One of the most famous poems written in Classical Chinese is The “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den”. It’s renowned for being composed of only one sound. One sound! The sound “shi”.

Is it a poem or a tongue-twister?

On the one hand, this text deserves to be called a poem. It still manages to use different characters and mean something!

On the other hand, as a one-sound poem, with lots of different tones, it also interestingly becomes quite the tongue twister.

When you’re learning Chinese, tongue twisters are always a challenge and a great way to practice your tones, so let’s explore this one!

Facts about the “Shi shi Shi” poem

• Often informally referred to as the “shi shi shi” poem, the poem’s full name in English is: “The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den“.
• This poem’s name, in Chinese characters, is 施氏食獅史. In Pinyin, that would be “Shī shì shí shī shǐ.”
• This text was composed by the Chinese-American linguist, scholar, and poet Yuen Ren Chao in the 1930s. Mr. Chao also significantly contributed to the modern study of Chinese grammar.
• The sound “shi” is the only sound in the poem. You find it 94 times (in some versions, there are only 92). Only the tones differ. That’s right!
• Mr. Chao wrote this poem as a linguistic demonstration.
• Therefore, the poem shows that writing a one-syllable text that means something is possible.
• That’s because Chinese is a tonal language.  So, the same syllable can have a different tone and correspond to a different character. Pawwsitively fascinating.

A one-sound poem that makes sense… in writing

This short narrative poem is written in Classical Chinese.

What is Classical Chinese? Also called Literary Chinese, or 古文, Classical Chinese is the written form of Old Chinese. It was used for literature and all formal texts, from the 5th century BC to the 2nd century AD, end of the Han Dynasty. It actually continued being used as a literary language, for all formal writings, until the 20th century! 

Since Classical Chinese is a written language, this poem makes a lot of sense in writing.

That’s because different Chinese characters compose it. More importantly, you have no trouble getting its meaning when you read it. That is if you’re somewhat familiar with Classical Chinese, which is a lot more condensed than modern Chinese.

Why did its composer write this poem as a “one sound poem”?

The poet behind this clever text wanted to make a linguistic demonstration. So, to create a fun tongue-twister of a poem with just one sound, he used the fact the Chinese language is full of homophones (i.e., words that sound the same but mean different things). When read in modern Mandarin, every syllable sounds the same: “shi”.

In other words: if you read this poem out loud, orally, it becomes challenging to understand.

In the same vein, if you try to read it in pinyin, you won’t be able to understand it either. That’s why it’s important to learn Chinese characters

Read the whole one-sound poem in Mandarin Chinese

Stone lions – Photo by Michael Myers.

《施氏食狮史》
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。

氏时时适市视狮。

十时，适十狮适市。

是时，适施氏适市。

氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。

氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。

石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。

食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。

试释是事。

As this poem is written in Classical Chinese, it’s good to know that it was composed using single characters rather than the double characters that are more commonly found in modern Chinese.

Let’s see the poem in pinyin now, just for fun.

Read the one-sound poem in pinyin

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.

Shì shì shì shì.

That made a lot of sense, right? I told you it was going to be fun!

What does this poem mean?

Okay, now, it’s time to prove that this one-sound poem actually means something! Here’s the translation of the Poem in English.

« The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict and had resolved to eat ten lions.

He often went to the market to look for lions.

At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.

At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.

He saw those ten lions and, using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.

He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.

The stone den was damp. So he asked his servants to wipe it.

After wiping the stone den, he tried to eat those ten lions.

When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were, in fact, ten stone lion corpses.

Try to explain this matter.

See? This poem is full of meaning! The poor poet thought he would eat, only to find stones instead!

Hear it read out loud

Ready to test yourself? Here’s what you can do:
1. Practice your Chinese pronunciation with the many dialogues and speaking stages on Ninchanese
2. Try reading this one-sound poem aloud and see how good your tones are!

Have fun, little dragons!

And one more thing…

If you want to continue learning Chinese with authentic and entertaining content, then you’ll love Ninchanese.

With Ninchanese, you get a complete method to learn Chinese, which has you speaking, reading, writing, and more in Chinese. What’s more, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, there’s content your level on Ninchanese and plenty more!

Start using Ninchanese on the web, with your computer or tablet, or on your phone with the Android app.

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post “The Lion-Eating Poet”: the meowsome one-sound poem you can only read appeared first on Ninchanese.

What’s Wordle?

First things first, maybe you’re not familiar with Wordle yet, and that’s 100% okay.  If you are, keep scrolling, you’ll learn about Chinese Wordle faster that way.

Wordle is an English-language word game, where you need to guess a word.

Your clues: it’s a 5 letter word. You get 6 tries.

• Each try, you’re shown:
• GREEN: which letters are correct.
• YELLOW: which letters are in the word, but not in the right spot.
• GRAY: which of the letters you entered are NOT in the word you’re trying to find.

Then you get to try again.
If you run out of tries before having guessed the word, that’s it. You’re done.

And if you find the word before that, congrats!

Guessed the word, with one try to go! Woot

What makes Wordle fun and super popular is the fact you only get one word per day.
And everyone gets the same word to guess.
Ah, competition. The drive to do better than your counterparts.  It never gets old.

Anyways! As a Chinese language learner, perhaps you too were wondering: how can I play Wordle but in Chinese? So, we went searching for a Chinese version of Wordle. And we found one here!

Why play Wordle in Chinese?

Why go looking for a Chinese Wordle?  Well, why not?

First of all, It’s great language practice.
Trying to play a game in your target language, i.e. the langue you’re learning, is a wonderful idea. It makes you actually use the language you’re learning, which is an excellent way to strengthen your learning and maximize retention.

Second, it’s fun to try to guess things in Chinese. And to play in Chinese!

How do you play Wordle with Chinese Characters?

Before you start wondering how it would work with the thousands of Chinese characters out there, let’s set something straight. Pinyin is key here.  Just like in English, pinyin offers a set number of letters, which makes the entire game, well, easily playable.

You’re not guessing Chinese Character Strokes. You play Chinese Wordle with pinyin. UPDATE: for a Chinese character based Wordle, scroll down. 

How Wordle in Chinese works

Now that’s out of the way, how does Wordle in Chinese work?

Same basic principles:

• One game per day
• 6 tries
• GREEN for letters you get right (该字母在正确的位置)
• ORANGE for almost right ((该字母不在正确的位置)
• GREY for those that aren’t in what you’re trying to guess. (当前成语的拼音中没有该字母).
• Everyone gets the same (UPDATE: or so we thought. In the Ninchanese Discord Server, we discovered you don’t always get the same. It changes per region, perhaps?)

The rules for Chinese Wordle are the same

Speaking of which, perhaps you’re wondering: What do you guess? Is it a word like in English Wordle? Nope!

Guess the 成语

In Chinese Worlde, you’re trying to guess … 成语 Chengyus!
That’s right, 4 character Chinese idioms and sayings.

In fact, Wordle in Chinese is called 拼音猜成语 – which literally means Pinyin Guess Chengyu. It’s made by Limboy. Thanks for making this fun puzzle game!

So, in 拼音猜成语 (aka Chinese Wordle), you have to guess the pinyin for 4 Chinese characters, which compose the chengyu. The number of letters for each Chinese character ranges from 2 to 5.  It’s no easy feat, but that’s what makes it fun!

Knowing which letters aren’t in the chengyu and which you haven’t tried yet is very helpful

Gaaah, so close!

The goal of the puzzle game is to get it right before you run of tries!  In both cases, whether you win or lose, you get to see the chengyu in Chinese characters at the end.

Success!

What else is cool about this game?

It’s good pinyin practice. You work on how familiar you are with Chinese sounds, think about syllables in Chinese, common word endings, and common words. This game makes you think about the words you know and recall pinyin sounds you’ve heard before. Excellent training.

Fun fact: if you try to enter a sound that doesn’t exist in Chinese, you get told: this sound doesn’t exist in Chinese.

In addition, all the instructions and comments you get are in Chinese, which immerses you nicely in the Mandarin language, without making it daunting. In context, you always know what they’re telling you.

Lastly, by playing this game, you’re guessing and discovering new 成语, chengyus. 成语 are an essential part of speaking Chinese.

The higher you get in your Chinese learning, the more you realize how important knowing Chengyus is. They are what allows you to show off your intelligence and education, and more importantly, you hear them a lot. In Chinese Dramas, in everyday conversations, in books… They’re also an integral part of the HSK 5 and above exams!  So learn 成语!

Starting at the HSK 5 world on Ninchanese, you’ll be learning 成语 in context. You’ll also be learning stories about what 成语 mean and how they came to be. Sign up to start learning now!

Learn the Chengyus you discover for good

Once you’ve discovered a new Chengyu in the puzzle game, don’t just quit there!
You can…
Look it up on Ninchanese in the dictionary.

For instance, this is a chengyu discovered above:

Look up the chengyus in Ninchanese’s free dictionary!

Simplified Chinese: 方兴未艾 Traditional: 方興未艾
Pinyin: fāng xīng wèi ài

Then you can create a special deck of 成语s in the Nincha Decks

That way, you’re having fun and maximizing what you can learn from the game at the same time!

Happy Wordling and Chinese learning!

Come join the Discord and post your 拼音猜成语 results in the  #游戏-games channel! You’ll find other motivated players there!

Looking for a non-pinyin-based Chinese Wordle? We got you. Here are some based on Bopofomo and on Chinese characters!

New find! Wordle with Chinese Characters and more

Looking for a  Chinese character-based Chinese Wordle? The meowsome community on Discord got you and discovered this other Wordle-like game:  汉字Wordle

The basic principle is the same: guess the 成语. The Twist? Guess it using Chinese characters this time! Using an IME, each time you enter characters, you’re told whether:
– the Chinese character you entered is correct, and if it’s in the right place;
– there are correct letters in the pinyin of that Chinese character and if the’yre in the right spot;
– the tones are correct or not.

Needless to say, this is a more hardcore version of Chinese Wordle. It keeps you on your toes. It makes you think about the chengyus you know, the Chinese characters you’re familiar with, the tones… Give it a whirl, too!

Yeah, it’s not going too well…

This Chinese Wordle is available in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

The nice thing is they give hints!

Here are a few more Chinese Character-based Wordles to explore:

https://bryony.dev/chengyu/chengyu.html
https://allanchain.github.io/chinese-wordle/
https://cheeaun.github.io/chengyu-wordle/
http://samuello.io/jndle/

Chinese Wordle with Bopomofo

Bopomofo is used in Taiwan and is a lot more widespread there than pinyin. It comes therefore as no surprise that a Chinese Worlde using Bopofomo was invented!
Play it here: Bopofomo Chinese Wordle

Poems and Chinese Wordle?

That exists too: you can guess the poem line in Chinese with  https://peotik.com.

Have fun exploring! In my case: I think I’ll stick with pinyin Chinese Wordle though!

And one more thing…

If you want to continue learning Chinese with authentic and entertaining content, then you’ll love Ninchanese.

With Ninchanese, you get a complete method to learn Chinese which has you speaking, reading, writing, and more in Chinese. What’s more, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, there’s content your level on Ninchanese and plenty more!

Start using Ninchanese on the web, with your computer or tablet,

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post Chinese Wordle: Play and Learn Chinese (chengyus)! 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

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

About Ninchanese

With Ninchanese‘s effective and personalized learning method, learning Chinese is fun and easy. You’ll stay engaged and motivated to progress until you master Mandarin Chinese.

Quick progress in Chinese at your level

Ninchanese is designed for all levels of Chinese, from beginners to advanced Chinese learners. So, whether you already have a background in Chinese or not, you will enjoy a way of learning Mandarin, both enjoyable and effective.

Ready to learn to speak Chinese? Sign up and try it now FOR FREE!

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

• Do I need to learn to write Chinese characters?
• When is the best time to begin with them?
• Where do you start?
• How do you write Chinese characters? Are there any rules?

With this article, I want to share a bit of my experience in writing characters and maybe a helpful additional way of learning Chinese. To be clear, I’m not talking about the art of Chinese Calligraphy but just casual hand-writing. Handwritten Chinese with a pen a piece of paper.

Do I need to learn to write Chinese characters?

Learning a language, in general, is split into 4 parts. Each with different importance:  Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. I think everyone would agree that Listening and Speaking are the most important. After that comes reading, and at the end is writing as the least important part. Also, if the language is similar to your mother-tongue, then writing and reading becomes just a byproduct, because you already can read and write the words, even if you don’t know the meaning.  

The question if you need to learn to write Chinese characters is the most common one, and honestly, it’s not necessary to learn handwritten Chinese. But learning how to write Chinese characters can help and provide another supporting method to learn them if you are into writing. 

Before jumping into the subject, let’s take a look at the reasons why you may not need to learn to write Chinese characters. 

 When is the best time to start learning to write Chinese characters? 

Since I started learning Chinese, I also started writing Chinese characters every day as an additional way to learn words, after the switch from pinyin only to Chinese characters. For me, all of the above points go very well together. Learning to write Chinese character reinforce my understanding of characters.

So, I would say this is also the best time to start writing Chinese characters: right from the beginning. Everyone has to go through the elementary pronunciation- and pinyin-only classes before entering the tough world of Chinese characters, so the best way is when everything goes hand-in-hand. But it’s also not too late to start with it if you are already on a higher level. You just need some patience, persistence, and a good learning strategy. 

But since everyone learns differently, has their methods and is not necessarily that interested in the world of Chinese characters, this totally depends on your preferences.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

How do I start learning writing Chinese characters?

The material

When I started with hand-writing Chinese, I tried different methods to find what worked best for me.  

So, first things first: Basically, what you need is just a pen, something to write on, some words you want to practice and a dictionary/app which can show you the stroke-orders and directions. 

The plan

Sounds simple and easy but there are some factors you have to ask yourself: 

• How often do you want to practice (daily, every 2 days, weekly, bi-weekly?) 
• When you practice, how much time do you want to spend? 
• How many characters do you want to write, and how to choose what to write? 
• Why do you want to practice these characters? 
• When do you know that you practiced enough and need to drill new characters? 

And as mentioned above, it’s not about Calligraphy, but casual handwriting. So, don’t spend too much time and money in searching for the best pen and paper. In my opinion, that doesn’t matter that much; you just need to feel comfortable when writing. The only thing which has at least a small impact is the paper.  

My own routine

For me, the paper affects a lot of those questions above. You’ll get that later, first I’ll show you my personal answers on the questions:  

• I want to write characters daily as part of my learning-routine (this needs persistence), but I also don’t want to spend too much time (<20 min daily).   
• I’m learning with different materials: Chinese classes, books, Apps (mostly Ninchanese), etc. I usually pick the words I write from those materials. E.g., I’m learning a new unit in a book or started to learn some new words on Ninchanese; then, I’ll also use these words to practice writing Chinese characters. This way, everything is learned together and can be connected.  

The role of the paper 

To answer the other questions, at this point, the paper comes in:   

I’m using those small vocabulary-notebooks, which are exactly what I need: 

Both of them are pretty much the same. It’s just different manufacturers, and the 田格本 had one row less than the 田字簿。 

So, based on these notebooks, I decided to write one page every day, which answers the questions of how much time to spent and how many characters to write:

• One page is one day 
• One line is one word (can be 1 to 4 characters), which currently is 12 words/phrases 
• On the left side, I write the pinyin, so I know what to write. To keep track of how long I have to practice a word until I know it, I write a point on the right side, and if I had this word right for at least 3 days, I’ll exchange it with a new character. 

Does stroke order matter in chinese? The list of Strokenames of Chinese character

All types of strokes have names by themselves, but you don’t have to remember all of those. Even in casual Chinese language, these are rarely known. There are some which are also very rarely used, only in a few characters.

I picked this sheet up in the past for a class once and translated the names, so you can imagine where their names come from: 

Writing Right-/Lefthanded: 

You may have heard that the majority of Chinese people are right-handed. It’s a tradition to train left-handed people to use their right hand. So, why do I mention it? I am lefthanded, which leads to a minor problem when writing these characters.  

When you look at the stroke orders and directions, these are defined rules and these essential when you write with an ink-pen or brush, because you have to press down and lift the pen at the end, so it leaves a specific line-thickness at the end or beginning.   

When casually writing Chinese characters, a right-handed person would drag the pen in the direction he writes and leaves the words, but a left-handed person has to push the pen and would always smear his left-hand over the just written words. So, using a lot of ink will always result in a big mess, but it also feels very uncomfortable when you have to push a pen to create horizontal strokes (try to push a pen over paper, you’ll see). And here again, I have to mention it’s just about casual handwriting, so to feel comfortable writing Chinese characters, I write horizontal lines from right to left instead of the other direction.  

A short personal story about that: One time in school, I had to write characters on the whiteboard in front of the teacher, and it was the first time I had to do that. So, I just wrote like I was comfortable with dragging horizontal lines from right to left. In the end, my teacher smiled and said that the written characters are 100% correct, but the way I wrote was not that accurate, and I explained that I knew but did so because I use my left hand, and it feels more comfortable that way. This was hard to understand for him, and it still is for a lot of (righthanded) people when I explain it. 

Final words 

Since that episode with the teacher, I’m still doing my writing-practice how I feel comfortable, but I also know the proper way, and whenever I have to write in front of a teacher, I’ll write how it is intended, even if it’s not comfortable for me. 

So, saying that, I hope this article provides some useful tips and answers to some questions which prevented you from writing Chinese characters. It doesn’t take much, so why not just give it a try? Who knows, you may get the hang of it and it becomes a routine in your daily life.

 Stefan and 

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post Writing Chinese characters: The purpose appeared first on Ninchanese.

So, let’s see the difference between Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters. And, let’s find out which Chinese character form is for you!

One way to speak and two writing systems for Chinese characters

First things first. When speaking Mandarin Chinese, all Chinese speakers use the same language.

But that’s not the case in writing. The Chinese language uses two character sets to write: Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. That’s right: The written Chinese language uses both Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters.

What is the difference between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?

Different Chinese-speaking areas use different writing sets. That’s why both Simplified and Traditional Chinese exist.

Where they are used differs

Simply put, simplified Chinese is the primary way of writing in Mainland China and some Chinese-speaking communities.

Traditional Chinese characters are the writing system favored in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Simplified Chinese characters are… simpler

The most striking difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese is their appearance.

As the name Simplified Chinese characters implies, simplified Chinese characters have a goal: to become simpler versions of Traditional Chinese characters. That usually means having fewer strokes than Traditional Chinese characters. Some characters were changed a lot; scholars made some only a little simpler. However, the pronunciation and the meaning are usually the same.

Why are there both simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters?

Traditional Chinese Characters are the characters that existed first. They derive from the Ancient Chinese characters, and initially, all Chinese-speaking regions used Traditional Characters.

Then, simplified Chinese characters were introduced to make it easier for Chinese speakers to read and write.

Let’s look back a bit at how they came to be. The history of Simplified Chinese characters is not very long.

Traces of simplified characters have been found as early as under the Qin dynasty. However, the idea of Simplifying Chinese characters solidified around 1920. Famous writers all over China then started theorizing it. The first complete system of Simplified Chinese characters wasn’t created until the 1950s.

Nowadays, the system of Simplified Chinese characters is quite stable, but it’s not entirely complete. There are still scholars working on the language, and new characters are being introduced.

What’s the reason for a new writing system? Why did the Chinese decide to work on Simplified Chinese?

In 1949, after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the government decided to launch a new and easy way to write Chinese characters. There are two main reasons for that.

First, they said it was to promote Chinese culture. Simplifying the Chinese language was then seen as essential to popularize Chinese characters and the language itself.

The second, and I think the most important, is they wanted people to be able to read and write Chinese. At that time, more than 80% of the population was illiterate. That was a lot, and so no wonder there was a desire to change that. So improving literacy and encouraging people to learn how to write was a significant factor in the decision.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters are different in appearance

To better understand how they differ in appearance, let’s see an example of the word Dragon in simplified and traditional Chinese.

The simplified Chinese character for dragon is 龙 long2.
The traditional Chinese character dragon is 龍 long2.

With this example, it’s easy to see the differences between Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters.

The Simplified Chinese character 龙 has fewer strokes and is easier to decipher. However, in traditional Chinese, it has more strokes: 龍. A lot more! But maybe, you’ll find you can imagine more easily from its looks that this character has the meaning of a dragon?

Can you see how the right side of the Traditional character has the shape of a dragon?

What are the pros and cons of Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters?

This example is a good introduction to why there is a debate on Simplified Chinese characters vs.Traditional Chinese characters. There are cons and pros to each writing system, as you can expect.

If everyone seemed enthusiastic about the idea of simplifying characters at the time (it was maybe difficult to think otherwise at that period, but that’s another subject), as time passed by, voices arose. Many scholars believe it’s necessary to keep both systems, recall Traditional Chinese characters, and preserve them.

The first issue is that it created a rift.

It is challenging to recognize traditional Chinese characters for the Chinese people on the mainland who stopped learning Traditional Chinese. As a result, reading ancient texts that use traditional characters is more complicated.

It can also be difficult for people who use Traditional Chinese characters to write in Simplified Chinese characters.

Second, simplified Chinese characters were often about reducing the number of strokes between traditional Chinese characters and Simplified Chinese characters. But that had a few pitfalls.

For example, they sometimes took two or more different traditional characters and fused them to create one simplified character. A good illustration of that is 台.  台 tái in Simplified Chinese means “desk”, “table”, and several other things – it’s also a classifier. As you can see below, this Chinese character also corresponds to several different traditional characters. Several! You can view all of them here.

Moreover, sometimes, the pronunciation became different in the process, but that was quite rare.

Do simplified Chinese characters lack inner meaning?

Lastly, the main argument people in favor of Traditional Characters have is that they created characters that lack inner meanings by simplifying the Chinese characters.

For example, they’ll often use the simplified character “爱 ai4 love”, whose traditional form is “愛 ai4 love”. In its original form, we can see that there is a “心 xin1 heart” component inside. They argue that’s meaningful because we love someone with our hearts. However, in the Simplified Chinese character form, the heart component was removed. So does that mean the Simplified Chinese character might signify “love” but no longer represent it? What do you think?

Which version of the character do you like best?

Lastly, some scholars also say that the Simplified Chinese characters lack beauty, and because they have fewer strokes, it is easy to mistake and confuse similar characters.

A lack of meaning and maybe, beauty are the main cons of Simplified Chinese characters.

Simplified Chinese characters also have pros, of course. Many of them, including the fact that they really did help increase literacy across China.

Here are a few other arguments in favor of Simplified Chinese:

They are usually easier to read and learn. For example, 飞机场 is simpler to memorize and recognize than 飛機場.

Simplified Chinese characters are also a lot faster to write in Mandarin. Since they have fewer strokes, the structure of simplified Chinese characters is also often clearer to recognize. For instance, “丰 feng1 rich” is more straightforward than “豐 feng1 rich”.

So as you can see, both writing systems have their advantages and disadvantages.

As Chinese learners, there’s no real need to go into this debate on which set of characters is best. Both writing systems exist in the Chinese language. They are different, and that’s what matters for you, who’s learning Chinese.

Should you learn Simplified or Traditional Chinese?

So, what Chinese characters should you choose as a beginner? Should you learn simplified Chinese characters or Traditional Chinese characters?  What writing system should you pick to learn Chinese?

Where do you want to go?

Think about where you want to go in the future. Which part of China do you want to go to? Is it Mainland China? A Chinese-speaking country?

Answering those questions is an excellent way to choose between learning traditional or simplified Chinese as a beginner.  It’s all about being practical. Choose based on your learning goals.

If you want to go to mainland China,  since they use simplified Chinese, learn Simplified Chinese characters. Same for Singapore and the Chinese community in Malaysia. They speak Mandarin and use Simplified Chinese characters.

Otherwise, choose to learn traditional Chinese if you plan to go to Hongkong, Macao, or Taïwan.

Related: Mandarin? Cantonese? Which is for me? All about the Chinese language

Why are you learning Mandarin Chinese?

If you don’t have a place in mind, then think some more about why you’re learning Chinese. What interests you? Who do you want to communicate with?

Are you planning on doing business in China? That’s another good reason to learn Simplified Chinese.

Are you more fascinated by the history of China and calligraphy? That might be a good reason to choose to learn Traditional Chinese.

Related: Why learn Traditional Chinese

Should you learn both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?

Only if you want to. But, especially to start, pick one, either Simplified or Traditional and then see if your needs change.

My experience with both forms of Chinese

I learned simplified first and then some traditional Chinese. I’ve traveled to mainland China many times and then, Taïwan.

It’s true. At first, I felt a little bit lost in Taïwan. The Chinese characters looked more complicated, and the pinyin was not what I was used to. [In Taiwan, they use Bopomofo and Zhuyin in conjunction with pinyin.]

But, when they were speaking, I didn’t see that much difference: Chinese Mandarin speakers use the same language, regardless of their writing system. So it’s quite okay to understand what’s going on.
And with a bit of effort, you realize the characters are not that different. Once you know, for instance, that 个 and 個 are two forms of the same character, pronounced “gè”, and that 后 hòu (after) is 後 in traditional Chinese, your life navigating both writing systems in Mandarin gets a lot easier.

Take your time getting used to the different forms of Chinese

Gradually, you’ll learn to decipher the characters in both writing systems. The most common ones, at least, as you run into them, in Taiwanese dramas for instance. So, there’s no need to worry, even if it takes time and sometimes you’ll get them wrong. You’ll get used to both writing forms.

To make your life easier, the Ninchanese dictionary always shows you both the simplified and the traditional version of a character, and you can switch between the two as much as you want.

Learn Simplified or Traditional Chinese on Ninchanese

So now, you are ready to choose between simplified and traditional Chinese characters! Whatever you choose, Ninchanese has got you covered!

The Ninchanese app is here to help you learn Mandarin Chinese, regardless of what writing system you want!

You can learn simplified Chinese characters. Or, if you want to learn traditional Chinese characters, that’s possible too!

Initially in beta, Traditional Chinese is now available for all on Ninchanese. Once you’ve signed up, all you need to do is choose in your settings what type of Chinese characters you want to learn. You’ll then be all set to start learning Mandarin Chinese, no matter which form of Chinese you’d like to know!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post Simplified or Traditional Chinese: which should you learn? appeared first on Ninchanese.

The quest to make learning Chinese characters easy

Chinese characters are consistently cited as one of the hardest things in Chinese by learners, and it’s not hard to understand why.

Haven’t you ever felt stuck trying to read a text in Chinese? Characters can sometimes be seen as impenetrable fortresses, yielding no clue whatsoever as to what they mean or can be pronounced. We’ve all experienced that feeling at one point or another of our learning journey. However, we also know it doesn’t have to be that way.

And so at Ninchanese, we are always on the lookout for new ways to make learning Chinese characters easier and faster, breakthroughs that make learning Chinese characters an easier task.

A learning order to organize them all?

When we chanced upon Loach and Wang’s study on how best to learn Chinese characters and words, we were astonished by their discoveries and the new algorithm they used.

Loach & Wang have decided to join forces and built a mathematically sound, logical approach to the order in which Chinese characters should be learned, based on data. Harnessing machine learning, network theory, and cognitive science, the two researchers built an algorithm to lower the cost of learning new Chinese characters ( = making it easier for you to learn them, what’s not to love?). How? By presenting them in an intelligent way. Intelligent because it takes into account a number of elements that are at the heart of Chinese characters and the Chinese language. Elements such as word and character frequency, the hierarchical structure of characters, the components they are made of, and several other variables, all mixed together to devise an optimal learning order. For you, little dragon.

The order in which you’ll be learning Chinese characters is optimal in that it goes back to the big bang of Chinese. To the roots of the language, to seek out an order and structure in the way Chinese characters are built. To help you understand the logic behind Chinese characters because once you learn to do that, it becomes easier and faster for you to learn new characters based on the ones you know.

Optimal also in that it strives to cost you the least learning effort possible. By making connections between characters and teaching you the ones, you need to know first. So it’s easier for you and a faster process. That’s why it can rocket fuel your character acquisition.

We just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to introduce this new approach to you. And so… We’re very excited to bring you an all-new world that goes back to the Big Bang of Chinese characters!

Your key: a whole new world on Ninchanese

Yes, we’ve created a brand new world solely dedicated to learning Chinese characters in this new order: the Universe of Chinese characters. 5000 whopping characters and words to learn in a science-backed, magic-fueled world.

100% focused on Chinese characters and fully based on this scientific research, this world promises to present you Chinese characters to learn in the most efficient order possible, backed up with the SRS power of Ninchanese for lasting memorization. It’ll highlight the link(s) between characters, their governing logic and, through that, will take you through thousands of Chinese characters and words. This world is nothing like you have seen before and
we hope you’ll have a blast learning Chinese characters this way.

The Big Bang question asked here is: How can we learn Chinese characters faster?

At the core of this new level, and the research that is its foundation, is a single desire: to maximize your learning efficiency in Chinese. Because here’s a secret: learning Chinese characters is often viewed as daunting, but when Chinese characters make sense, they become dramatically easier to learn.

In other words, the more components and Chinese characters you learn, the easier and faster it becomes for you to learn new characters based on the ones you know. It’s a breakthrough in how the Chinese characters are learned. You can read the result of this research here.

Maximizing your learning efficiency to increase your character retention while costing you the least effort possible, thanks to a cool new algorithm. Sounds appealing, right? But how does it work, and what does that mean? Let us take you through the new world’s way of working.

Let’s take a macro view: Chinese Language Big Data

There are, as you know, a ton of Characters in the Chinese language. They all contain a large amount of information if you know what to look for.  Information such as the character meaning components and phonetic components that make characters up, and plenty more.
We need to extract all of this information, figure out their connections, and use these relationships to build a logical order.  By understanding the logic behind the way Chinese characters are built, you can devise an order in which to learn them that makes the most sense, both scientifically and academically.

A Chinese character Universe to learn

You’ll learn to view Chinese characters as a group of families with their parents, children, cousins, and so on. They all come from one big tree with a few roots, and that’s what this world wants you to see. We’ll take you back to the Big Bang of how Chinese Characters were formed because becoming familiar with the roots and the primitive aspects of Chinese characters help greatly with learning a new character more easily.  

In this new world, each stage is dedicated to a limited set of words, and choose to focus on the characters you’d need to learn to be at ease with those words, as well as the character components you want to be familiar with.

In each stage, learn words and the characters that are key to know and the components that’ll shed light on how the characters are built!

To say it more specifically, In this world, we optimize the learning process of Chinese characters by ordering Chinese Characters using a novel topological sorting algorithm. Thanks to the new algorithm, you’ll see the benefits of learning Chinese Characters in order of usage frequency and in order of their hierarchal structural relationships. For example, you’ll learn the semantic-phonetic compounds of a Chinese character before learning the characters. It means that you’ll deploy fewer efforts to learn new words thanks to a special learning order.

Using this approach teaches you what to look for in a Chinese Character and where to look, and that’ll allow you to recognize/guess the meaning or its pronunciation instantly or nearly so. In other words, in this new world on Ninchanese, you will learn the real meaning of characters by learning first their ancestors, that is to say, from where they come from and how they are built. Here’s an example of a character tree:

Primitive characters appear as characters in their own right, whereas primitive components do not. The primitive component 灬 is an abbreviated form of the primitive character 火. The parameter r is the SUBTLEX-CH usage frequency rank of the character. Pronunciations are given in pinyin romanization. Note that each character is only assigned a single meaning. That is even though most actually possess a range of broadly related meanings.

More bang for your buck, what’s not to like in the idea?

The study compares the new algorithm to other well-known character learning methods, such as Heisig’s. It found that it outperforms previously published orders and algorithms.

How? The idea behind this new algorithm is also to introduce useful words you’ll be able to use productively right away. You won’t just be learning components. Characters and their components are only introduced when they compose multiple-character words or when the character forms a single-character word itself.

In short, it’s all about learning Chinese characters and words in a special order. This order takes into account:

• character frequencies,
• word frequencies,
• phonetic components,
• semantic components (aka meaning components),
• primitive components,
• the number of strokes,
• the relationship between them,
• and more.

This has a number of benefits. It’ll tremendously develop your character recognition and acquisition. What’s more, it will also help you distinguish similar sounds and characters and also characters that share the same sound.

Learn characters and words you’ll be able to use right away

This approach to learning to read and write Chinese has another clear advantage. The words you learn can be put to immediate and productive use when reading and writing sentences. These activities help the learning process. That’s why you’ll be learning Chinese characters in an optimal learning order.

Even if you are mainly focused on learning immediately useful words, you will find this new world useful. You’ll be able to recognize words more easily after learning the characters and words in the Universe World. That, in turn, will help you learn sentences and grammar more easily.

Note: Sometimes, you’ll be learning characters that are rarely used on their own. That’ll be because these characters are often found in words of 2 or more characters. These, however, are very frequently encountered. It’s a great way to understand a word deeper and learn it faster. Just keep in mind that by learning these characters, you’ll be adding them to our collection of learned words on Ninchanese and in your SRS. So, if you don’t want to learn components or single characters you won’t find yourself using as is, we recommend doing the classic story worlds of Ninchanese first.

So, what do you think? Ready to experience a new way of learning Chinese characters that’s both easy and fast for you? All thanks to the help of an algorithm that devised a clever order in which you should learn them?  We sure hope you have a blast learning Chinese characters this way! Be sure to let us know your thoughts!

We wish you success in your Chinese learning!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post New world: The Chinese Character Universe – Science-based Chinese character learning appeared first on Ninchanese.

First, a question for you: what starts with playing and ends with laughing in Mandarin?

No clue? Ok, so do you know how to say to joke in Chinese? That’s the answer!  The Chinese use 玩笑 to say “to joke”!

How to say to joke in Chinese: 玩笑

玩笑

wán

to

玩笑 means to joke and usually, you’ll use it with the verb 开 like 我开玩笑. If you want to say “I’m just kidding“, the expression also uses 玩笑: 只是开玩笑   – zhǐ shì kāi wán xiào – Just kidding! 

玩笑 breakdown

Breaking down 玩笑 shows you it’s an adorable term. To see that, you just need to understand the meaning of the individual characters that compose it.

Let’s see: 玩笑 is composed of the character 玩

玩

wán

to

The word 玩笑 also contains the character 笑

笑

xiào

to

Now you understand better why we asked you, in the beginning, to guess what starts with playing and ends with laughing, right?

In Chinese, playing to make people laugh is how you “joke”. Isn’t that a very accurate way of describing joking?

Can you think of a better description of how to say to joke in Chinese?

That’s all for today folks! See you next week for the next Play with Chinese words! In the meantime, have fun playing jokes with your friends!

Don’t hesitate to comment with your best jokes in the comments!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post Chinese Word Building: How to say to joke in Chinese appeared first on Ninchanese.

The answer is the Chinese word 冲浪:

冲浪

chōng

to

 It’s  funny because the Chinese manage to give you a very clear idea of what surfing is about, just by associating words. Of course, it helps that these words literally show you what is going on when you surf. Think about it for a second: if you were to describe the action of surfing to someone who has no clue what it is, AND were only allowed to use two words, which would you pick?

Think about it for a second: if you were to describe the action of surfing to someone who has no clue what it is, AND were only allowed to use two words, which would you pick? Would you pick the ones the Chinese used to create the word 冲浪, to surf in Mandarin?

 冲浪 breakdown

Let’s breakdown 冲浪 to understand the meaning of the invidual characters that compose it.

First, 冲浪 is composed of the character 冲

冲

chōng

to

Notice how the character 冲 contains  冫, a very useful semantic component to know, as well as the phonetic component 中?

The word 冲浪 also contains the character 浪

浪

làng

wave

So in Chinese, surfing = colliding with waves! Can’t say we disagree with that way of putting it

That’s all for today folks! See you next week for the next Play with Chinese words! In the meantime, have fun colliding with the waves!

In the meantime, we hope you have fun colliding with the waves!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post Chinese word building: to surf appeared first on Ninchanese.

With Western languages, even though you don’t know what a “flitterWochen” is (it’s an English word), you can easily read it out loud. Unlike English or Spanish, or any roman alphabet based language, in Chinese, however, it’s not that easy to read characters aloud you don’t know. The Chinese language is not a phonetic language, and with over 80,000 characters in the Chinese language, it’s quite normal to run into a character you’ve never seen before and to be at a loss as to how to pronounce it. So, how do the Chinese know how to read characters they’ve never seen before?

The secret trick

At first glance, the many strokes that compose a Chinese character don’t look like they give out many hints as to how they are to be pronounced. In fact, for a long time, you were expected to connect the strokes of characters to the sounds they refer to by sheer rote memorization. But, this is no longer the case. The Chinese know something you don’t and we’re going to let you in on their big secret: Chinese characters do represent sound, thanks to phonetic components. Phonetic components are indications the character contains on its pronunciation. 

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

How to deal with an unknown character

When you run into an unknown character, the first thing you want to do is analyze it and break it down to see what it’s made of.

That way, rather than seeing and trying to remember a jumble of strokes, when you break down a character, you easily spot the different meaningful elements that make it up.

You can break down the characters yourself, or look at a Chinese dictionary, like Ninchanese’s.  The dictionary will show you how the character can be decomposed, and allow you to look up the different elements in the character.

What can you expect to see?

Most of the time (over 80% of the time), the character you’ll be looking at will be a picto-phonetic character.

This is the most common way of forming characters. In fact, more than 80% of all Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters. That’s great news for us Chinese learners, and you’re soon going to understand why.

Picto-phonetic characters are made of two pieces, called components. These two components are usually a meaning (also known as semantic) component and a phonetic component. One piece gives you a clue to the word’s meaning, another to the word’s pronunciation. Isn’t that great? Meaning components and phonetic components really are the building blocks of the Chinese written language.

As today we’re exploring how to read out loud a character you’ve never seen before, our focus is on phonetic components. Let’s see what a phonetic component is precisely and how you can easily use it to know how a character sounds!

What are phonetic components?

Phonetic components are elements in a Chinese character that give you clues on a character’s pronunciation. They can be used to deduce the intonation of an unknown Chinese character. Curious to know how?

Let’s take the character 妈 mā mother. If you break it down, you’ll see it’s made of two parts:
女 which is a meaning component, symbolizing femininity, and 马, which is pronounced mǎ (and when used as a standalone character, means horse). As you can see, 妈’s sound matches the component 马’s pronunciation, aside from the tone. Here, 马 is a phonetic component.

Now that you know 马 is a phonetic component, can you pronounce: 吗, 骂, and 码?

That’s right, they’re all pronounced “ma”. Well done! You can expect Chinese characters that contain this phonetic component to sound the same.

In most of the cases, when you identify a phonetic component in a character, the character will be pronounced either exactly like the component or have a sound pretty close to it.

How to spot a phonetic component in a Chinese character

So you have your Chinese character in front of you. You may be wondering: is there an easy way to spot which part of the character is the phonetic component

The Chinese like to say:

有边念边，没边念中间吗，没有中间，自己编.

However, this method doesn’t always work. The phonetic component can indeed often be found on the right side of a character.
But, it’s also common for the phonetic component to be below the meaning component.

In other character structures, you’ll find the phonetic information inside another element; and, even more rarely, in other combinations.

When in doubt, go to your favorite online Chinese dictionary, and look up the character. Its character decomposition will help you research which element is the phonetic component, and what the other element(s) that compose the character are.

How do you master phonetic complements?

Phonetic components have traditionally less been studied than meaning components, which is a shame, as they are tremendously useful to knowing how to read and write a Chinese character. Before teachers used to expect the students to learn how to pronounce all the characters by rote, at least, now, we know we can rely on phonetic components to read an unknown character’s pronunciation.

One thing we don’t know for sure,however, is how many phonetic components there are.

Early research on the subject, by Soothill in the 1880s for instance, listed up to 1000 phonetic components. Other researchers have suggested other numbers, ranging from less to more. It may seem like a lot, but, we have lots of good news.

First, you can start by learning the most common phonetic complements first.

Excited by the idea of mastering the essential phonetic components? Then join us every Monday in our community.

Your Monday meeting with a component

Meet the phonetic component 包! Learn how to use it, by clicking here >> https://t.co/IJ5B4a3eZ6 #chinese #learn pic.twitter.com/M7sfpI6EF9

— Ninchanese (@Ninchanese) June 27, 2016

Every Monday, on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, get to know the key phonetic components and meaning components! You are introduced to a new component each week. You learn to use it all week in all sorts of fun activities, from silly dialogues to cool word building. Each component has a whole page dedicated to it, so you can also study in detail about it.

Head to this page to see all the Chinese character components you need to know. More are added each week! Don’t miss this weekly rendezvous.

Second, phonetic components are, more often than not, also standalone characters

This means: you’ll learn them as words, and then happily be able to spot them in words.

In addition, and that’s the second piece of good news: phonetic components tend to retain the same shape in the character they’re in. They don’t change shapes like a meaning component might do, which makes it even easier to spot them right?

Two key takeaways from this:

When you run into a new character, look for familiar elements. See if it looks anything alike the characters you already know and if it has anything in common with them. When you go to a place you’ve never been before, you look for something familiar, whether it’s a friend or an object, right?! By making an association between the characters you’ve learned before and the familiar features of the unknown character, you’ll possibly find clues on its pronunciation. For example, if you know the word 马 mǎ horse, there’s a big chance you’ll be able to pronounce words such as 吗 ma question particle or 妈 mā mother.

At Ninchanese, we know that phonetic components matter, so we help you help you learn all the components at your own pace. As you learn new words, you’ll learn and master new components so you can identify them better in unknown words. In addition to the learning stages, we also have many tricks to help you catch them all -yup, still talking about the phonetic components.

See, phonetic components come in particularly handy when you play a Ninchallenge.

Ninchallenge your knowledge!

In Ninchanese, you can engage your friends in fun battles called the Ninchallenges. Ninchallenges are the opportunity to review the Chinese words and characters you’ve learned before and learn new words while playing with your friends. They test your knowledge of Chinese. In the Ninchallenges, you mostly pick words you know but sometimes you pick unknown characters and words.

What happens, then? It’s up to you to guess their pronunciation! What are you going to need? That’s right: a phonetic component. If you know the phonetic component that is in the character you need to guess, you’ll be able to easily read them out loud and write down their pinyin.

For example, it’s your turn to play and you’re supposed to guess how to read the character 踉. You’ve never seen this character before, but that doesn’t mean all is lost. You now have your secret weapon: phonetic components!

Do you recognize a component you know in this in this character 踉? Yes, in the right-hand corner, there’s the phonetic component 良 liáng good, well-spotted! So how about taking a gamble and saying this character 踉 sounds about the same? Well done! You’re right, 踉 liáng jump sounds precisely the same, plus it’s an exact match!

Phonetic components are powerful in a Ninchallenge… and in real life

This happens in a Ninchallenge, but it will also happen to you in real life. You’ll run into all sorts of unknown character you’ll need to decipher and guess how they’re pronounced.

As you see, learning the components is essential if you want to expand your understanding of the Chinese language, and your resourcefulness when facing unknown characters.

There’s also many resources you can use to improve your knowledge of phonetic complements. For example, if you want to see all the perfect matches of the phonetic sets, Hanzicraft has an amazing database to explore.

Now you’ve got all the resources to master the phonetic components, you’re ready to pronounce an unknown Chinese character thanks to the phonetic sets. How can you use them to guess how to pronounce a character in Chinese?

What phonetic components will tell you about how to write and read Chinese characters

Great, so now you know where to look for a phonetic component in a Chinese character. Let’s move on to the indications these phonetic complements can give you on a character’s intonation.

As said before, Ninchallenges mirror the experience you’ll get in real life in a Chinese speaking country. Restaurant menus are the best example, but street signs and newspapers are also good ones to train yourself to read out loud unknown Chinese character. You’ll be often faced with unfamiliar and unknown words, but still, you have to deal with them if you want to win. So how do you overcome that obstacle? You look for clues.

Here’s an example that can happen to you in real life.

You meet the Chinese character 晴 when reading the weather forecast. The context may help understand the word, but how do you pronounce it? When you break down the character 晴 you get:

Here, 日 brings the meaning and 青, on the right side, is a phonetic component, which brings the sound. Then, you know the character 晴 will sound like “qing”. Indeed, 晴 is pronounced qíng and means clear (sky).

Phonetics can be essential on a daily basis. For example, if you want to order food but don’t know a character on the menu, you can try to pronounce it using your phonetic component knowledge and get an explanation from the waiter. Plus, you can practice your Chinese by speaking to the waiter. It makes you speak Chinese and practice your understanding skills. Neat!

The examples we’ve shown so far are perfect or near perfect matches for the phonetic component, but is that always the case?

Do characters always sound like the phonetic component they contain?

Yes and no. There are also several kinds of matches.

Perfect matches

If a character has the same sound, pinyin, and tone as the phonetic component it contains, it’s called an exact match. The character 洋 yáng ocean, for example, is an exact match with the phonetic component 羊 yáng sheep.

Near-perfect matches

Then you can find second-degree matches. These are characters that share the same sound as the phonetic component it is made of but not the same tone.

The character 样 yàng manner is a second-degree match with the phonetic component 羊 yáng sheep as they don’t have the original tone but share the same sound.

A little more distant matches

You can also find characters that share the same phonetic component and that have different, but very close sounds. Here, the phonetic component 可 kě to permit can be found in characters that sound like “ke”, “ge” or “he”. These three pronunciations share the finals “e”. A phonetic component can have two or more possible pronunciations that share the same initials, finals or tones.

Exceptions

As you can see, phonetic components aren’t an accurate science and there are some exceptions. The Chinese language has evolved a lot over the years, and therefore, sometimes, you have to look at character etymology, the traditional forms of characters or older sounds to understand why the character is pronounced the way it is.

Despite that, knowing phonetic components is a big piece of the Chinese puzzle, and your key to being able to be able to guesstimate the pronunciation of 80% of all characters. If that’s not meowsome then I don’t know what is.

So, learn to master the different phonetic components and you’ll be able to read any character.

Final words:

If you’ve always wondered how the Chinese managed to pronounce characters they’d never seen before, now you know they owe it to the phonetic compounds. Learning them is important to find unknown words’ pronunciation and also to understand the Chinese logic and memorize the characters better.

Here’s a quick summary of what you need to remember about the phonetic components that:

• Once you master a phonetic component, you master the pronunciation of the several characters that contains it.
• Most Chinese characters are either exact and second-degree matches for the phonetic component they contain.
• A same phonetic component can lead to various pronunciations that share the same initials, finals or tones
• In short: Dare to make guesses. If you don’t find the same intonation, you’ll end up close. And that’s a great start.
• Practice guessing the sounds of unknown Chinese characters and honing your deciphering skills in the Ninchallenges.

Don’t forget our one week one component to keep learning new components! You also continue your reading about Chinese characters and check out the following post about how many characters you need to know.

By the way, for your personal acknowledge, a “flitterwochen” is an old English expression to say “honeymoon”. Good to know when playing Scrabble!

Have you experienced an obstacle when meeting an unknown character? What’s your experience deciphering unknown characters? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Phonetic Components: The Secret Trick to Guessing the Pronunciation of Chinese Characters appeared first on Ninchanese.

It’s quite normal when you’re starting out in Mandarin to wonder how many characters and words are there exactly in Chinese? And then, to wonder immediately after that, just how many of those Chinese characters do I need to learn? The task may seem daunting, the number of Chinese characters that exist is enormous, but after you read this post, I can assure you that you’ll know exactly how many and how to find Chinese characters to learn. We’ll see first what the Chinese language is made of, then, how many Chinese characters you need to know and finally the amount of characters natives know.

How many characters exist in total in Chinese?

What is the Chinese language made of? Nowadays, the Chinese language is made of more than 80,000 characters, 85,568 characters to be more precise according to the Zhonghua Zihai dictionary. The 中华字海 Zhonghua Zihai dictionary contains all the Chinese characters that have ever existed, from old Buddhist texts to characters used by the Qing, Ming and Song dynasties. Such a very complete dictionary! It sounds very impressive, but you should know that a lot of the characters contained in this dictionary are actually no longer used.

So now you know that there are at least 80 000 characters in Mandarin. But it doesn’t stop there! These 80 000 characters equal many, many, more Chinese words. How does that work?
In the Chinese language, 字 zì characters also known as 汉字 hànzi (hanzi) meaning Chinese characters can be combined together to create 词 cí words. Yes, you heard right.
Single characters can be words on their own, for instance, you can use the character 手 shǒu hand if you want to talk about someone’s hand but most words in Chinese are composed of two or more characters. So if you take this character 手 for example, you can combine it with other characters to create new words like 手表 Shǒubiǎo wristwatch.

The Chinese language works in an interesting way, doesn’t it? It’s a little tricky.

This means if you “only” learned the 80,000 Chinese characters, you’d be able to understand a good number of the words you run across in a text, but not all of them. It’s often possible to guess the meaning of two characters combined together to form a new word, but often, it’s not possible, as you’ll see below.
Let’s take the characters 手 and 机 and their pinyin.

手 shǒu hand

+

机 jī machine

= 手机 shǒujī cellphone

You can easily guess the meaning of the word 手机 in simplified Chinese when you know the meaning of each individual character.

On the contrary, here’s a tougher word to crack, using the characters 上 and 手:

上 shàng above

+

手 shǒu hand

= 上手 shàngshǒu to master

See? The Chinese word 上手 made of the two characters 上 and 手 is harder to guess! And if you don’t know the characters you’ll hardly guess the word’s pronunciation.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

This is why you should master both Chinese characters and terms, to be able to understand the texts you run into in China.

So how many Chinese words are there in Chinese? That’s an even tougher question than how many Chinese characters are there. As Chinese is a living language, it’s hard to give a definite count. The Chinese language is still evolving and new terms and expressions are created every day. To give you an idea, The 汉语大词典 Hanyu Da Cidian (lit: Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary) is said to contain 370,000 words. Just like the 中华字海 Zhonghua Zihai dictionary for characters, a lot of the entries in the 汉语大词典 are no longer in use.

You know now how to identify Chinese characters (one syllable max) and words (one or more 字). But are you worried by the sheer quantity of words that exist in Chinese? We have some good news for you: there is no need to memorize all 80,000+ Chinese characters or 370 000 Chinese words. All you have to do is master the characters and terms which are commonly used today in the Chinese language. Conversational fluency in Chinese is within your reach and won’t take years and years of study. Relieved? I’m sure what you’re really itching to know now is: So, how many Chinese characters will I need to learn to be able to handle most texts in everyday circumstances?

How many Chinese characters do you really need to learn?

Many people are afraid of learning Chinese because of the 80,000 characters that make up the Chinese language. It seems like a lot to learn. The truth is you don’t need to know that many characters to speak Chinese. Did you really believe that Chinese natives all know 80,000 characters? Nope! Not at all. Native Chinese speakers themselves don’t know that many words and characters in Chinese! That’d be an incredible amount of terms to know. So before we move on to how many Chinese words and Chinese characters you would be required know to be considered fluent, let’s see first how many characters an average Chinese speaker knows.

In elementary school, Chinese pupils are expected to learn about 2,500 characters which are the most used. Then they assimilate about 1,000 more specific ones during middle school and high school. In the end, Chinese students that have finished high school know about 4,500 characters. For reference, the Chinese government puts literacy at 2000 characters. Well-educated Chinese people know anywhere from 8,000 characters and upwards. That’s really far away from the 80,000 Chinese characters! Only specialized linguists and scholars get closer to those 80,000.

4500 to 8000 characters to know doesn’t sound too bad, right? So how many Chinese characters do YOU need to know to be considered fluent? The number of Chinese characters and words you need to know depends on many things such as your learning goal, your current fluency level or even the frequency of use of these characters.

What’s your learning goal for Chinese?

First, ask yourself what’s your goal in speaking Chinese? What are you looking to do? If you want to live in China, and simply interact in your everyday life in Chinese, a working vocabulary of 1000 words might be enough to start with. You don’t need to learn many characters to travel to China. If you need to order food, read something that’s written on a menu, call a taxi or even asking for a direction, few survival words would be enough. If you want to understand what’s going on TV, on the radio or in the newspapers, you’ll basically need to learn about 3,000 to 4,000 characters. In newspapers you’ll find about 2.500 very common Chinese characters, so knowing 3,000 characters will allow you to understand about 99% of what’s written.

Now if your goal is to be able to read a Chinese dictionary, which is a pretty advanced Chinese goal, then you’ll need to know at least 9,000 to 15,000 characters to be able to comfortably read the definitions.
Having a Chinese learning goal is essential to progress, but knowing what level you are is also very important to know what Chinese characters and terms to learn.

What’s your level?

You’ve just started learning Chinese? Then you belong to the HSK 1 level which requires learning about 150 words. You’ve just entered the world 3 in Ninchanese? Then you’re the HSK 3 level and you’ll need to learn about 300 new terms. Check your level and see how many words you have to learn according to the HSK. As there has been a renewal of the HSK exams.

The numbers of words you need to learn for the new HSK:

HSK 1: 153    –     HSK 2: 150    –     HSK 3: 300    –     HSK 4: 598    –     HSK 5: 1300    –     HSK 6: 2513

The HSK levels are important if you want to prove your Chinese skills by taking the exam, it’s also good for you to know where you are and where you’re heading to. But don’t rely on them, as some terms in the lists are sometimes quite odd, and not that useful on a daily basis.

Pick the right characters to learn: Mind the characters’ frequency

Learning every single Chinese character would be a waste of time as you’ll rarely meet some of them. Why don’t you learn the characters that are the most used in everyday life? Here’s the list of the most frequent characters. See? Currently, the most used Chinese character is 的 de of; particle. If you master the most frequent Chinese characters, you’ll be in theory able to read a newspaper, have a conversation, watch TV and so on. It just depends on how many frequent characters you decide to learn. If you digest 100 of the most common characters, you statistically should have a 42% understanding of the characters you run into.

1000 of the most frequent Chinese characters should bring you an 89% understanding of what you read.The caveat to this method is that the 11%, for instance, you won’t understand will be the characters that bring you the meaning of the sentence. Imagine being able to read everything single word in a sentence that says “I bought an XXX for cheap”. If you don’t know what XXX means, then the sentence is rather pointless isn’t? The best way to counter that is to keep expanding your Chinese vocabulary, by learning new characters, and more specific terms you’re interested in, and more specific until you’ve learned the 3000 to 4000 most frequent Chinese characters. Then, you should be familiar with the vast majority of the characters you running into.

My advice : Do a little bit of everything

Pay attention to these three steps to know what and how many characters you should learn. My best advice would be to put as a goal: master 2,500 to 3,000 characters. Therefore, you’ll be able to understand many things. When you’re HSK 4 level (world 4 in Ninchanese), you should be able to understand about 2,000 characters and terms. But how and what should you learn? In Ninchanese, we help you learn the most common and frequently used Chinese characters. So, take the road to world 4 and you’ll be on the right path to speaking Chinese like a native!

Final words:

Now that you know how many terms and characters exist in Chinese, and how many characters you need to learn, aren’t you glad you asked? You see, there’s no need to be scared of some mischievous Chinese characters! You don’t need to assimilate an entire Chinese dictionary by heart to be fluent in Chinese, just follow our advice, and you’ll soon be learning the Chinese words and characters you need to reach your goal of fluency in Chinese!

Learning words and characters is the key to reading anything you see and fitting in China! The cool thing about Chinese characters is that they are the writing system common to all forms of spoken Chinese. See, you could be learning one of the many dialects of the Chinese language (check out this page to learn more about them), you’ll still be using Chinese characters.
Let’s say, for instance, that you want to learn Cantonese, as Olly Richards did in one year, can you guess what writing system you’ll be using? That’s right, Chinese characters. No matter what spoken form of Chinese you’re learning, you’ll be using them in writing.  So it’s pretty important to learn Chinese characters and really, there’s no need to be afraid of learning them.

Just pick your main learning goal, be realistic in the number of terms and Chinese characters you want to learn based on your actual level and select the characters that are the most frequent if you want to save time and efficiently study Mandarin. We’ve already selected the words you should know in Ninchanese so learn Chinese at your own speed without thinking about what you need to learn. After all, most of the Chinese only know about 5,000 characters and we know you soon will too!

Now tell us, how many words do you think you know in simplified Chinese? Or have you stopped counting?

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post How Many Chinese Characters Do I Need To Learn? appeared first on Ninchanese.