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I’m going to take an exam

I entered myself for the HSK1 exam in September, so I have two months to prepare. The photo shows my notes that I made today. The numbers to the left are those assigned by Heisig, on whose book I am relying to learn individual characters. HSK1 requires you to know 150 words. Most are compounds,…

Chinese is back on.

I know it’s been a long break. The last ten years have been like this. I get thoroughly stuck into Chinese, then something happens, usually work, and I could be away for two years. Then I come back to it and start again. Each time I re-start, it is quicker to catch up and then…

Accidentally setting one’s clothes on fire.

Good evening, everyone. I’ve just been reading an alarming news story over at The Chairman’s Bao, which has graded Chinese-language articles for learners of Hanyu. It is a story about a Miss Tang, an internet celebrity who was badly burned at a coffee shop. It is graded at Level 3 and I am most definitely…

A thick mist rises over the lake.

Hi everyone! Today’s character is 湖 hú, meaning lake. If you follow Heisig, it is character 156. Those three dots on the left hand side are three drops of water. It is the water radical, 水 shuǐ, in compressed or abbreviated form 氵 I have two versions of today’s sentence. The first is from Pleco, is longer and…

The wind howled through the trees.

Character of the day is hǒu. If you use Heisig, it is character 99. It means ‘roar’. You can make a couple of words with this character, distinguishing between roar as a verb and as a noun. Handy. Even if you are a beginner at Chinese, like me, you will probably recognise jiào because it’s one of…

Ninchanese

I’ve been looking for something new to stimulate my Chinese learning and this evening finds me avidly playing Ninchanese, a highly gamified application which you can use on the web or as an Android app. It caught my attention because someone mentioned that it teaches grammar, which not many apps do. This is important to…

The whole thing was a nightmare.

Character of the day is rú. If you use Heisig, it is character 104. It has a few meanings but the one we are concerned with today is the verb “be like” or “be similar to”. Here is today’s sentence. It’s interesting to note that 一切 means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or, in this case, ‘the whole thing’. We…

This gentleman will pay for everything.

I’m constantly looking for ways to refresh and consolidate my knowledge of the Chinese characters I’ve learned from Heisig. I nominally know 250 but I am prone to forgetting them if I don’t study and I need to connect them to other aspects of Mandarin, so from now on I’m having character of the day…

Choosing a Chinese name

Choosing a Chinese name is an elaborate business, as I discovered when I went down a rabbit hole of online advice and resources this evening. These are what I take to be some general rules: Choose one syllable to serve as your family name. Then you have an upper limit of two syllables for your…

Learning resources, 2018

For me, studying Chinese has things in common with exercise. When you are in a routine of doing it every day, it is relatively easy to keep on doing it. The easiest time to go to the gym is when you just went yesterday. If you lapse and let the hours in your day fill…