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Chinese Radicals: The Beginner’s Guide

In Uncategorized by Skritter

It’s common for beginners and sometimes even more advanced students to lack an understanding of how Chinese characters are structured. This includes misconceptions about components and radicals. In this article, I’m going to address some …

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Mandarin Chinese Polyphones

In Chinese by Sarah Heath

This is a guest post from That’s Mandarin. Find out more at the end of this article. Having trouble distinguishing between when to use a certain pronunciation for the same character? Ever not understood a sentence …

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Year of the Tiger Auspicious Phrases

In Chinese by Gwilym James

It’s the Year of the Tiger which means that aside from the usual phrases like 新年快乐 xīnnián kuàilè – Happy New Year, you can also learn some lucky phrases to wish people well during the …

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Making Tangyuan for the Winter Solstice

In Chinese by Gwilym James

The Winter Solstice 你听过“冬至”吗?冬至是一年里白天最短、黑夜最长的日子。冬至在古代被当作过年,虽然在台湾冬至没有放假,但还是一个很重要的节日。 Have you heard of the Dongzhi Festival? It is also known as the Winter Solstice in Taiwan – the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Traditionally, Dongzhi was …

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The new HSK 3.0: What you need to know

In Chinese by Olle Linge

Big changes are coming to the HSK, the most widely used proficiency test for Mandarin Chinese for non-native speakers. The new standard takes effect on July 1st, 2021, and in this post we take a deep dive into what changes are coming, what they mean for you as a student. We also present vocabulary lists for HSK 1-9, including lists specifically for handwriting.