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What is The Hanzi Movie Method? Part 1 – The Basics – Why Chinese Mnemonics Are Going to Save You Years (If you are brand new to Chinese characters, we recommend first checking out our series Chinese Characters 101) How Did We Get Here? The Hanzi Movie Method is a mnemonic system for learning ChineseRead more

(What are Chinese Characters? – Part 1  –  Chinese Strokes, Components & Radicals – Part 2) Pictographs Simple Ideographs Compound Ideographs Phonetic Semantic Compounds Transfer Characters Loan Characters 1. Pictographs 象形字 xiàngxíngzì Pictographs make up only a small portion of Chinese characters (Less than 5%). They are the most ancient and the easiest to learn.Read more

(What are Chinese Characters? – Part 1  –  The 6 Types of Chinese Character – Part 3) Chinese Strokes In total there are 35 different possible Chinese strokes. There are six basic Chinese strokes and 29 compound strokes. Compound Chinese strokes are combinations of basic strokes & combining strokes. Don’t worry about practicing these individually.Read more

(Chinese Strokes, Components & Radicals – Part 2  –  The 6 Types of Chinese Character – Part 3) Chinese characters are morphemes. The smallest meaningful unit of a language. English Example: We can split “unexpected” into “un-expect-ed.” These three separate parts are morphemes, and we hope this helps illustrate that a morpheme isn’t necessarily a word.Read more

BUILDING STUDY HABITS & BREAKING PROCRASTINATION PART 1- TRIGGER YOURSELF WHY BUILD A HABIT? PROCRASTINATION IS THE REASON We’ve had a lot of students who say something like “This course is great, I just have been lazy, haven’t yet started with my character learning/grammar building, etc.”. Should you expect yourself to have incredible willpower everyRead more

WHAT ABOUT 呢 ne? How to Use 呢 ne in Mandarin Grammar HOW TO USE 呢 – WHAT’S ITS FUNCTION? Much like 吗 or 吧, the character 呢 ne is an instrumental end of sentence particle. It has a few different uses, but one of the most common structures us:  “[THING YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT] +Read more

Chinese learners inevitably face the dilemma of Mandarin vs. Dialects. Mandarin Chinese is what you might call the “common tongue” of China. However, dialects abound in the middle kingdom, so Mandarin is meant to be a unifying language. The closest native dialect to “standard” Mandarin is in Shijiazhuang (capital of Hebei Province), and it isRead more

Much like English, many simple sentences in Chinese have a straightforward Subject + Verb +Object construction. The first time we see it in our course is the sentence “他 tā + 怕 pà + 他 tā” “He’s afraid of it.” Very straightforward! When sentences get more complicated, this structure may not work anymore, but inRead more

When Phil was nine years old and starting to learn how to play drums, his teacher (shout out to Gene Lazowicki!) said to him “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect”. The natural response to this might be, “but I suck when I first start, how could I practice perfectly?” This is the ultimateRead more

The number 10 十 and the third most common character in Chinese 是 are pronounced shí & shì respectively. It’s an incredibly important syllable, but you need to be sure you are saying it correctly. HOW TO SAY SHI – THE “SHHHHH” IS SUPER THICK The “sh-“ in Chinese naturally sounds much thicker than inRead more