Has there ever been that time where you come across a word written in katakana, but then find out that after sounding it out you still have no idea what it means? For those that …
Culture Corner : 好好学习，天天向上
In this weeks edition of culture corner we look back at revolutionary China, and a famous saying by Mao Ze-Dong: (S) 好好学习，天天向上 (T) 好好學習，天天向上 (P) hǎo hǎo xué xí, tiān tiān xiàng shàng (E) Study …
Tone Sandhi: Tone Changes for the Character “一”
Tone Sandhi: Tone Changes for the Character “不” Tone Sandhi: The Third Tone The Neutral Tone Studying words on Skritter I’m sure you’ve noticed when “不要” (don’t want) gets written as “bú yào” rather than …
Japanese Grammar
Slurping soup for politeness, reading a book right to left, the side of the road you drive on, and the emergency telephone number in Japan (119) are not the only things “backwards”-seeming to Americans, but …
Culture Corner: 少壮不努力，老大徒伤悲
Today on the Skritter blog I’m proud to introduce the first entry in the Culture Corner series. Culture Corner was inspired in a large part by an ongoing conversation I’ve been having with Olle over …
Making good use out of frequency lists
Last time on the Skritter blog I talked about the pitfalls of context free learning and list overdose. Near the end of the post I did, however, mention that these mega lists can be used …
Kanji vs. Hanzi
As anyone reading this probably knows, the concept of kanji first originated from China way back when, and there is a whole other theory on how Chinese characters themselves may have been created, which involves …
List Overdose
I promised Nick I wouldn’t be a grump while writing this post, so let’s kick things off with a tragically funny comic I found on Laowai Comics: Who really wants to be like Harry? (image …
Chinese Character Acquisition: A Native Perspective
This week’s blog post is in response to a question submitted by one of our Skritter members, Drew. He wrote us and asked: “I am always fascinated by how native Chinese speakers identify characters by referencing the pronunciation and …
Japanese Language Brain
This post has a Japanese version below. Feel free to practice by reading it first! There is something fascinating about the way the Japanese-language-speaking brain works. It has to do with the way that the brain …