Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation: Practicing Tones in Isolation

Most Chinese words are two characters, not single characters. The exceptions are: i) pronouns like 我，你 ii) grammatical particles like 了，过，吗 and iii) words with classical Chinese origins like 马 and 笔. Because words not characters...

sensiblechineseJul 10 beginner, pronunciation Comments Disabled

Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation: The 3rd tone is NOT Falling Rising

Whenever you see the 3rd tone described in a textbook it will always be shown as a falling-rising tone. Unfortunately it is hardly ever pronounced this way. A much better conception of the third tone is a “low tone” but even that isn’t sufficient....

sensiblechineseJun 16 pronunciation 1 Comment

Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation: The slippery Chinese –r sound

R is a bit of slippery Chinese pronunciation. At the beginning of words it’s very similar to the English “r” but with a slight buzz but certainly not as strong as a rolled Spanish “r”. Instead it’s somewhere between the English “r” and...

sensiblechineseJun 15Comments Disabled

Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation – Zh/J, Ch/Q, Sh/X and why we learn these incorrectly

If you get the distinction between u and ü (explained previously in this article) then the distinction between Zh, Ch, Sh and J, Q, X becomes easy. Without understanding the distinction Chinese pronunciation can often seem insurmountable. This state...

sensiblechineseJun 061 Comment

Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation: The difference between U and Ü

Note: See the bottom of this article to learn how to get free human feedback on how good your u and ü are. Very useful! Boy oh boy this one is a doozy. That said, if you nail the difference between the u and ü sounds in Chinese then a whole bunch of...

sensiblechineseJun 05Comments Disabled

Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation : Pinyin is Not English

Don’t get me wrong, pinyin is a god-send for early Chinese language learning. You can use pinyin to get up and running and communicating in basic Chinese much faster than if you had to rely on characters. However, the fact that pinyin looks like English...

sensiblechineseJun 04 beginner, pronunciation, speaking, waichinese Comments Disabled

All Chinese characters are made up of the same 200 Chinese radicals!
This is part of our How to Learn Chinese. Check out the How to Learn Chinese series to get a lot more...
Common Chinese Characters you’ve been Reading Wrong!
Kyle@Sensible: This is a guest post by John Renfroe of Outlier Linguistics. They are working on a very...
Tone Pair Drills: The Single Best Method for Learning Chinese Tones
If I was allowed to only use one practice method to learn Mandarin Chinese tones it would be this: tone...
Sensible Character Learning System – Welcome!
Hi there! This page is now out of date. Check out the Chinese Character Learning System in all its glory...
Learning Chinese Characters | Different Methods
Other experts have come up with their own answers to the question of “how to learn Chinese characters”. There...