When learning to pronounce tones in Chinese, it makes sense to focus on words rather than single syllables. Most words in Chinese are disyllabic and since practising these will also include to tone... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This article describes the basics of way to teach tones that is different from the traditional way mainly in that the third tone is no longer described as a falling-rising tone (since that is rarel... Read more.

sinosplice.com

You don't have to go abroad to learn Chinese. The main difference between staying at home and going abroad is that it requires less effort to learn once you're there (although it still requires qui... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

There are many ways of practising writing Chinese characters and they all have their pros and cons. In this article, I discuss seven different ways of practising and what advantages and disadvantag... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Is it easy to learn to read Chinese? ShaoLan, among others, claims that it is. I don't agree, and in this article I discuss some common trends among people who try to portray Chinese as being easy.... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Good pronunciation matters, whether you like it or not. In general, students (and teachers) tend to stop caring about pronunciation much earlier than they should. You don't need to aim for native-l... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Just you try designing 13,000-plus intricate character shapes that all have to balance one another. Read more.

qz.com

My article about various common problems students have with Pinyin. These problems mostly exist because people read Pinyin as if it were a phonetic alphabet instead of a transcription system. Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This article is an excellent start for anyone who wants to know more about the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan. In general, it's very similar to the Chinese spoken on the Mainland and most Taiwanese peop... Read more.

en.wikipedia.org

This is a simple and straightforward explanation of Chinese phonetics. I recommend it because it's not very complicated and (mostly) correct. I will try to write something myself later, but in the ... Read more.

zein.se

Explode Chinese characters into their building blocks; visualize and remember how they are formed. Read more.

characterpop.com

Evaluating pronunciation needn't be hard, but many methods commonly used by teachers are deeply flawed, resulting in inaccurate error analysis. If we want to improve, we need to be clear about what... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

John Pasden has over ten years of experience teaching Chinese language, and a particular awareness of phonetic difficulties. This page gathers a number of posts on his website sinosplice about pron... Read more.

sinosplice.com

This newly launched site offers basic information about pronunciation, mostly things that should be in all beginner courses and textbooks but seldom are. Currently, the content is fairly limited, b... Read more.

resources.allsetlearning.com

Duanmu San's "The Phonology of Standard Chinese" is by far the best introduction to Mandarin phonology that I'm aware of. It's mostly useful for people who like phonology or are already at an advan... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This article discusses the language power struggle that most learners are very familiar with. "Given a conscious choice between a number of languages to use for interaction, speakers will naturally... Read more.

sinosplice.com

Forming language learning habits is a key ingredient in any successful recipe for mastering Chinese. This makes sure that we learn regularly and that it becomes a natural part of our lives, rather ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Mastering Chinese characters, whether you find them enchantingly beautiful or overwhelmingly complex, is essential for literacy in Chinese. Outlier Linguistics will help you understand how the Chin... Read more.

outlier-linguistics.com

This is a unique resource that shows how most common speech sounds are actually produced. Most other resources use animations and diagrams, but this is the frist I see which show actual MRI scans. ... Read more.

seeingspeech.ac.uk

Follow this Twitter account to get a new animated Chinese Idiom (Chengyu) in your Twitter feed every day. Characters are Simplified Chinese, pronunciation is Pinyin (coloring is [Hanping's](http://... Read more.

twitter.com

Have you ever wondered what a small 二 or weird symbols that look like 〻 or 々 mean in Chinese handwriting? These aren't characters you normally find in printed books, but they do exist in handwritin... Read more.

en.wikipedia.org

What's a dialect? What's a language? Are Mandarin, Cantonese and Wu different languages or are they dialects of the same language. The answer is that there is no answer, it depends. This is a short... Read more.

sinoglot.com