This is the first part in our no frills series of vocabulary and phrase lists especially for beginners of the Chinese language. Each Chinese character, bigram or phrase is linked to our Online Dictionary. Click on the red links to see more information about the character, including pronunciation audio and stroke animations to help you… Read More
Conjunctions are words that connect phrases and clauses together to form a sentence. In English, some examples of conjunction words are ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘if’ and ‘because’. These words are very similar within the Chinese language, but often follow specific rules and patterns for them to make sense. Below is the first half of our lesson… Read More
It will only take [est_time] to read this post! When I began planning for my own wedding, I became curious about traditional Chinese weddings and how different they are in the modern day. In preparation for my own wedding, Nora and I went to a bridal ‘convention’ at the Shenzhen exhibition centre, it was full… Read More
Personal Pronouns in Chinese 人称代词 (rén chēng dài cí) One of the first words you probably need to learn is ‘I’ 我 (wǒ). Although in Chinese, you can often get away with missing off the 我 (wǒ) ‘I’ in spoken Chinese, it is important to use it within written Chinese. The word for ‘you’ is 你 (nǐ) and can also… Read More
The 在 (zài) character has several different uses, and since it’s a character that will appear soon after you begin learning Chinese, it’s a good idea to get yourself accustomed to its different functions. Most of them have to do with location, as primarily, 在 (zài) is used to express the phrase ‘to be located…’… Read More
We always love hearing from people out there that are studying Chinese, or live in China and want to share their stories with us. Some of you might have already listened to our spin-off podcast, the Two White Chicks in China, which is hosted by Nora and I. Each week we answer and discuss a… Read More