Laowai Chinese has moved

Due to perpetual banning and unbanning by China, this blog has moved. Please update your bookmarks to point to the new site: www.laowaichinese.net

Not banned. hǎo xiāoxi

(I don't know why the "hǎo" in the title looks dumb in Internet Explorer...sorry)

Well, for whatever reason, the blog is back up in China. So please destroy any links to the pirated pkblogs.com version (as I have done).

Here's some appropriate vocabulary to celebrate with:

hǎo xiāoxi = good news

huài xiāoxi = bad news

I actually think of that "xiāoxi" should as "information" or "message." If you want to say "read the news" it's a different word:

kàn xīnwén = read the news [look new + smell/hear]

Weird that "to smell" can also mean "to hear." And, even though it's not SUPER important, the correct measure word for both kinds of news seems to be "tiáo" {measure word for long, narrow things} according to Chubby. Doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I always imagine ancient Chinese messengers reading decrees from the emperor on long scrolls (remember ancient Chinese was written top to bottom, right to left). But thankfully, they actually seem to prefer the old "ge" measure word in this case:

wǒ yǒu yí gè hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have one {m.} good message] **better**
wǒ yǒu yì tiáo hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have one {m.} good message]

Don't be alarmed that the tone for "yi" changed. That's what it does. There's a post in the works about the tone changes.

It's apparently also ok to say

wǒ yǒu hǎo xiāoxi = I've got good news [I have good message]

But omitting the "one" part of it seems to imply that you have a whole bunch of news to share. And, more importantly, the Chinese usually have that measure word in there when they say it and hey...they're the boss.

And now that final step of integrating the vocab into my daily life:

wǒ yǒu yí gè hǎo xiāoxi: wǒ de bókè huílái le = I've got good news: my blog came back

Banned. zěnme bàn?

If you're able to read this you should be as glad as I am. It seems that China has, for whatever reason, blocked access to all blogger/blogspot blogs. I think the email updates should still be going out. But if you're in mainland China (I still haven't heard from that island off the east coast) you won't be able to access it directly.

Regardless of what context may suggest, "zěnme bàn?" doesn't mean "how did they ban me?" It's the bàn of bànfǎ = method [do way]. A good translation would be:

zěnme bàn? = what's to be done? / what should we do?

I used that the other day when my water dispenser sprung a leak. The guy delivered a new bottle and I showed him the puddle. He then waxed eloquent, totally losing me, saying things I'm sure boiled down to stuff like:

"Well this particular model, when inundated with an influx of new water after a freshly replenished container is installed, seems to have a tendency to backwash ever so slightly, while, I shouldn't fail to mention that, a simple preemptive strike--viz. draining the surplus water before installing the new jug--may very well serve to nip this problem in the bud."

I blinked at him loudly and said simply, "zěnme bàn?"

He then sprung into action demonstrating and implementing what he had (I'm sure) just explained and all was made clear. Never mind that it didn't solve the problem. I called him the next day saying:

hái yǒu yíyàng de wèntí. zěnme bàn? = (it) still has the same problem. What should we do?

The point is, this is a useful little phrase that, even if it doesn't lead to a real solution, might at least lead to action.

Which brings me back to the problem of this blog. Here's what I suggest:

1. If you're in China: depend on the email updates. To subcribe (or refer someone to subscribe) click here. Amzingly, you still seem to be able to leave comments (see "comments" link at bottom of the email). And, if you MUST look at the website version of this blog, you can go here (as long as it lasts) and type in "laowaichinese". But please don't make any links to the pirated pkblogs.com version becaise if/when my real blog comes back, that sight will be useless. There are also a lot of people complaining that pkblogs.com is stealing their "google ranking" which basically means people are linking to that site rather than the original one.
2. If you're not in China: enjoy your free access and let me know if there are any strange layout problems.

Field Notes

Even though it might seem like a no-brainer to you, enough people have commented on my little notebook that I thought it merited a short post.

I rarely leave home without my little notebook:

• I have a medium-sized notebook so I can write little phrases on one line. But it still fits in my pocket.
• On the left-hand pages I write single vocabulary words. I suggest writing them with English on the left like this: "English word = yīngwén dāncí". I haven't always done it like that but it makes it real hard to "look up" a word if my eyes are first hitting a bunch of pinyin. Also, if I'm walking, thinking my little thoughts, and I suddenly realize there's a word I want to know, I immediately write the English word and leave the Chinese side blank until I get the answer, like "escalator = " (it's the same as "elevator" by the way: "diàntī")
• On the right-hand pages I write phrases or little proverbs. Ideally (although I'm way behind), a native-speaker informant would record each of these phrases, as well as saying the page number, so I can memorize whole chunks of tonally correct Chinese.
• I laminated the outside cover of my notebook with packaging tape so that rain won't wreak immediate havoc on it.

Organize it however you want, but I strongly recommend carrying a field notebook whenever Chinese interaction, or even dead time that you might want to use as study time, is on the horizon.

MDBG Online Dictionary - My review

See also MDBG Online Dictionary - Tutorial

Having looked at most of the major online Chinese-English dictionaries, there is absolutely no contest as to which is the best for laowai trying to learn Chinese.

There are two ways to get to the MDBG Chinese-English dictionary:

www.xuezhongwen.net (easier to remember)
www.mdbg.net

While it might be confusing to get past the first screen, the actual user interface is by far the simplest out there. Other dictionaries are so cluttered I sometimes don't know where to type my query.

Strengths

1. Simple, easy-to-use interface
2. You can input English, pinyin, or hanzi characters in the same box (even at the same time) without switching modes
3. Accepts wildcards (*) when searching for a word (e.g. "chin*" gives you results including "China" and "Chinese")
4. Shows all entries containing your search or you can group (with "quotation marks") and or limit your search to exact matches
5. Pronounces pinyin syllables in an audio file (no need to download an extra plug-in)
6. Shows Cantonese pronunciation (Yale and Jyutping) for every hanzi character
7. Scissors tool that let's you see literal translation for every hanzi character in an entry
8. You can then select one hanzi character and see every entry that uses that character
9. Hanzi "sentence mode" that will translate every word in a big string of characters
10. Shows and recognizes traditional and simplified hanzi characters for every entry
11. Shows radicals needed to write each hanzi character
12. Shows stroke order and direction for each hanzi character (very useful if you want to write a new character)
13. Anyone can submit new entries or corrections to the dictionary. And my experience has been that they are actually reviewed and incorporated.
14. There are also a few other tools I never use including: hanzi character quiz, text annotation, and character encoding and converting for web pages

Weaknesses (a very weak list)

1. Limited vocabulary. It's, of course, a weakness of every dictionary. But just a warning that this dictionary doesn't have some English words (e.g. "obsequious") and doesn't recognize some Chinese compound words (wūhēi = dark, but it just told me the separate entries "crow" and "dark" without knowing it's a compound word)
2. Which word should I choose? Again, this is a common problem to most dictionaries. There are so many synonyms, it's impossible to know, for example, which or the words for "stubborn" is the one people really use (it seems to be gùzhí by the way).

Wish List

1. Proverb dictionary. Chinese people use a whole host of common little proverbs and idioms, often four words long. While this dictionary has some (e.g. "mǎ mǎ hū hū"), it would be nice if it could incorporate a comprehensive proverb dictionary to include phrases like:
   
   shèng lì zài wàng = victory is in sight
   xìng zāi lè huò = laughing at other people's disaster (German "schadenfreude")
2. Scientific/medical dictionary. It would be nice if the dictionary contained all kinds of medical terms such as "cortisone" or "hydrogen peroxide." Those can be very difficult to track down elsewhere.
3. Total results count at the top of each page. It currently shows to total SQL queries run ("Just 1 SQL query was processed for this result set in 0.568 seconds") but I would like to know how many results were returned so I can know, for example, how many "surnames" the dictionary knows.
4. "Did you mean..." link if I misspell something (like what Google does). I know, I'm lazy. But it would be nice.
5. Common use rating for Chinese words. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English shows "S1000" or "W3000" to mean "one of the top 1000 spoken words" and "one of the top 3000 written words," respectively. It would be a real coup if this dictionary had the same capability. Then we would know which word to choose from the dozens of synonyms.

MDBG Online Dictionary - Tutorial

See also MDBG Online Dictionary - My review

There are two main ways to use the dictionary:

1. Basic Word Dictionary


2. Advanced Word Dictionary

I always start with the Basic Word Dictionary (even though sometimes I end up using some Advanced Word Dictionary tools).

Basic Word Dictionary

You can input English, pinyin, hanzi or combinations into the Basic Word search box. I'll talk about hanzi entry below. Here's how the English and pinyin inputs work.

Examples:

1. suddenly => displays entries containing "suddenly"
2. sudden* => displays every entry containing "sudden" including "sudden" and "suddenly"
3. suddenly hu => displays entries containing "suddenly" and "hu." I use this sometimes if I'm looking for a word that means "suddenly" and I'm sure it has that pinyin "hu" in it.
   
4. you yong => just like example number 3, this will display all entries that contain "you" and "yong" in any order regardless of whether they are in the pinyin or English side.
5. youyong => this displays only entries that exactly match the pinyin syllable "you" followed immediately by "yong." This will display all multi-syllable pinyin homonyms.
6. "you yong" => adding quotation marks means these syllables must occur in this order, but entries may also contain other syllables.
   
7. lian2 => displays entries containing pinyin "lian" that has the 2nd (rising) tone.
8. lian2 xi => displays entries contain pinyin "lian" that has the 2nd (rising) tone and pinyin "xi" with any tone.
   
9. ma5 => displays all entries containing pinyin "ma" with the neutral tone

You can display the tones as "you4" or "yòu." I prefer the latter. To change your preference click on the little bubble thing that looks like this:

Smart searches - Basic Word Dictionary

To really track down those homonyms, you need to be able to do smart searches. Otherwise, a search for "you" will get you all the pinyin "you" entries AND the English "you" entries on one page.

Examples:

1. p:you => displays only entries containing pinyin "you"
2. e:you => displays only entries containing English "you"
3. pw:you => displays only exact matches containing pinyin "you" (with no other syllables)
4. pw:you4 => displays only exact matches containing pinyin "you" with 4th tone (with no other syllables)
5. p:you e:right => displays only entries that contain pinyin "you" and English "right"

Following hanzi rabbit trails - Start with Basic end up in Advanced

If you dump some hanzi into the Basic Word Dictionary page it will try to find a single definition. But, if you've thrown a whole sentence, or a line from a song (like this ) in there, it will give you the following message:

By all means click that and you'll be taken to a nice warm place where a wise old man will explain what each word means...or at least a page showing the results.

Now, let's find out what that "lao" in "laohu" really is. Click on the little scissors tool to separate the "lao" from the "hu"

Now you should be on a page that shows the exact meaning of "lao" and "hu" separately. Let's follow the trail a littler farther. Click on the isolated hanzi character for "lao" (looks like this ).

Now you're on a page that has all sorts of info about that character including the Cantonese pronunciation.

Look at the far left side of the table and you should see this:

If you want to know how to draw the character (brush strokes and all) click on the little paint brush.

If you want to see every entry in the dictionary that contains that character, click on the huge hanzi character on the far left.

This little rabbit trail has actually taken us through some of the Advanced Word Dictionary pages without our knowing it. This can be a good way to figure out what all the little pieces mean, especially if you're trying to weave a hanzi web in your brain.

Master the Tones

To really speak Chinese, you have to master the tones. But, most laowai don't.

It's a good idea to learn the tones as you are learning vocabulary.

The problem with learning Chinese vocab is there are really two things to remember for each word:

1. the sounds (phonemes...I don't know how to say "phonemes" in Chinese)
   
2. the tones (shēngdiào)

These two parts are totally disconnected. Much like learning irregular verbs in English, or the gender of words in German, the tones are completely arbitrary and, to us, random.

A friend found that his Chinese progress was really slow because he was trying to learn the tones from the get go. So he ditched them in attempts to master at least the phonemes for each new vocabulary word. It worked and he burned up the trail learning new words. But, he found people often didn't understand him and it was quite difficult to add the tones back into the mix later. I still believe it's best to integrate learning the tones from the very beginning.

Here are some strategies to master the tones:

1. Give each tone a metaphor, character, or personality
   
2. Make little mnemonic devices (what the Germans apparently call an "eselsbrücke" = "donkey bridge")
   
3. Record and memorize whole chunks together
   
4. When in doubt, talk fast

Metaphor and Personality

The tones are usually referred to in this way:

1. 1st tone (dì yī shēng) = high and level
   
2. 2nd tone (dì èr shēng) = mid and rising
   
3. 3rd tone (dì sān shēng) = falling quickly and then rising
   
4. 4th tone (dì sì shēng) = falling
   
5. 5th tone or zero tone ("qīng shēng" which means "light tone") = neutral tone/no tone (but it should really be called the "secret tone" because it's often still in there you just don't know what it is)

Once you learn how to say each tone, then associate some emotion with each one. For example, here's my own personification and characteristics for each tone:

1. 1st tone = transcendent, helpful, simplicity.
   I love words that have the first tone because of their simplicity and how easy they are to sing out and pronounce correctly.
   
2. 2nd tone = insecure, unsure, questioning.
   I sympathize with words that have the second tone because I've been unsure and insecure myself. I don't blame them for sounding like questions.
   
3. 3rd tone = mischievous, mean-spirited, illusive, like a bird you're trying to watch but he dives into the water and pops up where you aren't looking.
   I hate words with the third tone. They take more work and more time to pronounce. They change depending on the words near them. They seem to exist only to make my life more difficult.
   
4. 4th tone = angry, demanding, impatient.
   I also like words that have the fourth tone because I can shout them out. These words give me a chance to vent. Usually, as a default, if I don't know the tone of a word, I've found I'll say it as a fourth tone involuntarily.
   
5. 5th tone = secretive, deceptive, trying to trick me, won't live up to his own identity.
   I pretend not to care about syllables with the 5th tone. I act aloof, while really wondering what's under that mysterious exterior.

"Donkey bridges" (mnemonic devices)

Visual - think of pictures

• sháozi = spoon
  To remember the tone I had to make a visual image of a spoon handle sticking out of a bowl of soup rising at the same angle the second tone rises.
  
• fēijī = airplane
  This one was easy since I just imagined the plane needing to fly as high as possible for both syllables (high tone, high tone).

"Confusing cousins" - learn them in sets

• bīng = frozen = the smooth, level surface of a frozen pond
• bǐng = cake = my shortcake caved in and now looks just like the contour of the third tone
• bìng = sick = I hate being sick, I'm mad when I say this word.

• tāng = soup = the top surface of the soup is flat
• táng = sugar = the more you eat the higher your sugar high rises

• zhōng = middle = think of a teeter-totter with only one person sitting right in the middle; it will be balanced and level
• zhòng = heavy = the fourth tone is so heavy it falls

Sets / group shapes

• wénhuà dà gémìng = cultural revolution = 2-4, da, 2-4
  
• wēixiào = smile = tones are shaped like a diving board (straight and then jumping off)
  
• wéitāmìng = vitamin = tones look like a mountain /-\, or a little pile of pills
  
• bàngōngshì = office = like a waterslide, drops quickly, levels out, drops again into the pool

To reinforce the visual images of tones, you might want to label your house.

Record and memorize whole chunks together

This trick requires a native-speaker informant who speaks good Mandarin and a tape recorder. I wrote a bunch of useful little phrases like:

• shùnbiàn shuō yīxià... = by the way...
  
• wǒ yīng bù yīnggāi...? = should I...?

Then, I recorded my Chinese friend saying them. I tried to mimic the rising and falling of the phrase as a whole without caring one fig for the tones of individual words. This works really well since these kinds of phrases seem to have fairly set intonation.

Teddi actually drew a "crenulated castle wall" diagram of each phrase to have a visual representation of the ups and downs of the utterance. Maybe I can persuade him to contribute one or two to this blog as samples.

When in doubt, talk fast

This is a last resort that I'm had to, well, resort to several times. The reason this works is the Chinese themselves seem flatten out fudge on tones of individual words in rapid speech. So, if I'm not sure of a particular word's tone (and hopefully that's not the most important word in my sentence), I just breeze over it and hit the tones I know nice and solid. It doesn't always work, but it's often better than slowly and methodically saying the wrong tone for a word when you're not sure.

Good luck...

These are just examples. You can be as creative as you want as you make "donkey bridges" and think of tricks to beat the tones into your brain. Just get those little tones learned by hook or by crook.

See the tones. Be the tones. Make it happen.

Double eyelid

shuāng yǎnpí = double eyelid

I learned this word at lunch yesterday. Apparently most westerners have it, and not all Chinese do. The Chinese seem to think it's a beautiful feature. Somehow, it doesn't sound beautiful when I say it...oh well. Here's some more info on the physiological phenomenon.

tè = tèbié, a special word

tèbié = especially, special, exceptionally

NEWS FLASH: They often just say tè

I just got fruit from one of my usual fruit dealers. The competition is so fierce between the fruit ladies that they usually throw in an extra apple or orange to try to secure my business for next time. Here's how it went:

A = Albert
F = Fruit Lady

(F tries to give a free piece of hāmìguā)

A: bú yào, xièxie = I don't want it, thanks.

F: sòng gěi nǐ = I'll give it to you for free

A: bú yào, háishì xièxie = I don't want it, thanks anyway.

(F puts in the the bag)

F: zhège tè tián = this one is especially sweet

But often they don't use tèbié the way we would use "especially." We say especially to mean, "in comparison to other things (usually just mentioned)." For example, "I saw 3 movies but I the the third one was especially good."

The way I'm hearing it used is more like the way we say "really" or "SO." I heard a student describe a lecture (not mine) as:

tè wúliáo = SO boring

Another student celebrated her triumph in killing a mosquito by calling it:

tèbié bèn = especially stupid

If anyone knows any rules for when you can say tè and when you should say tèbié, please leave a comment below.

Label your house

During my first year in China, every Chinese person who came to visit me was guaranteed hours of entertainment. All they wanted to do was walk around reading the scores of little post-it notes with pinyin on them.

I labeled everything and it paid off:

1. I quickly mastered everyday words like "outlet" (chāzuò) and "toilet paper" (wèishēngzhǐ)
   
2. It reinforced the tones. Seeing them visually while just sitting around eating helped a lot. (I arranged all the prepositions of location on my refrigerator door.)
   
3. It helped me start to think in Chinese. By just seeing the thing (a window) and thinking "chuānghu," my brain learned to bypass that English word "window" completely after a while.

I also made a picture of a human body and labeled body parts (I can't draw very well so it was actually really "kǒngbù" (horrifying) as my Chinese visitors put it).

Later I even started writing notes to myself from my imaginary older brother in Beijing. Ping (as I called him) had a key to my house and would come in and leave pieces of advice or warnings like:

1. "nǐ chà diǎnr wàngle dài yàoshi" = "you almost forgot to bring your key" (on the inside of my door)

Teddi went a step further and posted his lists of "confusing cousins" and "random confusers" above his sink. Whatever it takes to get those tones under your belt.

Tip: buy the real Post-It brand sticky notes. The Chinese-made ones seem to sit in the package plotting little competitions as to who can be the first one to fall off the wall. They don't even stick to themselves when folded in half!

Tone Wars

It's not that we don't have tones in English. No. The tones are hard because English has tones, but we use tone for different reasons.

In English our tones are usually applied to the whole sentence but can also occur on only one word. We use tone to show emotion, attitude, type of sentence (question, statement), etc. As Teddi described it so well: If you asked me "Wanna get some Mexican food?" just think of all the ways I could say, "Fine." A falling tone might mean I really wanted to or that I really didn't depending on how high it started. A rising tone might say, "I want to, but..."

The biggest tone problem I've noticed for laowai learning Chinese is that we project our English tones onto Chinese sentences--especially the final word. The Chinese tone we know (or maybe don't know) is correct for that word is fighting in our mind against the tone we WOULD put on the word if it were English. It just feels weird to end a question with a declarative sounding falling tone as we must do so many times in Chinese (duì bu duì?). We don't feel right saying someone's name with a rising tone as if we can't remember whether it was her or not.

Unfortunately, to really speak Chinese means saying the tones properly, the way Chinese people say them. But the first step is admitting we have a problem, right? Ok, only 11 more steps to go...

Organize your vocab - hanzi web

People always ask me, "How many Chinese characters do you know?" I resist the urge to include some of my students and proudly answer, "About zero." They're shocked because we're speaking Chinese right now. And, to the Chinese, the language IS the hanzi characters.

But for us laowai, if your goal is to speak Chinese as soon as possible, it's a big waste of time to study the hanzi characters from the beginning. They are, however, useful to acknowledge as a way of organizing vocabulary.

I have a much easier time remembering words if I know what each little piece is. It's also a good way to keep the tones straight.

So, to link all those little pieces together, I often visualize something I call a hanzi web. I don't really draw these (that would take forever), this is just an example. But the point is I'm always trying to link the little bits of new vocabulary back to known bits of vocabulary. And the common link (even if you don't know how to draw it) is the hanzi character. It may not make a whole lot of sense, but at least you might have a better chance at remembering the tone.

So, how do you figure out what that dàn in bèndàn is?

1. use the online dictionary (and click the little scissors picture)


2. ask someone who speaks Chinese

Back to top

How Hard Is Chinese to Learn, Really?

Well opinions on that question vary. The US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute has given major foreign languages a rank in order of difficulty to learn for native English speakers. Although the ranking seems to have changed over time from a scale of 1-4 (4 being hardest) to a scale of 1-3, Chinese is invariably given the highest (hardest) score.

But, if you want my humble opinion (and what else is a blog?), I think the reading/writing Chinese hanzi characters is what makes the language hard, and speaking is relatively easy—-kind of. I'll break it down below, but I have to say this first: The best way to learn Chinese slowly is to try to tackle the hanzi characters from the beginning. I've got a whole little article on the subject of hanzi as a pedagological millstone around students' linguistic necks, but since I hope it will influence future Chinese curriculum development in the USA, it’s not quite ready for public viewing.

I’ve created my own scale of 1-10 where:
1 = as easy as I imagine a foreign language could be to learn
10 = as hard as I imagine a foreign language could be to learn

How Hard is Chinese?

Grammar: 3 (pretty easy)

Pros:

1. Word order is often the same between Chinese and English
   
2. Pronouns. No distionction between he/she/it. And no distinction between cases (he, she, her, it, its). tā = he, him, she, her, it. To make the possessive form add the "de" particle (tā de).


3. No inflected cases of any kind (like in German or Slavic languages)
   
4. No plural nouns. "Apple" and "apples" are both are translated píngguǒ. The only exception is the plural suffix "men" for pronouns (wǒ = I, wǒmen = us; tā = he/she/it, tāmen = them). But as you see, even that doesn’t change depending on usage.


5. No verb tenses to speak of. Do, does, did, doing, done are all translated as zuò. Tense is shown by time markers ("yesterday I do") or tricky little particles ("I am going to go now" = wǒ zǒu le (I go + particle to show change in states or situation).


6. No articles. "A book," "the book," the Chinese don’t care. Just say "book" (shū).

Cons:

1. Measure words. Nothing could be perfect. Even though there’s no plural or articles, they had to add those pesky little measure words that basically serve no linguistic purpose. There is no way to say "One book" in Chinese without saying the correct measure word (běn). So, really what you’re saying in Chinese is "One bound-thing book" (yī běn shū). Or for table, "One flat-surfaced-thing table" (yī zhāng zuōzi). My Chinese friends avidly condone measure words as a way of categorizing and organizing the world and telling you the shape of the thing you’re going to be talking about. I reply with, "There’s no reason for me to know the shape of the thing you’re about to say because you’re about to say the name of the thing itself which will be infinitely more useful for my imagining its shape." I then hear crickets chirping for a few seconds and we change subjects. My theory as to the practical use for measure words has to do with the myriad homonyms in Chinese, but that’s another post.


2. Adjectival phrases. Not all the word order is the same. The biggest difference, in my experience, is saying things like, "The person reading a book" in Chinese needs to be said, "The reading book person" (kàn shū de rén).
   Adverbs of place. Similar to the adjectival phrases, "Behind the shop" needs to be said "At the shop behind place" (zài shangdiàn hòumian).


3. Tricky little particles. It's a real trick to master when to throw in a "ba" or a "ne" or a "de" or a "le." But if I'm not sure I just pick my favorite and at least other foreigners think I know what I'm saying.


4. Word order very important. To pay the piper for all the perks of not having any cases or tenses, the Chinese depend very much on word order to convey meaning. Although it’s not as important in conversational Chinese as the textbooks would have us believe, throwing two words in the wrong order can absolutely stump most of them. I’ll try to think of a real-life example soon (it seems like it’s happened so often, yet they all escape me).

Vocabulary: 5 (medium)

Pros (In addition to the above grammar pros):

1. Little chunks. Since the Chinese language is made of a lot of characters (each with their own meaning), their compound words are combinations of smaller words. For example, "motivation" (dòngjī) when broken down into it’s two characters means "move machine." Also, "resolved, determined" (juéxīn) means "decide heart." Modern words also need to use known characters in new combination. The word for "blog/blogger" (bókè) has the same first character as the first character of "doctor/Ph.D." and the second is "guest." So, because of this bite-sized approach, vocabulary learning can gain a kind of critical mass where you’re not actually learning new pieces but, learning a new word means arranging old pieces in a new way. This can be made easier if you organize your known vocabulary using what I call a "hanzi web" (my next post).

Cons:

1. So many homonyms. Since there are so few possible syllables, and only 4 tones (I never thought I’d say "only"), there are so many words that sound exactly the same. The only way to distinguish them in writing is that they each have a different hanzi character. In speaking, context determines their meaning. The winner I think is shì with at least 40 different characters for the same pronunciation. There’s even a poem in ancient Chinese where someone wrote the whole poem using only words that were pronounced "shi" with different tones.


2. The tones. For every word you have to remember the right tone. This is just straight memorization. Its like learning two words for every one. The best way to remember the tones is to make a little mnemonic device for yourself (a later post).

Pronunciation: 6 (medium-hard)

Pros:

1. Limited pain. There are only a few hundred possible syllables in Chinese (strangely, people can’t agree on the exact number, but it’s around 400). After you learn to pronounce those, you’re done. You can say anything in Chinese.

Cons:

1. The tones again. Even though there are only 4 tones, you still have to a) remember the right tone to say, b) say that tone correctly, c) adjust for any tone changes. The tones do change in relationship to each other. There are rules, but you still have to remember the rules.


2. The secret tone. Most people agree there is a 5th, neutral tone. I’ve found this to be mostly a lie. a) How am I supposed to say something with no tone at all? Really fast? Really quiet? b) that hanzi character does have a tone and all the Chinese know what it is. If they say something really slowly it comes right out. For example, you’ll never hear a Chinese person say "you all" (nǐmen) slowly without putting a 2nd tone on the "men." It’s true that ma, ba, ne and other little particles really have no tone. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say them any way you want. For example in "let’s go" (zǒu ba) you have to say the ba like it’s a first tone. There are rules, but it’s still a hassle.


3. Some new sounds. As should be expected when learning a foreign language, there are some new sounds for speakers of English learning Chinese. For vowels the newest sound is the umlaut ü but the back "i" sound in pinyin "shi" and "si" can be a little tricky too. For consonants the biggest challenge is the "r" which is said a lot of diffrent ways (depending on whom you ask) including sounding just like our "r." There are also two ways to say our "sh" and "ch" in Chinese. For example the "sh" sound in "thank you" (xièxie) and the "sh" sound in book ( shū) are different.

Listening: 7 (hard)

Pros:

I can’t think of any

Cons:

1. So many homonyms. Even if I know the word, sometimes I can’t understand it because my mind immediately chooses to understand one of the syllables wrong. For example, I kept hearing "math" (shùxué) as "tree" (shù) study even though I knew that should never be anyone’s major.


2. So many synonyms. There are so many words for the same thing in Chinese. But people say, "it's the same in every language." No. Well, yes. But Chinese is different (probably because it's been around a lot longer than...well, most any other currently spoken language). They've had thousands of years to accumulate vocabulary. The various dialects and regions only compound the problem. I'll give one example. In English I only know one way to say, "I speak English." I guess I could say, "I speak American English" but that's it. In Chinese I know of 10 ways to say, "I speak Chinese." 2 words for speak (shuō, jiǎng) and 4 words for Chinese (zhōngwén, zhōngguóhuà, hànyǔ, guóyǔ, pǔtōnghuà). Although some of those mean Mandarin as opposed to just Chinese, people use them interchangeably. This means when I'm speaking I have all sorts of fun options to say. But for listening, if I didn't happen to learn all the different ways something could be said, I'm easily stumped.


3. So many dialects. While common wisdom states that "A billion people!" speak Mandarin Chinese, a recent article said that ain’t the case. This helps explain why so many people in my first two years living in China didn’t speak Mandarin to me. They didn’t know it. It makes me feel a little better for not understanding them, but still. Toward the middle of my first year I actually started asking people I couldn’t understand, "Are you speaking Mandarin" just to try to get the comprehension burden off myself.


4. So many accents. Even if people speak Mandarin, their accent may vary wildely from the standard. I still remember a time in a Kunming drugstore when a guy came up to say to me, "no one is watching your bike" and I kid you not (and I confirmed this with other people later) what he said sounded EXACTLY like "no one is watching your eggplant." He was speaking what he thought was Mandarin (and I give him full marks for that) but his accent was some amalgamation of his local dialect and Mandarin.
   
5. Reduced forms. Simillar to the English reduction of "I would have been killed" to "I wouldabeen killed," Chinese speakers often drop one or more syllables of common words. For example reducing "zuótiān wǎnshàng shuìjiào de shíhòu" to "zuó wǎn shuìjiào shí." If you don't know that not all syllables are created equal, and some can be dropped, understanding those reduced forms is basically impossible.

Reading: 8 (really hard)

Reading is easier than writing because it’s receptive not productive. Conventional wisdom says to read a newspaper you need to know 3000 characters. That’s not 3000 words but 3000 little pieces of words (see vocabulary pros). And the only way to learn those characters is rote memorization. Many are made of several smaller pieces (radicals) and that can give you a clue as to how it MIGHT be pronounced. But really, it feels a bit like memorizing the Periodic Table of the Elements, except longer.

Writing: 9 (really, really hard)

The only reason this isn’t 10 is because I’m in mainland China and they use "simplified" characters. Taiwan and Hong Kong writing is a 10.

Chubby: Best Paper Dictionary (first year)

It took Teddi and me about 90 seconds to admit that "Chubby" (as Teddi called him) is the best paper dictionary for an English-speaking laowai who is just starting to learn Chinese.

Chubby's strengths include:

• Numerous sentence examples
• A little grammar guide
• A little tones guide (including tone changes)
• A measure word reference
• Radical index (to help you look up which button on your TV remote is "on/off")
• Fits in my back pocket
• I've found him for sale in China (usually in university bookstores)

Chubby's weaknesses:

• Some important vocabulary is missing (because of his compact size)
• No sentence example for some words that really need one
• Written, apparently, for Chinese living in England (sentence examples often include British culture like "British pounds" as the currency)
• No Chinese pronunciation guide, only English pronunciation guide (see above)
• Chinese side is organized by hanzi characters instead of straight alphabetical order (making it a little difficult to look up a Chinese word quickly). It's still roughly alphabetical order, but not exactly.

But overall, there's no comparison between Chubby and other little dictionaries. If you're going to China and you can only take one book--or only one thing--I suggest it be Chubby.

For my review of an online dictionary click here

Where do I put the tone marks in pinyin words?

In my first year of studying Chinese I learned (by doing it wrong in front of Chinese friends) that there are rules for where to put tone markings in words with more than one vowel. The official rules, according to Mark Swofford's very helpful site, are:

• A and e trump all other vowels and always take the tone mark. There are no Mandarin syllables in Hanyu Pinyin that contain both a and e.
• In the combination ou, o takes the mark.
• In all other cases, the final vowel takes the mark.

But I noticed the craziest little pattern. If you want to remember only one rule and one exception think of it like this:

• Alphabetical order dictates which letter gets the tone mark. (if it's "biāo" then the "a" is alphabetically first, so give it the tone mark)
• The only exception I've found is the "iu" combination. In this case the "u" gets the mark even though it's alphabetically after "i"
• Oh wait, there is another rather rare exception and that's "io" combination ("o" get's the mark")
  

So here's the way I remember it:

• "duì" in Chinese means "correct," so the alphabetical rule is correct for that word
• "diū" in Chinese means "to lose," so the alphabetical rule has lost it's integrity (and face) for that word
• Since "io" is also an exception (xiōngdì), "I owe" everyone an apology for saying there was only one exception
  

Still, since the "io" combo is very rare, and the "ui" and "iu" combos are easy to watch for, I've found the alphabetical rule to be the easiest to remember and use.

Lenny: Best Paper Dictionary (intermediate)

If you've got the basic grammar down and now what you need is a handy pocket reference so you can find out how to say "aspirin" at the drug store, then "Lenny" (as I call him) is the paper dictionary for you.

Lenny's strengths (in comparison to Chubby) include:

• He's even smaller than Chubby (about half the thickness)
• A generally more inclusive vocabulary
• Chinese pronunciation guide
• Alphabetical order for Chinese entries (as opposed to hanzi grouping) making it very easy to look up a Chinese word

Lenny's weaknesses:

• He's even smaller than Chubby (not for the hard-of-seeing)
• No sentence examples (but by now you shouldn't need them as much)
• Some strange vocabulary differences between him and Chubby (but there are so many words for the same thing in Chinese, I suppose it's to be expected)
• I've never seen Lenny for sale in China

If you've got a handle on basic Chinese and you want to forget that you've got a dictionary in your pocket, I highly recommend bringing Lenny home.

For my review of an online dictionary click here

How to type pinyin (pīnyīn) with tone markings

There is apparently a tool called Wenlin that let's you type pinyin with tone markings (for example, hǎo). But the easiest way I've found to do it (in small doses) is to copy and paste. I personally have a Word document call "pinyin tones" and that's all that's in it. Click here if you want to see all the pinyin tones so you can copy and paste them.

Otherwise, if you have to do a whole lot of typing pinyin I suggest using this tool by Mark Swofford. It will take "hao3" and convert it to "hǎo". The only bad thing about it is it doesn't remember your line breaks--but I've learned to cope. The settings I use are:

add HTML coding for Web pages? no
output style: code soup
tag style: no <span> tags

If you're looking for something more than that, I suggest checking out Mark's post about Wenlin.