Choose your way to learn on Ninchanese.

On Ninchanese, you have access to a complete learning journey to take you to Chinese fluency. The learning content on that path is optimized for you, so you don’t have to worry about it and focus on learning Chinese. This way of learning is fantastic, but some of you told us they also wanted to learn their own vocabulary. They wanted to be able to take detours on their learning journey and learn vocabulary earlier or differently than in the courses.

That made a lot of sense, and that’s why we created the Nincha Decks! You are now more in control of what you are learning on Ninchanese. Follow the level-based learning path or create your own word lists – you decide.

Nincha Decks: Your Personalized Word Lists

What’s a Nincha deck? It’s a set of vocabulary, a list of words you can build and learn.

We created an easy way to make a clean list directly from the dictionary. The process is very simple and fast. You can make a deck in less than a minute! There are three short steps to create one: 

1. Go to your deck page, 
2. Create a new stage with a name and a description, 
3. Search for words in the dictionary, either in characters, English or pinyin, 

and boom, start making up your deck! 

You can create as many decks as you want, of up to 30 words, each with a minimum of 5 words.

Powered by SRS

Once your deck is built, you’ll learn words the same way you do in a vocabulary stage on Ninchanese. This means you’ll use the learning algorithm in the app, which is based on spaced repetition, to memorize them.

Then, the characters you’ve unlocked in your deck will be added to your global reviews. From time to time, you’ll need to review these words, just before you forget them. This ensures you keep everything fresh in your memory. With the SRS in Ninchanese, you make sure you never forget what you learn.

Like for a vocabulary stage, you can also do your reviews by deck only to focus your reviewing on that deck.

The Nincha Decks are clever

Do you know what’s cool? With the Nincha Decks, there is no risk of duplicates. So, for example, you can’t add a word twice to the same deck. There are also no risks of learning a new word more than once. If multiple decks contain the same words, you’ll only learn that word once. The same goes with words you’ve already learned on Ninchanese courses.

Don’t worry about managing words; our learning system will sort that out for you! Once you’ve unlocked a word, you won’t have to learn that word as a new word again, even if it’s in a different list or stage. You might have to review it, like all words, but that’s it!

In the same way, if a vocabulary stage in the Story Mode uses a word you’ve already learned in a deck, our system will know, and you won’t have to learn it again. Neat! 

What are the possibilities with this new feature?

Learn the Chinese vocabulary you want, when you want. You decide! What if you want to learn numbers in Chinese, but you are 5 or 6 stages away from that in Ninchanese? Before, you had to wait until you got to the Chinese numbers stage. With the Nincha Decks, you get to choose when it’s the right time for you to learn something.

Create your own word deck of Numbers and get learning! That’s what the decks are for.

Create decks of the words you learn in class 

What if you are in a Chinese class or have a tutor giving you new words to learn regularly? Quite frankly, from my personal experience, we were given 20 characters to learn every two days in class. It was pretty hard to follow my memorization of these characters. I mean, how did I know I knew these words? Besides, it was troublesome to have my book and pen ready to learn them. 

Now, with the Nincha Decks, you can easily save the words you see in class. Better yet, you can review them efficiently! A purrfect way to learn words in priority. Plus, you’ll be sure to always have the Decks in your pocket, and you’ll benefit from the memorization algorithm in Ninchanese to learn them. With the Nincha Decks, remembering the words you see in class will be easy! 

A super handy tool for you learners

Not only can you now create your own word decks, but you can also now create decks with different purposes! Imagine the possibilities. I can think of many ways to use them. For instance, if some characters have trouble sticking in your memory. Now, you can copy them in a deck and strongly focus on these characters. A deck could also be composed of 20 characters you want to focus on, like question words. Or the interaction words or expressions you’d like to use when speaking.

Focus on the words you want

What if you want to learn a very specific/professional vocabulary? 

There are not many courses available for very specific vocabulary needs in Chinese or costly ones. I was discussing that with someone working in health insurance yesterday. 

With the Nincha Decks, you can now create whatever word list you find useful! Problem solved. Focus on industry-specific vocabulary as much as you want! Everyone with their particular needs will be able to use Ninchanese completely. We help you reach fluency in Chinese with our courses, and you also have a way to specialize your Chinese.

Save unknown characters you encounter

We like to browse the Internet in Chinese, read books or manhua, watch videos in Chinese, and always encounter new characters we want to learn. Now with the Nincha decks, you’ll be able to add them to a deck and learn them. Then, next time you meet that word in a text or a video, you’ll understand it without difficulty. Isn’t that great?

Maybe you’ll pick up a word repeatedly said in a Chinese Drama and want to learn it. Perhaps you saw one of our tweets and wanted to learn that word, for example, cryptocurrency. Now you can! Just start a new deck and add words to it as you encounter them. Then, use the handy look-up tool to find any unknown word in the dictionary and add it to your deck.

Track your Progress

You can easily follow your progress learning words in a deck. As you unlock words in the deck, you’ll see your completion percentage. Then, you can see your memory level for each character on the deck page. The yellow stars tell you how well you know a word.

Manage your decks and words

Once the deck is created, you can change the title and the description of your deck. You can also manage the words in a deck and remove those you don’t want to learn anymore. You can also add more words to a deck whenever you want. You can add up to 30 words to a single deck. And lastly, if you don’t want a deck anymore, you can delete it.

Some other new updates:

The Nincha Decks are the biggest chunk of this update, but there are also a couple of other improvements.

• You can now skip the story if you want. That’s very nice when you reset your account to restart your learning and don’t want to re-read the stories again.
• The sound for some words was improved, and we improved how we handled the sound behind the scenes.
• The dictionary’s search results have gotten better. The search algorithm has been improved to see more characters shown in better order.

When learning a language, there are lots of content we want to access but can’t yet, and there’s no certain path for that. Having the Nincha deck along with your learning will directly benefit your learning.

We know Ninchanese has helped many Nincha members make meowsome progress in their Chinese. We hope these new features we discussed together will help you learn Chinese even better.

Many of you had been asking for this new feature so enjoy! And if you’re not a Premium member yet, upgrade now and help us bring even more features to Ninchanese.

We hope you enjoy these updates! We love to hear your thoughts and will be happy to discuss them by email.

The post Update on Ninchanese: Nincha Decks – Even More Personalized Learning! appeared first on Ninchanese.

If I asked you to think about words that had the character dragon in them in Chinese, you’d probably think of words like a dragon boat, a dragon fruit, and you’d be purrfectly right. But today, we’re here to talk about unusual dragon words. Words in Chinese you’ll be surprised to learn there’s a dragon in! So without further ado, here are unexpected words that contain the character dragon in

The following Chinese words, quite surprisingly, all have dragons in them. Which ones did you expect the least?

Dragon in Chinese phrase #1: Faucet

水龙头

shuǐ lóng tóu

faucet

literally: a  water dragon head

The name for faucet in Chinese is cool. It’s composed of:

水 shuǐ water
龙 lóng dragon
头 tóu head

What’s a Water-Dragon-head? Why, a “faucet” or a “tap”, of course! A little underwhelming, perhaps? Wait till you see this.

Sigh, if only all our faucets could look as dragonny as this one. Source

That’s why 水龙头 is our first word with a dragon in it!

Dragon word in Chinese #2: Boss

龙头

lóng tóu

Bicycle handlebar; boss

literally: a dragon head

In the same (water) vein, you have 龙头 which means a bicycle handlebar (as well as a faucet).
Interestingly, it also means “boss” or “chief”. That one’s easier to picture as a dragon head.

Dragon in Chinese language word #3: 龙卷 Tornado

龙卷

lóng juǎn

tornado

literally: a dragon roll

Literally dragon roll (doesn’t that make you hungry?), 龙卷 is how the Chinese say “Tornado” in their language. 龙卷 also means “Twister”.

No wonder Chinese CCTV called these nine tornados dragons.

Dragon in Mandarin word # 4: Tarragon

龙嵩

lóng sōng

tarragon

literally: dragon + lofty

Even the English name looks like it considered being a dragon, and then gave up halfway, only to come up with tarragon instead.
So way to go, the Chinese language, for being brave enough to include the word dragon in the name for tarragon in Chinese.
Yes, 龙嵩 is how to say tarragon in Chinese. You can also use 龙蒿 lóng hāo. Same dragon, same meaning.

Chinese Dragon word # 5: Lobster

龙虾

lóng xiā

lobster

literally: a dragon shrimp

Ah, the dragons of shrimp. We’re talking about lobsters, of course! Can you picture it? They are much bigger and badder than puny little shrimps!

其实我是龙
Actually, I’m a dragon

So, 龙虾 is how you say lobster in Chinese.

Two other fish and shellfish also have a 龙 in their name.

小龙虾, xiǎo lóng xiā, crayfish
The delicious, soft-water crayfish gets the name: the small dragon shrimp. They’re so yummy we can’t complain.

龙利, lóng lì, sole
Flat like a dragon? Like a dragon took a trip to 2D and became a flatfish.

Dragon word in Chinese # 6: Decrepit, senile

龙钟

lóng zhōng

senile

literally: dragon clock; dragon bell

Okay, this one isn’t so nice, and as fierce dragon lovers and protectors, we protest. But a word’s a word, so 龙钟 is a way to say someone is senile in Chinese.

How did this word come to mean “decrepit, senile”? That’s a question even the Chinese ask themselves.
Perhaps because as we age, we start to resemble a bell with droopy dragon ears that can’t hear much anything? Care to venture a guess? Let us know in the comments.

Dragon word in Mandarin #7: Queue

人龙

rén lóng

a queue of people

literally: a people dragon

When picturing a long line of people, you might think more of a snake in English. But the Chinese are all about dragons, and we love them for that.
So when you want to talk in Chinese about a large group of people waiting in line, say, in front of the post office, you can say 人龙. That literally means people dragon, and when you see the length of some queues, you have no trouble imagining why.
人龙 is a queue of people in Chinese.

Dragon in Chinese word #8: 恐龙 Dinosaur

恐龙

kǒng lóng

dinosaur

literally: fear dragon

Dinosaurs. Huge, powerful, mysterious creatures that roamed the Earth in ancient times called something close to dragons? Mm, that works for me. Fear dragons!

Is it a dragon? A dinosaur? A dragonosaur! — Concept art by Saleh Ahmad

Fun fact: most dinosaur names in Chinese have a dragon in them!

For example:
A velociraptor in Chinese is 伶盗龙, líng dào lóng.

A triceratops in Chinese is 三角龙, sān jiǎo lóng, a 3 horn dragon. Nice!

Bonus: 4 Chinese Loanwords that also have a dragon in them

Borrowed for its beautiful “long” sound, the word Dragon in Chinese is also found in these words imported from other languages:

Dragon loanword #1: Nylon

尼龙

 ní lóng

nylon (loanword)

What do you need to say nylon in Chinese? The Chinese character for a dragon, of course! Nylon in Chinese is 尼龙, ní lóng.

Dragon loanword #2: Salon

沙龙

shā lóng

salon (phonetic loanword)

Similarly, the Chinese conjured up the characters “sand” and “dragon”, for their phonetic pronunciation of the word “salon”.
Salon in Chinese is 沙龙, shā lóng.

Dragon loanword #3: Macaron

马卡龙

mǎ kǎ lóng

macaron (phonetic loanword)

Macarons can either be, depending on your viewpoint, either sweet French delicacies or yummy coconut treats. In either case, they’re sugary bliss. So much so that the Chinese decided you needed:
A horse (马), your card (卡), and a dragon (龙) to get some quickly enough. Just kidding, these characters were all borrowed for their sounds, of course, to form the word “macaron”. 马卡龙, mǎ kǎ lóng, is a macaron in Chinese.

Dragon loanword #4: Upsilon (greek letter Yu)

宇普西龙

yǔ pǔ xī lóng

Upsilon (phonetic loanword)

Lastly, Upsilon, the goatlike greek letter Yu was another excellent candidate for the character 龙. 龙 does indeed sound quite close to “Lon”.
宇普西龙, yǔ pǔ xī lóng is Upsilon in Chinese.

What did you think of these Chinese words? Unexpected to find dragons in them, right? Bet you wouldn’t have guessed all these words had a dragon in them! It shows how important dragons are in Chinese “animal culture”. So much so that they created lots of words with the Chinese character for dragon in them (128 in fact!).

Liked this article? Then you’re going to love this meowsome article on Five Words you didn’t expect to find a Cat in! Yeah, at Ninchanese, we’re all about cats, dragons, and learning Chinese.

The Nincha Team

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The post 8 Unexpected Words that Contain a Dragon in Chinese appeared first on Ninchanese.