Here are a few things I wish I had known about when I started to learn Chinese!

This is a BIG article! Or a small book – take your pick! Therefore it’s good to bookmark it (Ctrl + D or ⌘+D on a Mac) or download the PDF version of the article.

If you really want to explore these ideas then I recommend Benny Lewis’ Fluent in 3 Month’s package. His ideas are all focused around building up the confidence to just start talking as soon as possible, learning to embrace your mistakes and learning as fast as possible. Following this basic strategy he’s managed to get to conversational level in an impressive number of languages all whilst travelling around the world and running a blog that reaches over 100,000 people. Not bad!

He has a totally free email course which is available here.

If you want to go all in there’s also a premium package available here.

2.Work out Why you are Learning Chinese

Why learn Chinese? Specifically, why are you learning Chinese? Do you have a good reason?

Starting to learn Chinese without a good reason to do will likely end in failure. Take 5-10 minutes right now to work out why you want to learn Chinese. Write it down. Refine the reason to make it definite and attainable and then make sure you see your reason on a daily basis to help give you momentum.

My First Attempt

Learning Chinese is not as hard as you might think. However, it does take a long time to get to a level where you can communicate competently and even longer to get to anywhere near approaching fluency. It’s a long-haul language for sure, primarily because of the sheer number of characters that need to be learned.

The first time I tried to learn Chinese was when I was travelling and visited Hong Kong back when I was 18 – I picked up a textbook and gave a totally half-assed effort in trying to learn. Needless to say this attempt soon faltered. The reason, I know now, was that I had no great reason – no drive to learn –  Chinese at the time. I just thought it would be “cool,” which is nowhere near enough.

So What Are Your Reasons?

Because learning Chinese is a big project that will take a considerable amount of your time it’s important to know why you are learning Chinese.

This sounds simplistic – you want to learn Chinese so you can talk to Chinese people or perhaps do business in China in the future. China is about to become the world’s largest economy so learning Chinese just makes sense right?

These kind of general reasons sound fine but will not be sufficient to get you through the challenges that learning Chinese will present. You’re going to need something much more concrete and definite.

Write it Down

Take a moment away from your screen with a pen and paper and write down your reason for wanting to learn Chinese. It can be more than one but one good reason is far superior to 10 weak reasons.

The simple act of writing down your reason forces you to define your reasons much more clearly than if you keep the reason in your head. Translating your thoughts onto paper forces you to think about the particulars. Just externalizing the reason onto paper will therefore be a huge step in the right direction.

Now you’ve got the basic idea on paper take a step back and have a look at your reason. There are a couple of ways to make it better.

1. Make it Definite

First is to make it definite. Does your reason have a definable end point? A time at which you could potentially say “OK, I’ve done it”?

A non-definite reason is something like “I want to be able to talk to Chinese people”. A definite reason of the same ilk would be “I want to be able to talk to my in-laws parents in Chinese for 20 minutes without consulting a dictionary”.

One of Mark Zuckerberg’s reasons for learning Chinese was to be able to ask his girlfriend’s grandparents for permission to marry. That’s a definite reason.

Legitimate Reason. Good job!

2. Reasonable Time to Attainment

Second, the period of attainment. It’s important to have a reason that is attainable in the medium-term. Too short and you’ll achieve the target without having really got into Chinese properly.

An example of “too attainable” would be “learn to order food at the local Chinese restaurant”. Once you’ve learned “这个” you’ve pretty much achieved this one as you can just stab items in the menu and grunt “this one”. Job done!

Conversely, if you set a target like “be able to read the Four Classic Books of Chinese literature in classical script” when you’ve only just learned 你好 you’re in for a rough time.

That target will take a couple of years at least for most people, if not much longer. In the meantime you’ll likely run out of steam and give up on Chinese.

As such it’s a good idea to pick something reasonable that will take 6-12 months to achieve.

At this point you’ll be immersed in learning Chinese enough to want to keep going and can set some new targets now that you know a lot more about the language.

3. Keep Reminding Yourself

Third, make sure you are reminded of your reason for learning Chinese on a daily basis. Write your reason on paper and stick it on your wall. Set a phone reminder with your reason as the reminder text. Set your desktop wallpaper to an image containing your reason.

Whatever it takes make sure that you are reminded on a regular basis, do it.

This will also be helpful in the “dark times” when you are wondering why on earth you ever took up Chinese. Being able to see the reason written down in more rational times will help get you out of the rut and keep moving forward. 好好学习，天天向上！

To do now:

Starting to learn Chinese without a good reason to do so likely lead to failure. Take 5-10 minutes right now to work out why you want to learn Chinese. Write it down. Refine the reason to make it definite and attainable and then make sure you see your reason on a daily basis to help give you momentum.

3.Pronunciation and Pinyin

Update: Our free Sensible Pinyin Course is now available. First read through this article to see why Pinyin is so important and then head over to the Sensible Pinyin Course Introduction when you are ready! 

Before tackling Chinese characters make sure you have a firm grip on pinyin pronunciation and the tones. Trying to juggle pronunciation, tones AND characters all at the same time is a nightmare.

Make your first few weeks go a little smoother by nailing each skill individually and then combining them.

If you’ve started learning Chinese already you might know the horror of the first chapter of a Chinese textbook. The majority of textbooks start with a brief introduction to pronunciation and the tones and then immediately start throwing complete words and dialogues at you.

Before you can even say your first word – which will likely be 你好 – you need to understand pronunciation, tones and (depending on your book) struggle with the characters 你 and 好. Oh, and on top of that you’ve got two third tones in 你好. The third tone is already the most tricky but when you add two together we’ll have to learn some fun tone change rules too! And then the first phrase you’ll learn – 我很好 – three third tones! Surprise!

This is a lot to take in during your first ever lesson. Chinese is very front heavy in terms of difficult content. The traditional textbooks do not help to soften the blow. Some may introduce pinyin initials and finals gradually chapter by chapter but by then they’ve also been giving you words and dialogues every chapter! These first couple of weeks are rough!

Rest assured Chinese does actually get easier! However, getting through the beginner’s material of pronunciation, tones and working out the characters a bit is a struggle.

What to do?

One thing that I really wish I had done is to get a firm foundation in pronunciation. Then add the tones. With pronunciation and tones locked down it’s possible to start communicating and having a bit of fun with the language. Then, and only then, tackle the characters.

Trying to deal with pronunciation, tones and characters all at the same time is a nightmare. It’s certainly possible, and it’s the way we’ve all been learning for the most part. But it’s something that needs to be fixed to help ease the path towards learning Chinese.

First things first – Pinyin

First, get a good grasp of pinyin. There are a number of learning resources suggested in this article. In short, get yourself a pinyin chart and work on recognizing and being able to replicate all ~440 of the sounds. 440 isn’t too many because the vast majority are very simple and if you are an English speaker you already know the equivalent sounds. Instead it’ll be a small minority that will pose the majority of the difficulty.

Here’s a copy of the first three sheets from the Cheat Sheets from the Chinese Language Learning Pack – the PDF has a pinyin table, a pronunciation guide and a tone reference sheet. It’s available in Simplified and Traditional PDF. The full pack is available in the Sensible Chinese Language Learning Pack.

Here’s what it looks like:

Full  resolution version: Simplified and Traditional PDF.

Working with a teacher is the best way to do this. A couple of hours just drilling the pinyin table, getting corrections and improving your pronunciation is a great investment of your time and energy early on in learning Chinese. This should only take a few hours – I’m not advocating ignoring the tones and characters for weeks and weeks – this is just the first few hours of your Chinese education.

Then add the tones

Once you’ve got a grip on the basic pronunciation it is time to add the tones. The basic idea is to go through the pinyin table again (I know!) but adding the tone sounds until you can replicate them all. Again, this might take a couple of hours to really nail but it’s a wonderful investment.

After this it is time to move away from isolated sounds. This requires knowing a little about tone change rules (especially the 3rd tone) which is a stumbling block for early learners. This is just something you need to learn and practice I’m afraid. Thankfully there are only a couple of rules.

This blog article introduces the basics of Chinese tones and the idea of tone-pair drills.

It’s possible to do all of this in person with a teacher (or Chinese speaking friend) with a pinyin chart and then word lists. This is the best way to get human feedback. Without feedback there’s no way to correct your errors.

Once you have these skills nailed down you can begin to communicate with people. Communicating should be prioritized over the characters for now. Being able to have fun with the language by chatting to people, listening to music and other non-character based methods is important.

Learning the characters is a more solitary process for the most part. Just you and your paper or Spaced Repetition System, drilling and memorizing them. You’ll be spending a lot of time with the characters – don’t worry! – so enjoy your time without the characters for now and use this time to get a real feel for the language.

There are lots of other resources on this site about pronunciation and tones. For now work with a pinyin chart with a native speaker to get the basics down before worrying about all the small details.

4.Tackling the Tones

Chinese Tones are one of the most challenging aspects of Chinese. The good news is that with enough practice, like any skill, you’ll be able to master Chinese Tones.

Additionally, you already use tones in English, just in a very different way to in Chinese – we’ll look at how to transfer these existing tones to Chinese.

To really get a grip on Chinese requires spending some time up-front familiarizing yourself with the tones followed by practice specifically tailored to tone learning, especially tone-pair based practice.
A lot of textbooks cover the tones in the first couple of lessons and move on.

This hasty and inadequate approach is part of the reason Chinese is so hard to get a grip on in the early stages of learning. Getting a solid grasp on tones will make your life a lot easier in the long run.

Why are tones important?

Tones are important in Chinese because they alter meaning
at a character level. We do actually have tones in English (and other European languages) but they are used very differently to those in Chinese.
In English we generally use tone to alter meaning at a sentence level rather than the character/word level. We might call this “tone of voice” or “inflection” but the concept is basically the same.
Compare the two languages. In a ten character sentence in Chinese you have ten chances to mess up the tone and be misunderstood – in an Equivalent English sentence if you muck up the tone/inflection you may change the emphasis or the mood of the sentence but will probably still be understood.

But I will still be understood right?

You might hear the claim that even if you don’t nail the tones you’ll likely be understood because of the context of the sentence. People debate this point back and forth but I think do so misses the point.

For one, neglecting the tones is a bit irresponsible – it puts the burden of comprehension on the Chinese listener rather than on you as a speaker. That’s lazy and detrimental to your continued progress.

Even if you are understood, chances are people won’t want to speak toyou as much as if you are easy to understand. Your progress is dependent on continuing to communicate in Chinese as much as possible. If you are “that guy” who is really hard to understand people won’t engage in as many conversations and you’ll progress slower.

Second, the claim that the context of the sentence will save you depends on the assumption that you’ve got the rest of the sentence correct!

An incorrect tone may be understood by a native speaker if you get all the other tones around it correct. You need to get the rest of the context correct in the first place to save that failed tone!

Chances are, if you’ve followed the advice that tones aren’t that important, most of if not all of the other tones in the sentence will also be wrong! The context you were relying on won’t be there!

This reminds me a bit of the Morcambe & Wise comedy sketch where Eric Morcambe enthusiastically plays a Grieg piano concerto, getting everything horribly wrong and making ruining the whole orchestral performance.

When confronted about his dire performance he calmly states “I’m playing all the right notes—but not necessarily in the right order”.

Don’t be the Eric Morcambe of Chinese tones!

Tone equivalents in English

If you are reading this then chances are English is either your first language or you have learned English to a high level. These equivalencies occurs in other European languages but I’ll focus on English.

When we use tone in English we apply it on a phrase or sentence based level, rather than on an individual sound. The good news is that once we realize we use these tones already we can transport them over to Chinese and work on applying them in this new context – this is one way to get up and running with the tones quickly.

This great graphic by France Fu hits the nail on the head:

The first tone is like singing a musical note, high and level. Run a quick Do, Re, Mi and chances are that you’ll be using the first tone automatically.

The second tone (rising) is pronounced as a questioning tone that we would normally use at the end of a interrogative sentence in English. For example “Do you speak English?” That rise on “English” is equivalent to the second tone in Chinese.

The biggest difficulty here is divorcing that upward lilt from the concept of questioning. Some beginners will find that they inflect 吗 upwards at the end of sentence because they are so used to inflecting questions. So 你好吗 comes out as nǐhǎo má? This is a confusion of sentence level and character level tones – applying existing English intonation to Chinese.

The fourth tone (falling) is similar to the way we express annoyance in English. Like “What?” when we are angry, the tone falls sharply.
Another (highly specific!) instance is when we are whispering loudly to attract someone’s attention – like a stage whisper: “Hey, Kyle, hey, psst, hey Kyle, over here!” Imagine you are back in school and your friend is trying to get your attention, whispering but getting louder and louder and more insistent – that’s the fourth tone “stage whisper”!

Those of you paying attention may notice that I skipped the third tone. That’s because the third tone is … tricky.

For one, we don’t have an equivalent in English. Also, the traditional falling/rising conception of the third tone is a useful approximation but not quite accurate. Here is a much more detailed article about this particular problem.

Finally, the third tone is also very liable to be changed by the tone that follows it. This means that the sound of the third tone in isolation is very different how it is pronounced in words and sentences.

This means that learning the third tone will take up most of your time when learning Chinese. One piece of advice is not to worry too much about how the third tone sounds in isolation (the rising-falling conception).

Instead focus on how it sounds with other tones inside words. This is the idea behind tone-pairs.

Tone Pairs

We covered the basics of how to learn Chinese pronunciation and tones above. In short, get a pinyin chart or use a more sophisticated piece of software like Standard Mandarin or Pin Pin on iPhone/Android.

Once you’ve nailed the tones in isolation move as quickly as possible to tone-pair combinations. The vast majority of Chinese words are two characters so pairs of characters are the best method for practice.

When starting to learn Chinese I spent far too long focusing on sounds and tones in isolation. Because the vast majority of words in Chinese are two characters this practice was not as helpful as focusing on two-character words and tone pairs.

Lingomi’s blog has a useful table of tone pairs. This is taken from their website, which has lots of other useful tone and pronunciation information.

Source: Lingomi.com

These are all of the tone pairs possible in Chinese. You’ll never see a neutral tone preceding another tone which is the reason why this is not a 5 x 5 grid.

The basic idea behind tone-pair drills is to practice saying these phrases until your tongue (and brain) are trained. Because these are all of the possible tone pair combinations in Chinese, when you learn new vocabulary you’ll be able to hook the new pronunciation to the existing tone pair framework that you’ve been practicing.

For instance if you learn 学习 (xuéxí) it’s tone pattern is the same as 没来 （méilái) in this chart. If you know how the 2-2 pattern sounds and feels you’ll be able to transfer it from one word to another.

Pay particular attention to those that include the third tone due to the third tone change rules. For instance 3-3 你走 will be pronounced nízǒu rather than nǐzǒu.

Spending some time drilling the tone-pairs is much more worthwhile than practicing the tones in isolation. Tone-pair drills are not taught as often as they should be and are a very valuable method for achieving native-like pronunciation.

To practice tone pairs either use the chart above and repeat, repeat, repeat. Alternatively get your own vocabulary from a textbook or other source and order it by the 2 tones in each word to make lists of words to practice.

Finally, you might want to check out Sensible Chinese Pronunciation Package which contains a whole book of tone pair exercises. It’s available as part of the Sensible Chinese Language Learning Pack.

5.Getting your phone/computer set up for Chinese

A question that comes up a lot is how to type in Chinese.

I’m a big fan of Chinese typing as it allows you to start communicating in written Chinese really fast. Getting to a similar level of communicative ability using handwriting can take many months if not years.

The process of typing in Chinese generally surprises people – it is very simple. Typing in Chinese is generally called 打拼音 dǎ pīnyīn (to type pinyin).

The basic idea is that you simply type the pinyin of the characters you want to write and then select the characters as they pop on screen. This is much like predictive text in English, as you type a word like C-h-i- your phone might throw up the suggestion “Chinese”.

In Chinese if you simply type n-i-h-a-o your phone/computer will suggest 你好. In fact you can even take shortcuts and type n-h and get the same result.

The ease and speed improvement over written characters means that the vast, vast majority of written correspondence in China is typed. This makes perfect sense. Apart from note taking, signing your name, birthday cards and maybe shopping lists chances are you don’t hand-write in English all that much. And even if you do the volume of handwritten to typed is likely very low.

So – don’t be afraid of typing in Chinese. It’s how Chinese native speakers communicate via the written word and it’ll allow you to start communicating ASAP. In fact, immediately, today!

I want to cover two things:

1. How to Set up a Chinese keyboard

2. How to start using your new Chinese keyboard immediately

Setting up a Chinese keyboard

How you set up your keyboard depends on what device you are using. Also, these instructions will inevitably change over time as software updates. As such here are a couple of links to keyboard set up for the main devices. I’ll update these links as the software is updated.

iPhone (Official instructions) / iPhone Step by Step (Also applicable for iPad)

Android

Macintosh

Windows 10 / Windows 8 / Windows 7

How to start using your Chinese keyboard immediately

Now you have your nice new keyboard set up how to start using it?

If you are on iPhone/Android I’d recommend you download HelloTalk.

HelloTalk is totally FREE app for language exchange. Short text messages are used as the main form of communication making this a great place to start testing out your keyboard.

Most excitingly though you’ll get responses! This means you can start using the written Chinese language to actually communicate immediately. Very cool stuff indeed – not requiring weeks practicing your handwriting and having only a Chinese teacher reading your work.

Instead you can communicate with real people right now. This is how you can genuinely acquire a language fast. So don’t hang around – grab the app and you can send your first 你好 in minutes. Just type “nihao” and select the 你好 characters and you’ve started!

If you are on a PC/Mac then the best alternative right now is Lang-8. Lang-8 is another free language exchange platform that allows you to write and receive corrections from native speakers.

Go ahead and sign up and use your new keyboard to write your first entry – just introduce yourself using whatever Chinese you know. Copy a script from Lesson 1 of your textbook if that helps but adapt it to introduce yourself.

Whatever platform you use it’s important to start practicing with your Chinese keyboard. This will help you get a feel for how much you can type before the predictive ability of the software gives us.

In some cases you will be able to write whole sentences, in others you’ll only manage a couple of characters before having to select the correct meaning. Play around with the keyboard through actual usage and you’ll get a feel for it very quickly.

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6.Pattern based grammar

Chinese grammar is highly “pattern-based”. Learn these patterns and you’ll be able to communicate much faster than if you try to bolt together your own sentences.

 First things first – let’s deal with the idea that Chinese doesn’t have grammar. This is nonsense. Chinese does have grammar -otherwise you could put a word in a sentence in any order and be understood, which you cannot. Chinese grammar is however very different to the grammar of European languages.

 Chinese grammar does not include a lot of the elements we associate with the word “grammar” – namely verb conjugations, agreements, tenses and the like. We think of these as grammar because that’s what we spend the majority of time learning when we study a language like French or Spanish.

Source: Sheldoncomics.com

Chinese grammar instead relies on particles and structures that seem very foreign to us. The particle 了 is a good example. For one, it doesn’t really have a very good English translation because we don’t have anything like it. Broadly, it can be used as an aspectual particle and a modal particle.

Don’t know what a modal or aspectual particles is? This is the great thing about Chinese grammar: it doesn’t really matter. You can learn to use them by paying attention to their usage in patterns of speech and copying, as we’ll look at below.

If you are interested in grammar then AllSet Learning’s Chinese Grammar Wiki is your Shangri-La. It’s an amazing resource and well worth bookmarking.

The Chinese Sentence Magic Formula

The first (and most important) pattern to learn is that of the general Chinese sentence. There’s a relatively rigid structure that if you follow you won’t make errors.

Here it is:

Subject + When + How + Where + Negation + Auxiliary + Verb + Complement + Object

Follow that order – placing the different parts of the sentence into the right “place”- and you’ll be understood.

This is not the place to go into detail about what each of these is. This magic formula is adapted from this super useful and in-depth article over at East Asia Student. A lot more detail about what these components are is available there.

Supplemental Patterns

After the basic sentence pattern there are a number of supplemental patterns. These are the patterns you’ll find in the grammar section at the end of your textbook chapters. You know, those boring looking bits you tend to skip over?

The important thing is to realize that these patterns are very important. There are patterns in other foreign languages but they tend to be less set than in Chinese. If you learn the Chinese patterns and nail them then communicating becomes very simple – you simply replace parts of the pattern (subject, object, place, time etc.).

In European languages this would necessitate changes in verb conjugation and sometimes even in the structure of the sentence. This makes the patterns less useful, which may be why we tend to ignore them in Chinese as well! In Chinese it’s most often a matter of simply switching out a word which makes these set patterns very useful.

Want to know who is doing the action? Simply replace the subject with the word 谁 “who” and you are good to go – no further changes to the sentence required. This is what makes the patterns of Chinese grammar so powerful.

A lot of these patterns are used to cover things like conditionality (if this then that), emphasis and time concepts. These patterns take up the slack left by not having tenses (in the European sense) or conjugations. It’s just a different method to what we are used to.

You’ve probably seen some of these already: 是…的 for emphasis, 如果…就 for “if this then that”, 要是…就 for “if only this then that”, 但是…而且 for “not only this but that” etc.

How to Learn the Patterns

It’s hard to give a summary of all of these patterns so the best I can say at this time is to pay attention to them.

There are actually whole books based on learning these patterns. The best is probably Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student’s Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors. Another is Common Chinese Patterns 330.

The second has more patterns but they aren’t in any particular order. Therefore it’s difficult to tell which ones are worth learning and which to ignore. Therefore it’s better as  reference book. The first book has less content but goes through the patterns in a much more sensible textbook-like fashion.

Your current textbook is also a great source of this sentence patterns. If you already make flashcards for characters and vocabulary definitely think about adding flashcards for whole patterns. Go back through your old textbooks too and pick out the example sentences.

Practice switching out the elements (subject, object, where, when, how, verb etc.) of the pattern until you can quickly and rapidly makes these changes without having to think about it. The patterns will become a framework into which you can add meaning and be very easily understood.

Get the patterns mastered and your ability to communicate in Chinese will sky-rocket.

Extra Resources

Hacking Chinese’s very in-depth discussion with experts about how best to learn Chinese grammar.

A FluentU article on the basic Chinese sentence structure

AllSet Learning’s excellent Chinese Grammar Wiki 

Zhongwen Browser Plugin for Chrome/Firefox (now with built-in references to the Chinese Grammar Wiki)

7.Radicals

Every single character in Chinese, both Traditional and Simplified, is made up of around 200 small “pieces” that act very roughly like an alphabet. Learn these 200 pieces and you’ll be able to easily identify and remember meanings as well as get clues about how to pronounce the character.

Every character! Even this monster:  面 “biángbiáng” noodles.

Break it down

When first starting to learn Chinese each and every character looks utterly different.  The only similarity was that they all looked super complex and totally unlearn-able!

Thankfully this is not the case. There are in fact a limited number of “pieces” that make up each and every character in the Chinese language. Once you realize that the written language is made up of these pieces, and that there is a relatively limited number of these pieces the language becomes a lot more understandable and logical.

So what are these pieces? Let’s look at an example before getting stuck in detail.

One of the first words you will learn in Chinese is 你好　nǐhǎo meaning “hello”. This word is made up of two characters 你 (“you”) and 好 (“good”) – let’s just take the character 好.

好, as you may know, is made up of two piece – 女 and 子, “woman” and “child”. The 女 is a little bit squished up in 好 but it’s still 女.

好 is a simple example that a lot of people know so maybe this isn’t too impressive. What you may not realize though is that every single character in the Chinese language works this way and that there are only ~200 of these pieces in total.

Check out Wikipedia’s list of Radicals to find out what all of these pieces are and check the bottom of the article to find a lot more useful resources. 

Also download our Chinese Radicals Poster here (5MB PDF)

Example with 矿物

We could do this with any character in Chinese. Let’s go for a random yet relatively difficult one. Here’s a word I’ve picked at random: 矿物 (kuàngwù) which means “mineral”.  The traditional version is 礦物，which we’ll get to shortly, mainly to show the main differences between simplified and traditional.

The first character of 矿物 is 矿 kuàng which means “mine” or “ore”. 矿 has two pieces – one on the left and one one the right. This left-right structure is very very common in Chinese. We saw it above with 好. On the left of 矿 is 石 which means “stone” and one the left is 广 which means “wide”.

Neat! – an ORE MINE is a place with a WIDE expanse of STONE. That makes sense! So the character “mine” in Chinese is made up of the smaller pieces “stone” and “wide”.

The second character in 矿物 is 物 which generally means “thing”, especially a physical “thing”. On the left is 牛 which means “cow” and on the right is 勿 which means “must not”.

Huh. This one is a bit more tricky! COW + MUST NOT = physical THING.

Pardon the slight vulgarity (though vulgarity will help you remember!) : Hey! Guy! You MUST NOT BULL (cow) me! I want to see the real PHYSICAL THING before you get the cash!

So now we have 矿物 which means “mineral” and know that it is made up of 矿　”ore”/”mine” and 物 “physical thing”. But by realizing that every Chinese character has further pieces we can break down “ore”/”mine” into STONE + WIDE and “physical thing” into COW + MUST NOT.

This is not because I happened to choose a word that this works with. We can do this with every single character in the Chinese language.

And here’s the thing I really wish I knew : there are only around 200 of these “pieces” that make up every single character.

It’s almost like a (albeit very complicated) alphabet. I hesitate to use the word as it is misleading but I think still a useful metaphor – each character can be decomposed into these ~200 pieces much like every English word in made of the 26 letters. Don’t take this too far though – Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet!

Radicals vs. Components vs. Pieces

Sometimes you’ll hear about Chinese radicals – these are the 214 official “pieces” set by an old Chinese dictionary. However when we are decomposing characters the pieces we get are not always these radicals, sometimes it will just be a character (which is in turn made of radicals).

The difference is not that important and only argued by people who care too much about these kind of things (I’m one of them…). The main thing to know is that every single character can be broken into smaller pieces and that there are only around 200 of these small pieces.

When you realize this and start to learn and recognize some of these pieces suddenly Chinese characters are not so scary. Even characters you don’t know you’ll be able to look at and say ‘Oh, that has “water” and “mouth” in it. I don’t know what it is but I recognize those pieces at least.”

Suddenly Chinese becomes less foreign and terrifying. Once you really get a grasp of these pieces you can unlock some very powerful tools – namely being able to guess at the meaning and, drum-roll, being able to guess at how it is pronounced. This is the topic of the next article in this series though on phono-semantic characters.

Interested in Traditional characters? If not skip ahead to where we discuss How to Learn these Pieces.

What about Traditional Chinese characters?

Here’s an aside on the difference between Simplified and Traditional characters. If you are learning Traditional then this will show how we break down 礦物 as we did with the simplified 矿物 above. Even if you aren’t learning Traditional this should be useful.

First, the 物 in 礦物 in both Simplified and Traditional is exactly the same. This happens with a lot of characters, which makes the difference between the two scripts more manageable.

The difference appears in the 礦. In Traditional there is an extra “piece” under the 广. In Simplified the word for “wide” is simply 广. In Traditional it is 廣. Therefore in the character 礦 in Traditional script the “wide” piece is different.

We can still consider this one piece with the meaning wide, so we can still think of the character as STONE + WIDE.

The piece 广 in Traditional itself has two pieces. Aha! In Traditional 广 is composed of 广 “wide” and
黄 “yellow”. All that has happened when the Chinese script was simplified was that the 黄 piece was
removed.

Simplified characters are just Traditional characters with less pieces in order to make them easier to write. Vitally important though is the fact that the pieces, even though there may be less of them used in a Simplified character, are the same.

There are a few cases where the radicals themselves are different ( 讠 in Simplified vs. 言 in Traditional) but this is a very small number that can be learned in 5 minutes.

The vast majority of variance is instead from simply having less of the same pieces per character.

Therefore if you focus on learning the pieces that make up Chinese characters you can apply this knowledge to both Simplified and Traditional scripts and also more easily transition between the two. Chinese is giving you a break for once!

How to Learn

Basically as long as you are aware that all of the characters are made of these pieces you will start to notice them more and more. For now check out these tools and websites to find out more about the structure and process of Chinese characters.

Play around with HanziCraft to prove to yourself that all the characters can be broken down.

Read this series of great articles from Hacking Chinese on building a language toolkit

Check out Wikipedia’s list of Radicals

Get our Radical WallChart to print out and stick on your wall

8. Sound Meaning Characters

If you are a native English speaker learning a European language for the most part you can look at writing in that language and make a guess about how to read it out loud. If you are lucky it may be similar enough to actually know the meaning – like “le menu” in French. This gives us more of a fighting chance when learning languages with the Roman alphabet.

“Tourist Hotel” – Pfft! French is Easy! I’ve got this.

First day in China? Try to do this? Haha, sorry buddy you’re illiterate! In Chinese it at first seems like this is impossible.

Yay! We’ve arrived at the hotel! I think…

How can you look at a sign in the street and guess its meaning and how to say it? The surprising thing is that you can.

I was so excited when I realized this as it allowed me to order totally random items on menu by being able to (more or less!) sound out the name of the menu item without knowing the characters beforehand.

Introducing the Phono-Semantic Character

Above we looked at how characters are actually composed of smaller pieces that have their own meaning. One thing I held back on was the fact that these pieces can also give us a hint about how we say the character!

What is this black magic you ask? The secret: phono-semantic characters.

Unfortunately phono-semantic characters is an awful name, making a relatively simple concept sound really difficult. Phono-semantic is a fancy way of saying Sound-Meaning, which is exactly what these characters gives us. We get both a hint to the meaning of a character as well as how to pronounce it. I think that part of the reason more people don’t know about them is the rubbish name.

So these can’t be that frequent right? Otherwise you would have heard of them. Well actually 90-95% of characters in Chinese are phono-semantic in some way. They are the single largest set of character types.

The other types include characters that look like what they are (like 木 for tree and 火 for fire) and characters that represent concepts ( like 休 “to rest” looks like a man leaning against a tree). These are the type of characters that are first learned because they are really cool!

These type of characters also makes Chinese seem really easy – it’s all just pictures right!? These characters make up only around 5% of the language though, the rest being phono-semantic. Thankfully phono-semantic characters actually make the language easier than if it was all picture-based because it allows for a more logical structure.

This actually makes sense. As the language progressed and more complicated concepts were required it must have been really hard trying to think of ways to draw the concept or try to represent it symbolically. Drawing the sun, the moon or a woman is easy – drawing things like modesty, religion and justice is much harder.

Instead a character like 谦 “modest” is phono-semantic. On the left is the semantic part – in this case 讠meaning “speech” (or 言 in Traditional) which tells us that the character has something to do with speech. In this case it is probably because modesty is considered an aspect of speech – to talk
modestly.

On the right is 兼 which means “unite”/”combine”. We’re less interested in the meaning here though than we are with its pronunciation. 兼 is pronounced jiān. 谦 “modesty” is pronounced qiān. Both contain the same final -ian and are said with the same first tone. Nice!

This can’t be common right?

This is not a fluke. Don’t trustme? Head to HanziCraft, which is a neat character decomposition tool, and try it yourself. In fact, even if you do trust me go try it out anyway to get a feel for how extensive this is.

Stick in a few characters to see if the pronunciation of the pieces of a character resemble the whole character’s pronunciation. It could be a similarity in the initial (b-,p-,m-,f- etc.), in the final (-a, -i, -o, -iao etc.) or in the tone. If you are lucky it will be more than one of these.

The phonetic (sound) piece of a character gives us a hint. When we are very lucky we’ll get lots of help – 青 is an example of this. If it appears in a character (晴，情，请，清） then chances are that the pronunciation will be qing, though it won’t tell you the tone.

Other hints are less useful but still get you in the right kind of area. Instead of guessing between 440 initial/final combinations multiplied by 5 tones (including the neutral) which is about 2,200 possibilities you’ll suddenly be in the right ballpark.

Ordering food using phono-semantics

Getting into the ballpark is all you need, especially if you know any of the characters around the character that you don’t know. This is what will allow you to really get away with bluffing! Say you are trying to order something on a menu like 干煸豆角.

This is the first thing I ordered by guessing a character. In this case I already knew 干， 豆 and 角 but not the 煸 (biǎn). I did however know that 篇 (“chapter”) was said piān and 遍 (measure word for “occurrence”) was pronounced biàn.

Recognizing the 扁 allowed an educated guess that the second character in 干煸豆角 was -ian and probably b or a p. I had no idea of the character so used a first tone (incorrectly). By using the guessed character in the context of the rest of the word though I was understood immediately and the dish was successfully ordered.

This may seem like cheating or at least fudging it a bit. And it is! But it’s a way to begin communicating in Chinese as quickly as possible. Instead of just pointing at the menu and saying “one of those please” I was able to give it a shot and be understood.

I then asked the waitress to repeat the word back for me, which allowed me to get the tone correct for next time. Much better than checking in the dictionary and disrupting the flow of communication or, much worse, not communicating at all!

I could go through lists of characters that have these phono-semantic pieces. However, because these characters make up 95% of the language I’d basically be delivering you a dictionary. I suggest you go play around in a dictionary that has decomposition abilities (Pleco or YellowBridge) or do some decompositions on HanziCraft to prove to yourself that this really exists.

As you become more familiar with using the pieces that make up Chinese characters you’ll become better and better at guessing both meaning and pronunciation. A virtuous cycle!

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The post How to Learn Chinese appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

The key with listening is to be able to process the vocabulary you are learning at conversational speed.

It’s not enough to just learn vocabulary and hope to pick it out whilst listening to a native speaker. You need to be able to do this fast. As fast as the speaker is talking.

How to build Chinese listening speed?

Listening resources tend to come in two flavours: either from textbooks or from native materials (TV, radio, youtube etc.)

Textbook audio goes nice and slowly and you’ll have a script (in the book) to read along with. It’s a good place to start.

Our goal however is to work towards native materials as this is closest to how native speakers communicate.

However it’s often difficult to find material that helps us move from basic textbook dialogues to conversational spoken Chinese.

I want to give you a few suggestions about this sort of material – material that helps us move from textbooks to conversation.

In Chinese we have 3 main options:

1. A conversation-based audio course
2. Chinesepod
3. FluentU

1. Conversation-based audio courses

These audio course are very different to textbooks: They don’t rely on written scripts, instead allowing us to focus on the sound of the spoken language.

This is especially important with Chinese because of pinyin, which is misleadingly similar to English and causes confusion. At the early stages it is important to “tune the ear” to the sound of Chinese without pinyin interfering too much!

There are two courses in particular that I recommend because they don’t rely on written pinyin but instead focus on spoken Chinese.

These are the Pimsleur course and the Michel Thomas course.

drpimsleur

michelthomas

Both use spaced-repetition to reinforce what has already been taught. By following the courses you’ll be constantly reinforcing what you’ve already learned. This is super important for listening – by reinforcing certain words and phrases by repeated listening they’ll be easy to hear in native conversation later. Your brain will be up to speed with these elements of the language already, allowing you to focus on other parts of the sentence that you don’t understand.

By making some parts of listening instinctual and automatic you free up more brain space for working out the parts you don’t know. This is the key to effective listening – nail down the basics until they become automatic. 

Pimsleur and Michel Thomas use the same basic method of listen/repeat, reinforced with spaced-repetition. The main difference is that Michel Thomas uses a “virtual classroom” approach – you as the listener are in “class” with two other students who are learning at the same time.

These students are on the recording so you can hear their difficulties. It makes the process more human than Pimsleur but it also means that there is less Chinese spoken per minute of audio. This is not a huge problem unless you are listening multiple times to a recording – at this point it becomes annoying.

Pimsleur on the other hand feels a lot more rigorous but also drier. It’s less human than Michel Thomas but the trade-off is that you’ll hear a lot more Chinese.

There are other notable mentions like Glossika and Assimil. Glossika is much better at the intermediate stage of learning to polish up listening skills through massive audio input. Assimil (a French method, less seen in the US than in Europe) is normally great but the Mandarin Chinese book/audio is one of the weakest in the series. Therefore I can’t recommend it.

All of these products have free samples. Rather than discuss the relative merits it is better if you go ahead and listen to the introductory lessons of each and see which style you prefer. If you find Pimsleur too dry you’ll like Michel Thomas. If Michel Thomas has too much filler for you then you’ll like Pimsleur.

In terms of pricing Pimsleur can get expensive, especially if you wanted all four levels. You can get a little bit off by using the code SAVENOW (10% off mp3 version and 25% off the CD version) but Pimsleur is still expensive!

Therefore definitely check out your local library. You can use WorldCat to check all the local libraries around you for a copy. For some reason public libraries seem to be well stocked with Pimsleur products so it’s normally easy to find a copy.

Michel Thomas is much more affordable. The first level is around $15 and is money well-spent for listening skill reinforcement.

You can get sample lessons at these sites:
Michel Thomas
Pimsleur (need email for sample) or Soundcloud (no email required via Lingholic)

2. Chinesepod

As Chinese learners we are very lucky to have Chinesepod. I’ve learned a lot of languages and few have such a rich listening resource as Chinese does with Chinesepod.

In short Chinesepod has a huge library of several thousand podcasts, ranging from absolute beginner to advanced native levels.

Most of the podcasts have a central dialogue, much like a textbook, but the real value comes from the discussion and explanation around the dialogue. The native Chinese hosts will explain a little about the language and give more context about the dialogue’s contents. Around the intermediate level all of this additional discussion is carried out in Chinese, which means the whole podcast is conducted in Chinese rather than slipping back into English.

If you use your email to sign-up for a free account you can get access to 100 lessons straight away. You can do that here: https://sensiblechinese.com/recommends/chinesepod

However, if you don’t want to even sign up for a free account there are some unlocked free lessons I’ve found for you. Those will give you a taste of the style and quality of the content and hopefully convince you that it is worth signing up for the free 100 lessons.

The free (no email needed) lessons are here: https://sensiblechinese.com/recommends/chinesepodfree/

3. FluentU

FluentU is a new kid on the block compared to the other methods I’ve been talking about.

If you haven’t seen it yet FluentU is basically Youtube with foreign language videos that have been carefully subtitled and ordered by difficulty.

If you’ve ever tried to find a Chinese video you can watch on Youtube (or Youku, the Chinese version) you’ll know it’s frustrating to find the right level of difficulty to match your level.

Also, lots of videos on Youtube won’t have subtitles or perhaps will have subtitles in Traditional whilst you are learning Simplified (or vice-versa).

FluentU has gone ahead and made the process of finding video content for language learning much easier. There’s lots of free content and you can sign up here: FluentU
Working with video is actually a smart way to improve your listening. Video gives you more context than audio alone – you can see the facial expressions and non-verbal clues of the people speaking which gives you more information.

Is this cheating? Not really – a lot of the time you’ll be talking to actual people in Chinese and you’ll have these non-verbal clues to rely on. Unless you intend on only using your Chinese on the phone video is a better learning tool than audio.

Like Chinesepod, FluentU has a lot of beginner’s material to help you get started. Where it really gets interesting though is when it moves into native material.

By analyzing this native material and the words used FluentU have managed to categorize by difficulty, meaning you can ease yourself into native material much more gradually than if you simply turn on Chinese TV. This is invaluable.

Summing Up

These resources will give you enough material to take your listening from beginner to advanced native level.

In what order should you tackle the material? It’s really up to your preferences but I’ll give you my personal suggestion:

1. Michel Thomas Introduction ($15)
2. Pimsleur I (library)
3. Newbie level Chinesepod/Beginner FluentU (free)
4. Pimsleur II/III (library)
5. Continue with Chinesepod and/or FluentU (subscription)
6. Native material 

Working with audio from different sources may seem messy. Actually, it is messy. But that’s what you need to help reinforce your listening ability!

Talking with native speakers is messy. They’ll have different accents, different speeds. Sometimes they’ll have bad colds! They won’t always sound like crystal clear textbook recordings.

Getting used to variety of spoken language (by working with a whole bunch of different resources) will prepare you for this randomness.

Also, working from different methods at different points in your study will stop you getting bored. The very idea of sitting down and working from Pimsleur Level I to level III bores me. Being able to switch back and forward keeps your learning interesting, makes you more likely to stick at it and reach fluency.

What are your experiences with these or any other listening materials? What do you find difficult about Chinese listening? I’d love to hear in the comments! 

The post Chinese Listening Resources appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

In a language that uses an alphabet (like English, French or German) we can simply look up words in alphabetical order. We just need to now the order of the alphabet which, thankfully, in most European languages mirrors the a,b,c,d we learn in English.

In Chinese though we have to work out how to look up a character. This is a much trickier proposition. Indeed using a paper dictionary in Chinese is difficult.

The basic process requires knowing the main radical (“piece”) of the character and then counting the remaining strokes. For example 好 has the 女 radical + 3 additional strokes (the three strokes of 子). We’d then look in the 女 + 3 section of the dictionary to find 好.

Honestly, it’s a pain. In fact it is so challenging that Chinese school children have competition to see who can find characters the fastest in a dictionary! When something is tricky enough to become a competitive sport then it’s probably a beginner probably doesn’t want to concern themselves too much with!

Getting started in Chinese is hard enough. We already have new pronunciation, tones and the characters to deal with. Let’s not add to the early “hump” by torturing ourselves with a paper based dictionary.

Making life easier: Digital Dictionaries

Let’s make life a little easier and give ourselves more time to focus on communicating in Chinese rather than poring through a dictionary!

Electronic dictionaries make looking up Chinese much. much easier.

If you are using a computer to look up characters then the website mdbg.net and Pin Pin Dictionary are your friends. They are both free and will cover all of your desktop computer-based needs.

Pin Pin Dictionary

MDGB.net

However, ideally you need a dictionary that you can look up characters and words with on-the-fly. Hands-down the best mobile (iPhone and Android) dictionary is Pleco.

The basic Pleco dictionary is free and there are a number of upgrades to extend Pleco’s functionality. The upgrades seem expensive but when compared to the cost of a paper based dictionary (rather than comparing the $0.99 app pricing!) then the value is clearer.

Pleco is the only Chinese app I use on a daily basis and I can’t recommend it enough. I’m not the only one who raves about Pleco though. In this survey of the top Chinese language learning bloggers/websites Pleco comes out as a clear “must-have”: How to Learn Chinese: 50+ Top Bloggers tell You How

Once you have Pleco how do you actually go about looking up a character?

There are a couple of different situations here:

1. You know the English and want to find the Chinese

2. You know the Chinese pronunciation

3. You only know the Chinese character

English to Chinese

In the first case, where you know the English, looking up characters is easy. You simply type in the English and Pleco will spit out Chinese words and characters that match.

One problem here is that Chinese often has many characters for each English word. You’ll see this reduplication a lot in Chinese and it’s hard to tell which Chinese character you should be using. The dictionary will tell you all of the characters that translate to the English concept but this will include classical usage, literary usage, spoken usage, informal slang usage etc. etc. This makes it tricky to tell which characters to use.

You could look up the frequency (ie. how “common” the character is) in a tool like hanzicraft.com but honestly this is a little too much trouble and the results are often inaccurate. The best way to check which character to use is to…you guessed it…ask a native Chinese speaker!

Use HelloTalk or iTalki or some other free service to connect with a speaking partner. A native will be able to guide you to the correct characters in seconds.

Chinese pronunciation to character

The second case is quite simple. This is where you’ve heard a word in speech and want to look up and check which characters are being used in this particular word.

To do so you can search in Pleco using pinyin. If you heard 你好 nǐhǎo and wanted to check the characters you can simply type nihao into Pleco and you’ll get what you are looking for.

If you can give tone information then Pleco will be able to narrow down the character results. To do this tap the numbers at the top of the Pleco keyboard to add tone markers. nǐhǎo would therefore be typed as ni3hao3. This sort of search will remove all the other words that have different tones.

Chinese character only

This is the most interesting function of digital dictionaries. Let’s say you see a new item on a Chinese menu and don’t know its meaning or how to pronounce it. What do you do?

A few years ago, unless you were carrying around your paper dictionary, you’d be in trouble.

Now you can whip out Pleco and draw the character on screen using your finger tip.

To do so you need the handwriting recognizing module. At the time of writing the small version is free and the full-screen version is a paid add-on. You can also use your phone’s built in handwriting recognition if you have your phone set up for Chinese characters. Here’s an article about doing just that if you have not yet.

Even if you don’t know the stroke order and the character looks an absolute mess chances are Pleco will guess which character you mean. Pleco will present a number of different options that it thinks you are writing and you just pick out the matching character to get its dictionary entry.

One very nice (paid) addition is the OCR or optical character recognition. This turns your phone’s camera into a Chinese character reader. You capture the Chinese characters in your viewfinder and Pleco will automatically translate what it sees. It’s pretty magical and it’s better to see in action rather than read my explanation. Here’s an old official video from Pleco – the features are actually more robust and user friendly now so think this + 100% extra magic sauce:

Summing Up

You can save hours of your life by using a digital rather than a paper based Chinese dictionary. With those saved hours you can spend more time using and enjoying the Chinese language.

My earliest and most oft-repeated advice to early beginners is to download Pleco and learn how to use it ASAP. You’ll use it countless times over your Chinese learning journey and be thankful that you got it so early!

Image source: https://flic.kr/p/5YTZAG with added text-overlay. Share-a-like Creative Commons.

The post How to Use a Chinese Dictionary appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

Here’s a video to go along with the ideas in the article:

All three of these steps are totally free and will form the foundation of a great speaking practice habit.

These three steps are:

Each of these steps takes less than 2 minutes to complete. Just by completing these three small actions today you’ll have set yourself up for success in your spoken Chinese studies.

Let’s look at all three and flesh out your action plan.

Step 1: Commit to Speaking from Day 1

“Speaking from Day 1” is a concept I’m cribbing from Benny Lewis, the Irish Polyglot.

One of Benny’s critically important messages for language learners is to get away from your textbooks ASAP and start speaking to native speakers.

In fact it’s only when you start talking to native language speaker that you can really start to learn the language. Everything else is either a waste of time or at the very best vastly inefficient compared to talking with native speakers.

Following this logic the best time to start speaking Chinese with native speakers is… Day 1!

And if you have been studying and haven’t yet started speaking with Chinese native speakers then the best day to start speaking to them is… today! Not tomorrow, not some time next week and certainly not “after I’ve studied more Chinese”. The best time is right now.

It’s only by making mistakes and receiving correction and feedback that you can ever hope to improve. This is in fact the definition of learning –  learning is really a process of getting stuff wrong, receiving a correction and doing better next time.

So right now I want you to commit to the idea of speaking to native speakers.

If you want to get over the blocks and fear you might feel when thinking about this then Benny Lewis has a free email based course that is worth your time.

It’s a series of daily emails to bust through the fear and get you talking, no matter your level. You can get the free email course here.

I bet you feel resistance to the idea of speaking with a Chinese person in Chinese today. In your head it’ll be rationalized as “I’m not ready” or “I need to study more” or “I won’t be understood”.

These are ways of your brain rationalizing the fear of trying something new, something that will be difficult. But talking with Chinese people in Chinese is the only way you are ever going to learn Chinese. The sooner you get over the resistance and starting the talking the faster you will reach your language goals.

Action #1

So your action point right now is to make the simple decision: “I will speak Chinese today”.

If you aren’t ready for this (you are, you just don’t know it yet) then your action point today is to sign up to get the free email course mentioned above.

That course will bust straight through your resistance and get you to a place of confidence where you can declare that “I will speak Chinese today”. Then and only then should you move to Step 2.

Step 2: Download HelloTalk

Now that you’ve made the decision that you will speak Chinese today you need someone to speak to!

If you have Chinese friends or family around you good job! Start talking to them in Chinese today.

If you don’t (or even if you do!) grab your phone and download HelloTalk.

You can download the app and set up a free account in a few minutes and have at your fingertips thousands if not tens of thousands of Chinese speakers looking for language exchange.

To learn more about the functionality and best practices for HelloTalk check this review/guide over on I Will Teach You a Language.

Once you are set up with the app, start speaking! And no cheating here – remember we’ve pledged that we will be speaking; not typing which is much easier!

In the bottom right of the chat screen there’s a small icon of a microphone. Tap that to bring up the recording interface. Tap record, speak Chinese, tap send and that’s it – you’ve successfully spoken in Chinese to a Chinese native. Job done!

The time from reading this article to successfully sending a voice message to a Chinese native can be done in less than 5 minutes.

Do it now. 5 minutes from now you would have achieved your goal of speaking Chinese today.

Technology has made it possible to talk to people anywhere in the world instantly so the excuse of “oh, well there are no Chinese speakers in my area” is no longer allowed!

Action #2

So your action point is to download HelloTalk on your phone, set up an account and send your first message.

Step 3: Set up an iTalki account

HelloTalk is amazing for short informal chats you can fit in during your normal life. But you’ll also need to practice speaking for more extended period of time. This is where the wonderful iTalki comes in.

iTalki is similar to HelloTalk in that it gives you access to thousands of native Chinese speakers who want to talk to you.

It’s different to HelloTalk in because the normal way of communicating is via a Skype call. This means the interaction is longer than simple voice messages sent back and forth on HelloTalk.

This extended interaction is a better way to practice your spoken Chinese because in most cases you’ll be using Chinese in extended conversations rather than 30 second bursts. Always make sure your practice matches your language goals!

iTalki is totally free to use for finding conversation exchange partners and very cheap for finding professional teachers ($5-10/hour).

Once you’ve set up an account and a profile the friend and language exchange requests will come flooding in – just take some time to go through them and arrange some times to talk. These extended Skype sessions with language exchange partners are the fastest way to get practicing immediately and reach communicative fluency.

Action #3

Your action point right now is simply to head over to iTalki.com to set up an account.

If you are serious about learning spoken Chinese these are the three single most effective steps you can take today.

Each will take less than 5 minutes and all are totally free.

Therefore the excuses of “not enough time!” and “not enough money!” no longer work.

Taking these three steps will put you on the path to Chinese spoken fluency. So, what are you waiting for?

Action #1 : Decide that you will Speak Chinese today. If you keep making excuses get the free email course mentioned above and break the resistance.

Action #2: Download HelloTalk on your phone.

Action #3: Head over to iTalki.com to set up an account.

The post Speak Chinese: Step by Step appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

What is Backchaining and how does it help with our Chinese pronunciation?

Backchaining is a simple tool you can use to help pronounce difficult words, phrases and sentences. Despite it’s simplicity backchaining is highly effective.

The quickest way to explain backchaining is to show you an example. Let’s assume you are totally new to Chinese. We’ll use backchaining to show how we can start pronouncing Chinese words.

The post Backchaining : The best tool for difficult Chinese Pronuciation appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

What the heck is a Tone Pair?

Mandarin Tone Graph (Source: web.mit.edu)

You’ll see this chart at the start of every Chinese textbook. This one happens to be from a MIT course but you’ll see it in every single Chinese textbook.

Why is this useful?

How can I practice Tone Pair Drills?

You can practice this tone pair drills by:

• sitting next to a Chinese speaker (ideal!) who gives you corrections.
• via iTalki with a free language exchange or paid teacher.
• by recording yourself and comparing your tones with a native recording.

The main thing is that you don’t simply read the words to yourself – you need some form of feedback and correction to make sure you aren’t making mistakes. Tone pair drills are very effective at burning tone patterns into your brain. You need to make sure you are learning the correct sounding tone pairs – otherwise you’ll be very efficiently forming incorrect pronunciation patterns! So please please make sure you have some way to get corrections.

If you have time then schedule time with a Speaking Partner. This could be a professional teacher/tutor or perhaps a free language exchange partner. I’ve written an eBook about finding someone to talk to and it’s available for free here:

Finally if you want more words for your tone pair drills (as well as native speaker recordings in .mp3) I’ve actually written a whole exercise book based on these drills.

The post Tone Pair Drills: The Single Best Method for Learning Chinese Tones appeared first on Sensible Chinese.

While working at the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy (MMLA), I saw firsthand how students struggle to master one of the hardest languages in the world—and again, these same key questions helped students through this most difficult challenge. MMLA is a four-week long fully immersive summer academy where students must continue speaking the language they are learning throughout the entire day. This can be a frustrating and exhausting experience for students if they do not have the necessary linguistic tools to navigate the uncharted waters of a new language. However, when equipped with this core set of Chinese phrases and an eagerness to ask questions, I have found that students are able to handle any difficult situation, as well as gain a deeper understanding of the words and grammar they may be struggling with.

The first indispensable question is “Can you please speak a little slower?” 你可以说慢一点吗？ When just starting out in any language, it can be difficult to interpret and understand when a native speaker talks. One of the main reasons for this has roots in your brain, in your first year of life—after about 10 months, babies begins to specialize in hearing the sounds (called phonemes) of your mother tongue. For example, the difference between r and l in English sounds extremely similar to native Japanese speakers, but to Japanese babies these two sounds are different. This adaptation makes you more effective at learning your own language, but it makes interpreting foreign sounds when you’re older a challenge.

When you are first starting out learning Chinese, it is perfectly acceptable to ask speakers to slow down and even repeat themselves multiple times. Often native speakers are unaware of how fast they are speaking and their speed is just by force of habit. For example, you can say, “Can you repeat what you just said? I didn’t understand.” 没听清楚，你可以再说一遍吗？  Using this question is not a sign of linguistic weakness, but rather a sign of strength. You are showing that you can ask questions in your new language to eliminate confusion. It’s easy to gloss over and nod your head like you have understood what someone has said, but real language learning happens when you admit what you don’t know and ask whomever you are talking to repeat themselves.

The above mentioned Chinese phrases are essential at the beginner and intermediate levels because they allow you to hear the words slowly over again, which gives your brain time to process the many new sounds and linguistic patterns that you are learning.

The next two Chinese phrases are “What does X mean?” X 有什么意思？ and “How do you use X in a sentence?” 在句子里面怎么用 X ? These are vital questions to help you understand words that are unfamiliar, and they can put words in context so you can start using them in sentences like a native speaker. When you encounter a word that you don’t understand, the best strategy is to ask the meaning of the word and for an example of how to use it in a sentence: “Can you give me an example of X used in a sentence?” 用这个词在句子里面，可以给我一个例子吗? or “Can you give me an example?” 你可以举个例子给我说吗？

A great habit that effective language learners have is to look up every new word that they encounter. And what if you do not know how to spell the word? You can easily say, “How do you spell the word that you just said?” 怎么拼你刚才说的词？ or “Can you write that word down for me?” 你可以写下来你刚刚说的词吗？Training yourself to spell words that you hear is an important part of the language learning process, but sometimes there are words that you simply cannot spell or even hear correctly in a foreign language. When your friend or tutor writes down words that are unfamiliar to you, you can gradually build up the ability to spell new words that you hear. Another way to build up your spelling is to try to guess how to spell it on your phone or dictionary, and then show it to your friend to see if you spelled it right. Over time, you will notice what sounds are challenging for you, and you can specifically focus on training your ear to hear those sounds.

What if you encounter a word when you are reading or out on the street and you don’t know how to pronounce the word? You can say, “How do you say this word?” 这个词怎么说？ or “How do you pronounce this word?” 怎么念这个词？Clear pronunciation is important for reaching fluency, and these Chinese phrases will help you learn how to pronounce words like a native.

When you reach an upper-intermediate or advanced level, you will being to encounter many words that are similar or are very close in meaning but are used in a wide range of contexts. The two best ways of clarifying these differences are: 1.) to read more and 2.) to ask native speakers the difference between the words in question. For example, “What’s the difference between A and B?” A 跟 B 有什么差别？and “How do you use these two words in a sentence?” 在句子里面怎么用这两个词？ Now, native speakers are sometimes unable to explain the subtle differences between words. They might only be able to give you a general explanation—it’s second nature to them! However, focus on the examples that they provide because they can give you a sense of how to use the words like a local, which is the ultimate goal.

True fluency is being able to use the right words at the right time for the right situation. It is not impressive to know fancy words if you use them incorrectly or in the wrong situation. This is especially true for chengyu 成语. Often times, the English translation provided gives you the sense that these chengyu can be used exactly like their English counterpart. However, that is often not the case. There is usually a historical backstory to the chengyu, and it’s only used in specific cultural contexts that often get lost in translation. I’ve used my fair share of chengyu improperly only to have my friends laugh and proceed to educate me on how to use the chengyu in question properly.

Two important Chinese phrases for determining the appropriate context for a word are “Is this word only used in formal language (written language) or can you use it in any situation?  这个词只能用在书面语还是什么时候都可以用？and simply “Is this word spoken language or formal language?  这个词口语还是书面语？Throughout your journey studying Chinese, you will encounter many words that are in your textbook that you would NEVER use. They maybe outdated. It is important to identify common, current ways of speaking. Try to focus on learning the most frequently-used words, rather than the most complicated or complex words. “Is this word used often? Or does no one use this word?” 这个词常用吗？还是没有人用这个词？

If you spend the time now internalizing these questions, they will reap many benefits throughout your Chinese learning journey. Don’t underestimate the power of asking questions in Chinese. Having these core questions in your toolbox can help you overcome any difficulties you have in the language.

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