#mandarin tips

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1. Have someone to guide you to get good pronunciation habits. It is almost impossible to re-learn bad habits later so make sure you get your pronunciation right from the beginning. I mean the pronunciation of the sounds, not the tones. Tones take more time to get used to and you can't rush it - but try the best you can. Some tutors don't bother too much about the pronunciation so make sure you find someone who is strict about that, you will be grateful later. Also get confident in pinyin, you will need it.

2. Understand the composition of the sentences. The word order is super easy and it stays the same all the time (the question and informative sentences have the same word order). I have a formula for the word order but I won't reveal it here, it is one of the secrets I keep for my students and people who use my materials.

3. Understand that there are no tenses in the sense we think about them in English and other languages. Learn to express future, potential future, finished action, change of state, experience in the past and circumstances of the event. See the difference between action verbs and verbs of state.

4. Learn to use modal verbs and conjuctions.

5. Build usable vocabulary based on the fact that everything in Chinese is interconnected.

6. Understand 就， 才，的 and 得

7. Don't learn grammar rules and words separately. Learn functional practical sentences that will serve you as examples of the grammar structures (then you just need to change the words in these sentences).

8. Develop your listening skills - that is very important. For that there are Youtube channels and podcasts on Spotify (and in my materials the audio part also plays an important role). You can listen to Chinese radio stations just to get the feeling of the language.

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After 3-4 months you should feel pretty confident in normal conversations if you study regularly under competent guidance.

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R-evolutionary learning materials and resources: https://chineseffect.com

本 běn origin/roots

分钟 fēnzhōng minute

后面 hòumiàn rear/behind/afterwards

里 lǐ inside/lining/interior/internal

水果 shuǐguǒ fruit

医院 yīyuàn hospital

so i made that post and then someone asked a question and i figured i might as well just make an expanded post so here we go

i feel like these tips are for high beginner/low intermediate learners. if you’re a low beginner, you should probably still use pinyin to help you as you learn characters

so when i learn new vocab i don’t write the pinyin and the character together. instead, i’ll do something like this:

剃刀 razor (tìdāo)

when i do this, i’m not seeing the pinyin when i read the character so i’m more encouraged to try and remember how to pronounce it on my own

also, if you’re drawing from a paragraph or something longer, try not to put the meaning/pinyin for new words next to the original in the text. what i do is i underline the word and then i go to a different page and write the character and definition like i did above

if i’m just writing a whole sentence in my notes, i don’t put pinyin with it at all

*if whatever you’re reading has pinyin included under the characters, grab a notecard and cover it up as you read. you might accidentally catch little peeks between lines, but it’s a good way to help you pay attention to the characters more than the pinyin*

another thing to do is try and get familiar with the phonetic components of characters

you’ve probably noticed that there’s like five qings (请，情，清，青，晴）yeah? well when you look at them, they all have the same basic part: 青

while characters aren’t phonetic, many of them contain hints to their pronunciation by using these phonetic elements. since those characters all share a phonetic element, the thing that sets apart their meaning is the radicals 

as you read just try and figure out what parts of characters are phonetic elements. if you think you’ve found a character that’s based off a phonetic element, look at the radical and try to figure out what it means. it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong so long as you start to practice recognizing some of these characters. once you’ve made your guess, you can look it up and see how close you were on pronunciation/tone and meaning (because sometimes the pronunciation is tweaked *just a little bit*)

here’s a huge list of characters grouped by phonetic components 

Hello all!

A very hallowed and deep reading in today's lesson that made me think about the dreams we have now, as youths.

As best as you can, try and follow those dreams to the end if that's what you want, although dreams change as people do.

Some 把 and 被 practice!