Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!

As (confusing) as possible

I was revising flashcards recently, and in a relatively short space of time there were sentences that included 尽可能 (jǐnkěnéng - as much as possible) and 尽力 (jìnlì - trying one's hardest).

Aside: 尽 (jin) means something like 'to the furthest extent', so since 力 means 'strength' and 可能 means 'possible', you can see how (尽X) words would work. 

Anyway, so my mind noticed - because the two sentences appeared just minutes apart - that in one I found myself saying jǐn (third tone - which is correct) and the other I said jìn (fourth tone - correct too). Chinese is always confusing - I've written about this plenty before - but I got to wondering when each would be correct.

The other word which then popped into my mind was 尽快 so I looked that up too ... damn!  The dictionary showed that it could be both jǐnkuài OR jìnkuài. So strange.

I was speaking to Judy about this oddity the other day, and she - as a HK'er who uses the traditional character system rather than the simplified system - pointed out the following ...

• This is a known oddity in Chinese, and even HK people note this when studying Mandarin
• If you use traditional characters, the words are written 儘可能 and 盡力, which shows us that actually they are not the same character in the traditional set (the 亻 component exists) - which partly explains why the one is third tone and the other is fourth tone
• 尽量 gets this right, because the one traditional variation is 盡量 which consistently uses the fourth tone (jìnliàng) while 儘量 consistently uses the third tone (jǐnliàng)
• However, when you look up 尽快 in the dictionary, you strangely find that not only can it be written using both forms of the traditional character (盡快 and 儘快), but even the matching tones that we observed above don't work here!

I guess this is a point of theoretical interest. It's nice to know, but if you're learning by listening & talking (and not just reading) then you'll get these points right anyway. Like in my case, I was actually correctly using the respective first & third tones without realising it - because that's how I learned each - and it was more coincidence than anything that I noticed it.

TL;DR:  Probably the right advice in this case is (a) listen to Chinese more (obviously!) and (b) if you're a flashcards kinda person (and you ought to be, if you're not yet advanced) then make a point of sometimes reading them out aloud - making sure the tones you're saying match the tones you're reading in the pinyin.

I've written before about words which - although the pronunciation remains the same - the meanings can be really flexible. But in this case it's about having the same meaning, but different pronunciations. Do you have any particular words which are as confusing as possible to you? Please leave a comment below ...

Cat's Delite

When I was very young I wrote a story at school, during which I used the word 'delite'. The teacher corrected this to 'delight' using her angry red pen. Later that evening my mom was looking at my work, and asked me why I spelled it incorrectly like that. I pointed out that I had seen the spelling on TV - and indeed I had. If my memory serves me correctly, there was a cat food product called "Cat's Delite" advertised, and they used the 'wrong' spelling for the brand name.

I remember feeling how unfair it was that incorrect (quote unquote) spelling was allowed on TV which could confuse us poor little innocent children.


And so we come to Chinese.

I had lunch recently with Jimmy, a language exchange partner. I forget what we were talking about, but when wanting to use the word "communicate" (i.e. people communicating with each other), I used the word 交通 (jiāotōng) - which Jimmy was quick to point it was not the correct word.  He recommended that I should use 交流 (jiāoliú) instead.

I know there are often many synonyms for a single word, and somehow I had convinced myself that 交通 was a valid alternative for 'communications'.  I was about to accept that I must have made it up, or something, when Jimmy came up with a suggestion ... and he was right!

Yup, all over HK I see the logo for Bank of Communications, and the word 交通 appears there. In my mind I guess I had therefore connected those two words - even though in fact 交通 is more about 'traffic' than about people 'communicating' with each other.

Sigh, us poor little innocent language learners. Learner's Delite indeed.


Have u incorrectly learned words that terned out knot two bee rite?  Drop a note be low and rite a comment ...

Stoned Horses

When students learn to read & write Chinese characters, there are broadly two ways of doing it. The first is 'brute force' where you practise the strokes over & over again until you have internalised them, and the second is to use some method of visualisation which allows you to decompose the characters into parts - and piece them together again using imagary (which is much easier to remember that just pure strokes).

Although I used the Heisig method to learn 3000 characters (and I've blogged extensively on this - you can find the full collection here), note that what I'm writing below is about visualisation in general, and is not specific to the Heisig approach.

Take for example the character for 'numeral' - which is 码 (mǎ, also written 嗎 in the traditional system). You can see it's made up of 石 (stone) and 马 (horse). When I learned this character, I naturally had to create an image of why stone+horse=numeral. In this case, a flood of images came to mind, and I realised there were so many options.

So many examples!

It got me thinking of times I've spoken to people about visualisation methods, and they say it's so hard to create images. So in addition to the very popular article Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations, I decided to share here a range of images that I could use for this character.

• I picture the Terracotta Army, but instead of rows and rows of soldiers, I picture rows and rows of stone horses. And of course, since this is a very valuable collection, I imagine each horse is numbered - as you often see in museums. I suppose you can use this & this to help you create the image yourself. Ultimately this is my preferred image for remembering that stone+horse=numeral. Your preferred image may be different, and that's OK.
• Or I can see a horse doing maths. You know, with numerals. But horses can't write in books, so this horse has a few stones laid out on the ground before him, and he is moving them around, a little like someone might use an abacus, to do the calculations. 
• I can also visualise a ten-pin bowling alley, but you won't find pins at this place - instead you will find 10 stone horses at the bottom of the bowling lane. Can you see as your ball hits them, they break from the impact - and your score (such a high number!) appears on the board above you.
• Maybe there are horses running a race, but the track has lots of loose stones on the track, and each time a horse stumbles on the stone and falls, someone keeping score of 'lost' horses chalks up a higher numeral on the board.
• How about a large piece of cardboard which is part of a colour-by-numbers approach. But with this one you don't paint according to the number, you place a stone of different colour on that number. And when it's done and you step back, you can see it's a horse!
• Another possibility is to imagine cave paintings of horses scratched into the stone walls, but when you look more closely you notice that between the pictures of horses there are numbers - almost like the person was doing maths with horses as numerals. 
• Alternatively, I can see a gateway with a stone horse head mounted on top (it looks a little like this) - there is someone sitting astride that head, and as people pass through the gateway, she updates the numerals in her notepad, since she's counting people who use this entrance. 

Choosing the best one

Let's be clear, the one that is best for me may not be the best for you - so don't simply choose the one that I have chosen, but recognise which one best matches the way your own thinking works.

(It is possible to come up with really bad images, which I've written about here, but none of the above ones fails the tests in that article.)

After having done 3000 characters this way, I know instinctively how my brain works. And if you repeatedly hypnotised me to forget this character, and kept asking me to (re)create an image, it would probably be the first one, again & again. This is important, because in future when you're facing the character in The Real World © you will indeed need to see 码 then think stone+horse, and if your mind comes up with a different image, then you're never going to be able to work out what character you're looking at!)

So?

Did this help? Is it useful to be reminded that there really are so many (good) ways of creating images, that we shouldn't feel helpless, and we shouldn't forgive ourselves for feeling we can only come up with poor images?

So while you're in a visualisation mood, challenge yourself … Pick one or two of the characters below and create a few images that actually work. For fun.

• 敌: tongue+taskmaster = enemy
• 妄: perish+woman = absurd
• 坏: earth+NO = bad
• 如: woman+mouth = if

Leave a comment if you have any clever thoughts. Or if you have any dumb thoughts, that's OK too.

Ridiculously flexible words

When you start learning Chinese, you figure out relatively quickly how the language puts characters together to make words.

Since 好 (hǎo) means 'good', it makes sense that 好友 is a 'close friend', 好看 is 'good looking', 好处 is an 'advantage', 好心 is 'kind hearted', and so on.

Deep down, I want Chinese to be like this all the time: consistent, and easy to learn. Unfortunately, life isn't fair. And Chinese isn't like this.

The one character, more than any others I have found, that seems to represent so many different things, is the character 节 / 節 (usually pronounced jié). The MDBG dictionary provides this selection of possible meanings: "festival / holiday / node / joint / section / segment / part / to economize / to save / to abridge / moral integrity / classifier for segments, e.g. lessons, train wagons, biblical verses".

I was seeing this character appearing in so many (very different) words, which is what got me thinking,  including: 节目 (jié​mù) = program;  春节 (Chūn​jié) = Spring Festival (but it also applies to most festivals including Christmas & Valentines Day);  章节 (zhāng​jié) = chapter;  细节 (xì​jié) = details;  空气调节 (kōng​qì​tiáo​jié) = aircon;  etc.

Not sure about you, but I find this confusing!

In an attempt to gain control of this character, with Judy's help, I came up with the following sentence to put in my flashcard pack.

     On Thanksgiving, frugal people might buy energy-saving lightbulbs in order to save money
     在感恩节，节俭的人可能买节能的灯泡来节省金钱
     在感恩節，節儉的人可能買節能的燈泡來節省金錢
     zài Gǎn'ēnjié, jiéjiǎn de rén kěnéng mǎi jiénéng de dēngpào lái jiéshěng jīnqián

(And if you remember, it really does help to create 'special' sentences for you flashcard pack, as I've written about here: The clever butcher uses a cleaver)


What about you? Do you have a character in mind that has many meanings? If so, please leave a comment below (anonymous notes are welcome too!).

Mandarin does not use these Cantonese characters

In the previous article I wrote - about Chinese people confusing 'he' and 'she' when speaking English - we discussed a very common word that is used in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin. That got me thinking about other characters which similarly appear in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin.

Of course there are many expressions that are used in one and not the other (for example, while Mandarin says 不好看, Cantonese instead says 唔好睇) - after all, they are two different languages. But in this article I'm going to avoid expressions, and rather focus on individual characters that have this feature.

As a cheat - since I don't speak Cantonese :) - my starting point was to search in the MDBG online dictionary for the word 'Cantonese', which gave me 99 results, from which I started to whittle the list down to ones worthy of being included in this article ...

• 唔: This is the first obvious one which means 'no' or 'not'. In theory it's pronounced wú in Mandarin, but it's only* used in Cantonese where it's pronounced m4. This is extremely common in Cantonese, generally used where Mandarin would use 不 - so for example 'bad' in Mandarin is 不好 whereas in Cantonese it would be 唔好.
• 冇: In Mandarin it is pronounced mǎo, but in Cantonese it's mou5. The closest Mandarin word to this character might be 没有 (méi​yǒu - which even sounds very similar to mou5). This is another very common character in Cantonese. To be clear, I have never seen this used in Mandarin.
• 佢: This is he/she/it in Cantonese: keoi5. No need to discuss this one - since I wrote an entire article on it before :-)
• 嘅: This is the Cantonese equivalent of the Mandarin possessive article 的. In Cantonese 嘅 is pronounced ge3.
• 呢: This character as used mostly in 呢個 to mean 'this' - basically it's the same as 這個 in Mandarin (or 这个 in the simplified system)) and is pronounced ni1.
• 嗰: Similarly, this character is used for 'that' in Cantonese - usually in the word 嗰個, which is pronounced go2go3. Mandarin would use 那個 (Simplified: 那个) instead. 
• 喺: This is the Cantonese equivalent of 在 (to be at) - and it is pronounced hai2.
• 咩: This is pronounced me1, and it indicates surprise by turning the sentence into a question. For example, 係咩 (hai6me1) means "Really?"
• 佬: If you're a foreigner living in HK, you will hear this character every day - part of the word 'gweilo' - this character is actually pronounced lou2. Therefore 'gweilo' actually means 'male ghost' (and not 'old ghost' - which is a common mistake that confuses 佬 with 老).
• 乜嘢: This is pronounced mat1 je5 in Cantonese, meaning 'what' or 'why'. Since both characters are unique to Cantonese, and since they are commonly used together in this compound word, I just gave them a single entry. It has the same meaning as Mandarin's 什么 or perhaps 东西.
• 咗: This is pronounced zo2, and puts the sentence into past-tense, in the same way that Mandarin might use 了 or 过 (過).
• 咁: The character is pronounced gam3, and can mean 'so' (like Mandarin's 这样) or 'very' (like 很).
• 噉: This is the other 'gam' word of interest, although the tone here is different: gam2. It means 'in that case' or 'and then'. When I'm listening to my colleagues speaking on the phone, I hear this word a lot! (In written Cantonese, this is sometimes just written as 咁, apparently.)
• 啱: The character is the Cantonese equivalent of Mandarin's 对 (Traditional:對), meaning 'correct'. It is pronounced ngaam1.  (And because you, Dear Reader, are so clever - you probably already worked out by yourself that we can piece together two of these characters to get the Cantonese word for incorrect: 唔啱.)
• There are a few more that are worth listing here because they are quite common, but I will just group them together: They include 搵 (find, like 找), 瞓 (sleep, like 睡), 噏 (gossip), 攰 (tired, like 累), 嘥 (to waste), 屌 (to fuck), and finally 餸 (a side dish). 

In the past (before moving to HK), I had been reading Chinese comics which I picked up on my travels, wondering why I was struggling to understand the text so much - and I kept seeing strange characters (like 冇). That is how I originally realised that there are indeed characters which are used in Cantonese and not Mandarin, which explains why at the time I couldn't easily work out what the text was saying.

So now we all know. 冇問題.

Luke, SHE is your father

I'm sure you've noticed, when talking English with native-Chinese people, that they sometimes mistakenly interchange 'he' and 'she'. And although I noticed it in China, it is certainly more common in Hong Kong.

In Mandarin, 'he' (他) and 'she' (她) are both pronounced 'tā'  (same sound and same first tone). And I had convinced myself that because the two words sound the same, that in the mind of Chinese people it must be easy to confuse the translation into English.

But there were two things that kept bothering me ... (1) I figured Chinese people were more likely to think in terms of characters than pronunciations (since so many words sound the same), and (2) Why was the confusion of he/she so much more common in Hong Kong than mainland China?

Clearly, this wasn't the explanation I was looking for.  (*)

And it was only a couple of weeks ago that I found out!  Which surprises me since I've been living in HK for nearly three years already.

It turns out that in Cantonese they actually use the same word for 'he' and 'she' - 佢. In Mandarin, this is pronounced qú, and in Cantonese it's pronounced keoi5.  Yes you can find both 他 and 她 in a Cantonese dictionary (both pronounced 'taa1'), but it's not the one they use. So now we know.

佢 ... Yes, the force is strong with this one. (*)

Mando-lish-nese: the trilingual bookstore name

In the heart of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay (the shopping district with the highest rent in the world, higher even than New York's Fifth Avenue, and double that of Tokyo's Ginza district), I saw this book store:

... and the name of the place really intrigued me. You can see it better here:

If I were to tell you that the English name is derived from the Chinese name, would you believe me? Possibly not, so let me take you through my logic ...

• 樂文 = Luck-Win  (In Simplified characters it's 乐文, but ignore that for now - this is HK)
• You probably know 樂 from 快樂 (kuàilè = happy, S=快乐) - and 樂 by itself means 'happy', not 'lucky'
• Similarly 文 is from 文化 (wénhuà = culture), and 文 by itself means 'culture' not 'win'

So what's going on?

• The first clue is that 文 is pronounced wén in Mandarin, and that sounds exactly like 'win'
• But that hasn't solved the problem, because 樂 is pronounced 'le' and not 'luck'
• So now we leap across to Cantonese, where 樂 is actually pronounced 'lok', and yes - that does sound a little like 'luck'

So I thought that was cute - like many Chinese brands, the name of the book store is so positive (Luck-Win), and actually the English name can be derived from Chinese ... but not from the meaning of the characters, only from the pronunciation.  And even better than that, one comes from Cantonese pronunciation, and one comes from Mandarin pronunciation.

I think my next project will be an online Mando-lish-nese dictionary. Clearly there is need for something like that :-)

Charlie Brown teaches Chinese sentence structures

I recently wrote an article entitled "The sentence with (the girl with (the dragon tattoo) )" where I spoke about how Chinese sentences are sometimes put together.  I presented a set of 13 examples where I showed how the ability to (mentally) apply brackets to a sentence makes it much easier - indeed makes it possible! - to understand what is being written.

What I didn't want to give is the impression that these structures are not common - in fact it was because they are so common that I decided to write about them in the first place.

So, to make my point (and to make it in a fun way) I paged through a Chinese version of the Peanuts cartoon strip, starring our little hero Charlie Brown.  Here are some frames which give more examples of  "(require brackets)'d sentences"   :-)

By the way, if you're not at the level of reading as many Chinese characters as this, don't worry about it. Focus on the English versions of the sentences, to start to get a feel for how they are constructed in Chinese.

(click on the images for clearer shots)

Frame 1:

This first frame is a great example of just how long the 'middle' phrases can be, and if you don't spot the opportunity to put in some brackets, then the sentence is going to seem like garbage (like it did with me, when I first saw this frame):

我要告诉你一些我以前从来没对任何人讲过的事情

我要告诉你一些(我以前从来没对任何人讲过)的事情

I want to tell you some (...) things

I want to tell you some (I have never told anyone before) things

I guess the clue is that after the words 一些 ('some') it seems to immediately begin a new sentence (我以前 ...) without any preposition or conjunction. That should get you thinking about brackets!

Frame 2:

你能不能把它放在一个我能想起来的地方？

你能不能把它放在一个(我能想起来)的地方？

Can you put them in a (...) place?

Can you put them in a (I am able to remember) place?

Frame 3:

我看见一个坐在南瓜地里的傻孩子

我看见一个((坐在南瓜地)里)的傻孩子

I can see a (...) dumb child

I can see a (sitting inside a pumpkin patch) dumb child

I used a double-brackets in the Chinese sentence to emphasise how prepositions (like 里=inside) are applied in Chinese, if that's not quite obvious to you yet.

Happy reading (subjects that you find interesting)'d texts.

Choosing a Chinese Teacher

Previously I have written in broad terms about how I use a Chinese teacher as part of my self-study regime, and following that I'd like to describe how I choose teachers who are consistent with those goals. If you've used a different basis for making your own decision, please feel free to leave some comments below.

learning online

Although this is not really for me, there are many websites where you can get online teachers, ad hoc or pre-booked with them, and learn via Skype or other video software. A couple sites which I have previously bookmarked that provide this service include ChineseTeachers, TutorChinese and eChineseLearning- and there are a lot more.

I believe this type of site is quite popular, and maybe depending on your lifestyle or location this would be the only reasonable option. But I like the human contact of sitting opposite someone in a coffee shop, drinking a hot latte, and sharing Chinese. I like watching them write on paper rather than type on a screen, and I like their being able to underline words, use arrows to show where my verb should have gone, and cross things out.

So I choose live teaching for myself. For others I recommend whatever words best for *you*.

choosing a Real! Live! teacher  

I started off searching the web for Chinese teachers in my area. Especially in Hong Kong, a number of nearby language-specialist schools appear in the results, but I focus on those offering lessons as individuals. This choice was discussed in a previous post - I don't want to be constrained by attending pre-planned lessons or even have to wait my turn to ask a question in small group. And although these school do offer 1-to-1 lessons, they are materially more expensive than 1-to-1 lessons with private teachers.

Then I corresponded with each of the potential teachers I found, asking about costs, and possible times (weekdays/weekends, mornings/afternoons/evenings, and flexibility - because of my travel schedule). Additionally, I filtered out teachers for other reasons:

• There were some teachers who were insisting that they'd take me chapter-by-chapter through a text book - but that would have bored me to death so I rejected them. 
• There were others who insisted on a minimum number of hours a week - I rejected them too, because I'm in charge of my time, not them.
• For my most recent choice, I loved the fact that in addition to knowing English, Mandarin & Cantonese - she is currently learning French & Spanish herself, so truly understands the challenges of language learning.  

I tried one or two lessons with the 'finalists' :-) and rejected some of those for a variety of reasons:

• their inability to speak at a speed that I was happy with
• the fact that their pronunciation wasn't always 'standard' enough (one claimed to speak Putonghua but I struggled to get even half of her simple sentences)
• the quality of their explanations when I asked questions.

And that is how I decided.

As always, these thoughts reflect what works for me. Make sure you focus on what works for you - and follow that through. Good luck!

I would love to hear from you how you chose a teacher, or chose not to have a teacher. What things does a teacher do that bothers you? What do you really appreciate? And if you're a fan of online teaching, let us know how it works for you.

Heisig: my just desserts

I was reminded recently that there is a large gap between knowing individual Chinese characters, and being able to understand what the entire phrase or sentence might mean.

This is already an idea I know well, I certainly mentioned it a few times in my series on learning to read using the Heisig system, and I've left numerous comments on others' blogs to that effect.

Nevertheless, I felt this example was 'extreme' enough to be worth sharing.


As you can see from the photo attached, there is an item on this late-night dessert place, which says:
    南北杏木瓜雪耳


(By the way, I did screw up a bit by initially confusing the 杏 character with 否. Forgive me?)

Anyway ... so doing what I normally do, I tried to work out what the dessert was. Actually, from my Heisig days, I knew the meaning of every character, which are as follow:
    = South North apricot wood melon snow ear

I had no idea what that was!   (All I could guess was that there was melon in there.)

It's easy enough to put this through a dictionary, but even here, it doesn't get much better, because I'm still left with:
    = South North apricot [papaya] snow ear


Upon discussing this with a HK friend, it turns out that the expressions are Cantonese in nature, and so knowing Mandarin (or using a Mandarin dictionary) isn't going to help much. But I persisted ...

Now, using human input and a Cantonese dictionary, I discover that the grouping should be as follows:
    (南北杏)(木瓜)(雪耳)
    (almond)(papaya)(white fungus)


Aside: According to Wikipedia, apricot kernels are sometimes used instead of bitter almonds, but it seems to be accepted in HK amongst those I spoke to that when they see 南北杏 they generally take it to mean 'almond'. White Fungus, in this case, does indeed look more ear-like than mushroom-like.

So there we have it. (Although *I* didn't have it.  No, I ate some kind of warm red bean soup instead. Mainly because I didn't need a dictionary for that one!).

Chinese seems hard, but it's actually harder than that! :-)


Can you recall any specific words that you learned along the way where the word or phrase looks *nothing* like the characters which make it up? If so, please leave a comment below.

Life Sentences - a new series

This is the first part of a new series about sentences in Mandarin Chinese.

For a few months now, I have been on a new journey in my Mandarin learning. The previous one was working through Heisig & Richardson's first book (simplified or traditional, affiliated links) on learning how to read and write Chinese. I made it through 1500 characters in about 3-4 months, and I had great support from all of you as I did so.

But now being able to read & write characters, and having learned a whole bunch of compound words (through flashcards), I have extended this into understanding how Mandarin sentences are constructed. In my opinion, this is the least intuitive part of learning Chinese, and it's what keeps me from having coversations which flow as smoothly as I'd like.

Don't believe people who tell you that Mandarin is the same as English: subject-verb-object.  I mean, it is. Kinda.

The problem is that when you first get past "I drink beer" (我喝啤酒, wǒ​ hē​ pí​jiǔ) (subject-verb-object, in both cases), things get a bit fuzzy and non-intuitive. But once you've got a feel for Chinese sentences, it starts to come back into focus, and you realise that to a large degree (again!) it is S-V-O.

Just to show you what I mean about this being non-intuitive, take a look at the following sentences, which are arranged as follows:
   English
   Simplified Chinese
   Traditional Chinese
   Pinyin
   Literal translation

S1. What should I give him as a gift?
我该送什么礼物给他?
我該送什麼禮物給他?
wǒ gāi sòng shénme lǐwù gěi tā?
(I) (should) (give) (what gift) (give him)?

S2. She enjoys sharing her experience of learning the Chinese language.
她很喜歡跟別人分享她學習中文的經驗｡
她很喜欢跟别人分享她学习中文的经验｡
Tā hěn xǐhuan gēn biérén fēnxiǎng tā xuéxí Zhōngwén de jīngyàn.
(she) (very likes) (with others) (share) (her) (study Chinese)'s (experience).

S3. People who want a tattoo must go to a proper tatto parlour.
要文身的人, 必须去专业的文身店｡
要文身的人, 必須去專業的文身店｡
yào​ wén​shēn​ de rén​, bì​xū​ qù​ zhuān​yè​ de wén​shēn​ diàn​.
(want tattoo)'s (people), (must) (go to) (professional)'s (tattoo parlour)


Certainly not intuitive, but definitely learnable.


The purpose of this series is to get you as quickly from the "newbie S-V-O" to the "more advanced S-V-O" phase, without getting too stuck in the middle. And this is as much to document my learning for myself, as it is to share my learning for your benefit.


To make sure you don't miss out, ensure you subscribe to Mandarin Segments. I look forward to your active participation.

Copyright acknowledgement: Over time I have collected a variety of sentences, and loaded them into my flashcard system. By this stage, I no longer have any idea where they came from. Some are of my own construction, or from friends who have emailed or instant-messaged me. Others have been copied from websites along the way. To make sure I give credit where due, the following sites are the most likely external sources:
   About Mandarin
   JuKuu
   iChaCha
   Engkoo
   Bing Search
   20,000 Mandarin Sentences
   Nciku Dictionary
   ChinesePod
   Popup Chinese
   Collins (paper) dictionary


Articles in the Life Sentences series so far:

• Getting Sentenced in Mandarin: where to get sample sentences

To see all posts in the "Life Sentences" series, click here. 

Heisig - wherefore art thou now?

Nearly three months ago, I announced that I had finished working  my way through Heisig's "Book 1" on learning to read & write the first 1500 characters Chinese characters. I just wanted to update you on what I've been doing since them in terms of reading/writing.

Whether you're interested because deep down inside you're a voyeur, or because you're curious what may be in store for you when you finish book 1,  please keep reading ...

This is an update on my experiment to learn to read Chinese. You can also read my original post on this topic, or check out all other posts on my experiment. After a bit of research I settled on Heisig's "Remembering the Simplified Hanzi" method - which is progressing really well.

The observations are quite simple:

• I have done almost no revision using the Heisig book (although I did try for the first week after completing the book). I have not used any Heisig flashcards either.
• I did become increasingly aware, while doing Heisig, of the importance of knowing lots of compound words, and have since put lots of effort into that - instead of revising Heisig.
• I do try to read some tweets in Chinese, the odd Chinese website, and some Chinese cartoon & children's books I bought a few months ago.
• Of the 1500 hanzi that I learned, I would guess that I know 500 really well so that I can read them without having to work out what it means, 500 I have to work out using the Heisig image system, and 500 I have probably forgotten and will have to re-learn (although that will be pretty quick I'm sure).

So basically, there has been a "polarisation" of those 1500 characters. Some of the characters have become increasingly firmly embedded, and others have faded away.

Of course I'm disappointed to have forgotten anything at all, but sometimes that's the reality of living in the Real World (tm) - and not having enough time to do what you want. However, don't confuse forgetting some characters with having wasted my time.

This has not been a waste of time. In fact, my time with Heisig still feels like a massive success.

I am now very comfortable using instant chat with my Chinese friends (Skype, QQ, Sametime), communicating only in hanzi. There is very little more satisfying for me at the moment than closing down a Skype window, for example, staring at dozens of lines of pure Chinese characters.  (Even now, a little self-satisfied shiver runs down my spine :-)

I'm sure I will spend time with Heisig Book 1 in future, actively revising. I just don't have time. Bit by bit, when I come across hanzi I don't recognise, I will look them up, remember the Heisig image, and they will become firmly embedded too.

And eventually, I'll take up Book 2. (Although at this rate, I might be ready for Book 2 before Book 2 is ready for me!)

Complicating the Simplified

For those who missed the announcent, the Chinese government will be issuing a series of official changes to the "simplified" written system where it has been over-simplified. There's plenty of debate as to whether they're heading back to the "Traditional" system.

You can read more about this in The Economist.

So why choose Mandarin?

Once I had decided to study Chinese, my next step was to choose between Mandarin & Cantonese.

In retrospect, based on everything I now know, it should have been an easy choice. But I spent quite a lot of time reading, reviewing & debating. In case it helps you, here are some of the items I considered at the time.

• According to Wolfram|Alpha, there are approximately 1 billion people who speak Mandarin, of which nearly 900m speak it as their first language. Cantonese, on the other hand, is spoken by 55m people. Mandarin is by far the number 1 language in terms of the number of native speakers, and that's a good reason to speak it.
• And of the 55m who speak Cantonese, a large proportion also speak English. For Mandarin, this is not the case - so in terms of actually needing to speak Chinese, Mandarin is the clear choice.
• Mandarin has 4 tones (plus neutral), which is difficult enough for Westerners to grasp. Cantonese has 9 tones (plus neutral), which definitely makes it more difficult topick up.
• Even in Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the main language, in recent years it has been Mandarin that is now compulsorily taught (especially at international schools), and not Cantonese as I would have thought.
• Most of the material on the web for learning Chinese is Mandarin-based. It's not impossible to find Cantonese material, but the choice is certainly much more limited.

The main reasons I would have chosen Cantonese were:

• I was visiting Hong Kong quite often, and Cantonese is the main Chinese language spoken there.
• Chinese restaurants generally seem to have Cantonese-speaking staff. Of course I'm generalising, but when I eat Chinese - in London, New York, Munich, Zurich, Johannesburg - they don't always speak Mandarin, just Cantonese.

Life's never simple, and so even choosing Mandarin isn't enough - because there are many dialects which exist too. The most commonly-taught version is Standard Mandarin, known as Pǔtōnghuà [普通话]. And the good news is that most of the Mandarin course material on the Net seems to focus on this Standard Mandarin. Other variations include Guóyǔ [国语] which is spoken in Taiwan and is actually quite similar, Shangainese, Beijing dialect, and others.

Here are some additional links which might be of interest:

• Mandarin on Wikipedia
  
• Cantonese on Wikipedia
  

And if you have a different opinion to mine, let me know in the comments.