīngtíng dragonfly

苍蝇 cāngyíng fly

蚊子 wénzi mosquito 

瓢虫 piáochóng ladybug 

蜘蛛 zhīzhū spider

萤火虫 yínghuǒchóng firefly, lightning bug

蚯蚓 qiūyǐn earthworm (i don’t think this is an insect but who cares)

害怕 hàipà to be afraid