厲害了，我的哥!

Lì hài le, wǒ de gē!

You rock, brother!

How the slang expression “厲害了，我的哥!” appeared

The expression 厲害了，我的哥! Lì hài le wǒ de gē has gotten pretty popular online and especially in the gaming circle in China. It became popular when a military student was caught by his military training instructor playing the popular game King’s Glory on his phone. The funny story starts here. The instructor happened to also be a fan of this game and played along with the student. As they became stronger together, they started to win. The high school students could not believe what was happening and started commenting the gaming skill of the instructor. Tada! ” 厲害了我的哥” popped out and became a wide-spread expression in China. I love this story of this newborn expression!

How to use “You rock” in Chinese

Use this slang expression in Mandarin to express astonishment or amazement. You can use it in a lot of situations. You can also use it with everybody: just replace the last word 哥, “brother” with what you need to address people!

The Nincha Team

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The post Popular Chinese Slang Expression 厉害了，我的歌！Lì hài le wǒ de gē! appeared first on Ninchanese.

我喜欢坐火车旅行

Wǒ xǐhuan zuò huǒchē lǚxíng

I love taking the train to travel

Let’s break down the words:

• 我 – Wǒ – I, me, my. Here: I
• 喜欢 – xǐhuan –  to like, to be fond of.
• 坐  – zuò – to sit; to take
• 火车 –  huǒchē –  train
• 旅行 – lǚxíng – to travel, journey, trip. Here: to travel.
  • Here’s a tip to find 旅行 with your IME (input method editor, what allows you to type in Chinese): instead of the ü, type a v! That’s the norm in Chinese as most keyboards don’t have an easy way to type such things (with the exception of languages like French or German, that have diacritical marks like ¨ or accents).

Did you know?  To say “to take the train”, the Chinese say 坐火车, which literally means “to sit (in) the train”. That actually makes a lot of sense. When you take a train, you’re sitting on the train, not driving it, so why not be specific and say that instead of just “take”? Make sure you remember. In a similar fashion, you can say  坐公共汽车 to take the bus or  坐飞机, to take a plane.

Stay tuned for more of Nincha’s adventures and travels!

Related: Nincha discovers mooncakes!

The Nincha Team

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The post Nincha travels: 坐火车 – taking the train appeared first on Ninchanese.

Literally: the time comes, fortune turns.

Let’s break this Chinese quote down:

• 时 shí means time
• 来 lái means to come
• 运 yùn means luck, as in “祝你好运！I wish you good luck!”
• 转 zhuǎn means to turn

In other words:

时来运转 is a very inspiring Chinese quote

Sometimes you feel the world is against you and you just can’t get a break. Uncool things keep happening to you day after day and you should want to hide in your bed until it all stops.

Looks like the Chinese know better. They know that no matter what life throws at you, you’ve got to keep being a trooper. Don’t give up. Just stay strong and keep forging ahead. The wheel of life keeps turning, and one day your fortune will change. You will get your lucky break. Just give it time.

Isn’t that a good way to look at things? Don’t you think it’ll help you go forward when things get rough? Keep trucking ahead, and your luck will change.

The Nincha Team

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The post Chinese idiom: 时来运转 Get your lucky break appeared first on Ninchanese.

This week’s rather big update is all about your user experience learning Chinese. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve added a lot of new things in this update, including what we gave away in the title but not only! So now, you guys know what to do: experience the changes on Ninchanese and give us feedback! But first, you can read up on the improvements below.

In this week’s update, you’ll find:

A better responsive experience

We want you to be able to use Ninchanese everywhere: on your computer, on your tablet, on your phone… So making sure you can browse and use Ninchanese smoothly whatever the device you’re using is one of our priorities (I really want to use Ninchanese on my phone too!). Little by little, we’re working on improving the layout of Ninchanese on different screen resolutions. We’ve just redone some of the pages, such as the level selection screen where you choose what you’re going to do. Go on, give it a try, whip out your phone or resize the page. We guarantee it’ll look nice, whatever your screen (almost). Many more responsive improvements are coming in the next beta updates!

Improved display of the answers

Nincha put his paw down: No more displaying answers with definitions that were extremely long and tough to read, not to mention sometimes were cut-off in his vocab stages! Now, answers are displayed in a nice, numbered, orderly manner, so you can easily see what a word means, and get an idea of how many different meanings it has!

Sound plays automatically

You’ve been asking for this, and this beta update has listened. Now, when you get a word right in the vocab stages and in your reviews, it’ll play automatically! By hearing the sound more, you’ll be helping your brain make more associations and memorize the sound as well as the visual representation of the word. When you click on a block in the sentence building stage, you’ll also be able to hear the sound! Mewsic to your years, right?

A Meowsome Pop-up

You’re going to be friends with this pop-up

Perhaps this sounds familiar: you entered an answer, confident it was right, only to realize you gave the reading of the word in pinyin, rather than its meaning in English… Since the system was expecting English, your answer was counted as wrong. Well, good news, there is now a popup that gently lets you know that you entered the right word, but in the wrong language! You’ll therefore get a second chance to try again, albeit in the right language. We bet this was a major source of frustration for some. Now it’s gone. Sweet, no?
Naturally, if you get the answer wrong, no matter in what language, your answer will still be be counted as wrong.

A new help button with Nincha

Feeling a little confused about the word you just saw? Would like to have more information on it? Just hit help in the vocab stages and Nincha will take you straight to that word’s page, where you’ll be able to see the word’s stroke order, read example sentences, so you can understand how that word can be used and see how it behaves in context, and more!

Just hit Next!

Pick: go back to the selection screen or continue? You Clicked Continue? Skip selection. Go straight to the next stage. Don’t collect 20, 000. Uh, no, this is not Monopoly.  Still, we’ve added a new “next stage” button that’ll take you directly to the next stage without breaking your flow. Ain’t that cool? The next button is great when you want an uninterrupted study session in Mandarin Chinese!

New star system

As you learn words and get them right in your reviews, your memory level improves; this lets the Great Nincha Machine know you’re starting to know that word pretty well and can push back when it’ll show you the word again.
These stars were already visible in your word list, but we’ve decided to make them more visible: you can now see them in the vocab stages and in the reviews! They are an indicator of your progress and a better way to see where you are at in pushing that word in your long-term memory. We’re likely to be toying with these stars some more, so let us know what you think of them as they are now and if you see a need to improve them!

Unifying the structure

The whole structure of Ninchanese was redone and unified so that all stages work in a similar way (on our side at least) and have a unified design. It’s visually more pleasing, don’t you think? You might not see what changed that much, but believe us, it has, and these changes pave the way for a lot more, like the boss stages! Something to look forward in the near future

And a bunch more things in this beta update

In addition to all this, as usual, we’ve fixed a bunch of little stuff:

•  bug fixes: they’re spotted, they’re squashed.
• Word corrections: I corrected several words by adding some of your definition suggestions, fixing a typo here and there, and adding more example sentences. We also are gradually introducing British spelling for words, if you see any more that need British spelling, let us know in the feedback interface!
• Story fixes: there were a few typos to correct in the story, and sometimes Lupishu’s head wasn’t quite right…

These are little things we correct everyday as soon as we or you spot them, so if you see any such thing, you know what to do!

Before we stop rambling and let you go check out this beta update’s newest changes for yourself, one last word:
We hope you enjoy these improvements and they help you learn Chinese even better. Our commitment to bringing you an enjoyable and efficient Chinese learning experience is strong, so please, let us know what you like and don’t like, and what other features and improvements you’d like. As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback!

Enjoy learning Chinese!

The Nincha Team

With Ninchanese, enjoy learning everything you need to know to really speak Chinese! The web app is now in beta so sign up now to join the Ninchanese beta! Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest and pre-order now to get access to the full beta!

The post The Automatic Sound, Stars and Awesome Popup Beta Update appeared first on Ninchanese.

A hair-raising exams technique!

Ok, so this technique is sort of extreme. And not really what we recommend you should be doing to study! But as the first semester’s finals are looming near for Chinese students, some have taken to resorting to strange techniques to study. Or rather, to relieve the pressure a bit and relax during these stressful times. The girl in the picture was the first to show off this innovative but painful studying technique, which in turn inspired many other students to do the same! Who knows, maybe clothespins, shackles and smelly shoes really are the best way to stay focused and studying!

Inspired by a real chengyu

Maybe you’re wondering: Where on earth did the idea for this curious, albeit fake, study technique come from?  Well, from this very real Chengyu:

悬梁刺股 xuán liáng cì gǔ

A literal translation would be to tie one’s hair on the house beam and jab one’s side with an awl to keep oneself awake.

Character breakdown: “悬(xuán)” means “to hang”; “梁(liáng)” means the “house beam”; “刺 (cì) means “to pierce” and “股(gǔ)” means “legs”.

The meaning is slightly less literal and is “to grind away at one’s studies, to study tirelessly and assiduously…”, but hopefully without hurting oneself.

Talk about extreme! Guess at some point, this technique was really used?! While this chengyu isn’t really used anymore (its use has gotten really ironic and outdated…), it certainly continues to inspire Chinese students!

An obvious but real study tip

Fancy having to hurt yourself to make sure you don’t fall asleep by mistake! That’d be taking cramming too far, don’t you think? Here’s my (real but far less funny) study tip: take a few short naps from time to time (20 minutes tops!)! It’s simple but it works wonders and helps you stay refreshed while studying. In any case, we hope you never get driven to using such extreme techniques! And we promise we’ll teach you much more efficient Nincha techniques to learn Chinese on Ninchanese! No hair hanging for you! For those of you studying for exams right now, 加油 (jiā yóu)! Keep at it, it’s all worth it! Happy studying!

The Nincha Team

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The post The secret Chinese technique to pass your exams appeared first on Ninchanese.