#hsk6

Books for kids in other languages will humble you 😩 so many words to learn!

Thank God there are holidays, I can visit my Chinese family and borrow some books from kids 📚

拍謝辣~

Sorry in taiwanese

你們看到這邊都很挫對吧。/ 你们看到这边都很挫对吧。

挫 : [cuò] frustrated - HSK6

我自己也不置信。

置信 : [zhì xìn] to believe what somebody claims

there’s a lot of new changes, so i’ll try to summarize a bit below:

in order to counteract the “unbalance” in the system - namely, that HSK 1 and 2 were relatively easy to pass due to them having 150 words each whereas HSK 5 (2500 words) and HSK 6 (5000 words) were a lot more difficult - the new system tries to spread out learning more gradually. specifically, each level has a set number of 300 characters in each level and a varying number of words which are made using the 300 characters you must learn for that level. in effect, this makes levels 1 - 4 harder, but 5 and 6 easier.

word lists have also been revised to remove outdated words (such as “fax”)

levels 7 - 9 have been added as well! they are more advanced than HSK 6 and supposedly supposed to be for academic purposes. however, from what i understand is that these levels share a word list and once you take the test you will be put in level 7, 8, or 9 depending on your score.

also, HSK levels are now subcategorized by level of proficiency. HSK 1 - 3 is beginner, HSK 4 - 6 is intermediate, and HSK 7 - 9 is advanced. it is now considered to have “3 levels” (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and “9 bands” (1-9).

these new changes will go into effect on july 1, 2021

there’s a lot more information, but this is just a quick overview! i would highly recommend reading more here if you are interested.

九 = jiǔ = nine

A gorgeous neon 九 from a restaurant in Taipei!

There's not much to say about the character... 9 is 9. But we can take a detour here to talk about discounts in Chinese, which work the opposite way than the western world and are thus a bit confusing at first: instead of telling you how much the discount is, they tell you how much percentage of the original price you have to pay.

So for instance, if something has a 10% discount, you'd say 九折 (jiǔ zhé), as in, you only paying 90% of the price. The lower the number before the 折 character, the higher the discount. Takes a bit of time to get used to!

There are a few expressions that say "most likely" using 9, like 十之八九 (shí zhī bā jiǔ) or 十有八九 (shí yǒu bā jiǔ). Both of these hint at something happening 8 or 9 times out of 10, so it's quite likely it'll happen.