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helpful Chinese language learning tips and resources

How to learn Chinese guide

Posted on | September 11, 2009 | 5 Comments

How to Learn Chinese Guide (725)

Free Chinese language study guide available for download in pdf format. (please register first in Member’s area in order to download the Study Guide.)  This useful guide covers topics such as learning strategies, learning styles, maintaining motivation, overcoming barriers, memorizing vocabulary, and other issues in the study of Mandarin. Now freely available online with hard copies available at our  Beijing Chinese language school. Tell all your friends!

Comments: 5 Comments
Category: Resources
Tags: Language > tools > useful

Christmas in Beijing – a 外国人 （wàiguórén – foreigner’s） perspective

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | Comments Off

We had not lived here long by the time Christmas came round last year, but I don’t remember there being very much in the way of Christmas things about, a few small decorations, but not much else. So this year, we were not expecting too many things to be happening to remind us about Christmas, but we have realised that, in some ways, we were very wrong!

From a commercial side at least, it seems that here in the area where 1 on 1 is, Christmas is a fairly big thing. The first thing that gave us a clue was when various shops started to put some decorations in their windows. Then the supermarkets (超市- short for 超级市场 – well we are studying Chinese after all!) started to sell Christmas decorations and trees. Seeing lots (and I mean lots!) of shop assistants wearing ‘Santa’ hats is something we are finding pretty strange, but perhaps most strange is to hear the music that is played in many of the places we go, that certainly I as a westerner can’t keep myself from humming along to. The songs range from older classic secular Christmas themed songs to modern Christmas themed songs (What I think of as the very British ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas’ being the one I was most surprised by). There are also scores of traditional Christmas Carols (with great lyrics!) to be heard – perhaps even more so than we would have heard in shops at home!

When it comes to personal homes we, unsurprisingly, have not seen much in the way of evidence of Christmas coming. The only obvious Christmas tree we have seen in a home is in that of a Westerner. Speaking to some Chinese friends, some feel that Christmas is important, but for others, they like the excuse to get together with their friends, but beyond that it is not important. We have already been to two Christmas parties, with a lot of Chinese friends there, and have another one to go to yet, so this does seem to be true!

 

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Category: Culture, Living in Beijing
Tags: beijing > holidays

Inputting Chinese characters

Posted on | July 21, 2011 | Comments Off

If you are learning Chinese then chances are that before too long you will want to write in Chinese using the computer. Assuming you are looking for a tool that allows you to write in Chinese as easily as it to write in roman script, then what you are looking for is a Chinese IME (Input Method Editor).

Google has is own IME for inputting Chinese characters http://google.com/intl/zh-CN/ime/pinyin/, and like most things Google it works well. Once installed it is easy to switch between writing in English and writing in Chinese.

The key selling point of any Chinese IME is its ability to provide the exact characters you want. For instance if you are writing about a policeman then you will want 被警察 (bèijǐngchá) rather than 北京茶.

The Google IME appears to claim that it will do a better job at getting to the characters you want quickly and accurately, and from my experience so far it seems to do a very good job of it. It can cope with writing long strings of characters and analyse the whole sentence to determine what characters make sense.

 

One drawback about the Google IME is that it the software itself is in Chinese– i.e. the terms and conditions, the settings etc are all in Chinese (so not so helpful if you are still a rookie language learner). You don’t need to alter the settings to make it work well, so this isn’t necessarily a problem but if you are of a nervous disposition, or just like to carefully read all your terms and conditions then maybe the Microsoft Pinyin IME would be a better alternative.

 

See also the previous blog post on wubi and pinyin.

 

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Category: Chinese characters, Language
Tags: Chinese character > chinese character input > tools > useful

Learning by language bloopers

Posted on | May 31, 2011 | Comments Off

  Today I was learning some useful cultural differences between China and the west.

  We were discussing that in China it is not the done thing to lick your fingers (and I understand that you don’t usually eat with your fingers either – so beware if you are planning a buffet for your Chinese friends!). In the West while it is maybe not very polite to lick your fingers, at least where I come from people don’t really have a problem with it. In order to explore cultural differences a bit further, and to get some more spoken Chinese practice, we then talked about other things that you are allowed or not allowed to lick. I suggested that:

在英国你可以舔邮局

In England you are allowed to lick post offices!

邮 yóu – is the word for post, and 局 jú is the word for office

I eventually got it right

 

在英国你可以舔邮票

Where again 邮 yóu means post, and 票 piào literally means ticket, so together, 邮票 means a stamp.

  Hopefully I haven’t left my teacher with visions of Westerners licking buildings! But this lesson will stick in my head partly because of the language mistake I made along the way…

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Category: Culture
Tags: chinese learning

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