What would you target in terms of HSK level in order to help my children be bilingual? I started actively studying in February but my wife and in-laws do speak mostly Mandarin so I have exposure for a few years. I feel like I have been holding back my daughter’s expressive language given my poor Mandarin skills at present.

Some background: 我有两个孩子。我的女儿叫爽爽，她三岁。我的儿子叫小王。我的妻子是北京人。我的妻子说中文很好，但是她不会写字。我是医生所以每天很忙。我可以学习一点儿.请帮我.

This is a sample of my current skill level without using a dictionary, translator or other assistive device/app. My spoken Chinese is better than my written given my longer term exposure. I have a long ways to go…

If it is 200 or even 500, then, it is THE way to build up vocabulary capacity.

If it is 2000, then, why bother!

Anybody knows a source that is reputable and easy to verify?

^ What’s the difference between the following sentences: 她吃着苹果写作业 她一边吃苹果一边写作业

So I've been having a lot of trouble with my TOCFL fluency tests as it appears my textbook learning has reached a ceiling and my learning has stagnated, then i thought that I've been watching anime since like 6th grade in Japanese dub and I can speak pretty decent Japanese to just get by and understand the gist of convos after all these years even though i haven't studied it or know how to read it. Personally, I think this is the way I learn languages, trying to imitate characters, dialogues.

I was wondering if i should apply a similar approach to mandarin

So hit me with the Mandarin language masterpiece 10/10 animes, tv shows and movies (which use relatively standard mandarin i hope and subbed)

I watched one show called xiang jian ni and it was pretty cool, learned some phrases out of it.

I understand that “děi” needs to be placed between a verb and adjective, but the repetition of the verb is something I’m just starting to see with these sorts of sentences and it’s a bit confusing.

For example, does the additional “yóu” need to be tacked onto what otherwise would be “tā yóu yǒng děi hěn kuài”? If it doesn’t, how do native and natural speakers usually say sentences like this?

Click here to see the previous 学习伙伴 Study Buddy Requests threads.

Study buddy requests / Language exchange partner requests

If you are a Chinese or English speaker looking for someone to study with, please post it as a comment here!

You are welcome to include your time zone, your method of study (e.g. textbook), and method of communication (e.g. Discord, email). Please do not post any personal information in public (including WeChat), thank you!

点击这里以浏览往期的「学习伙伴」帖子

寻求学友/语伴

如果您是一位说中文或英文的朋友，并正在寻找学友或语伴，请在此留言。

您可以留下自己的时区，学习方式（例如通过教科书）和交流方式（例如Discord，邮件等）。 但千万不要透露个人私密信息（包括微信号），谢谢！

Click here to see the previous Quick Help Threads, including 翻译求助 Translation Requests threads.

This thread is used for:

• Translation requests
• Help with choosing a Chinese name
• "How do you say X?" questions
• or any quick question that can be answered by a single answer.

Alternatively, you can ask on our Discord server.

Community members: Consider sorting the comments by "new" to see the latest requests at the top.

Regarding translation requests

If you have a Chinese translation request, please post it as a comment here!

If it's an image (e.g. a photo), you can upload it to a website like Imgur and paste the link here.

However, if you're requesting a review of a substantial translation you have made, or have a question that involving grammar or details on vocabulary usage, you are welcome to post it as its own thread.

​

若想浏览往期「快问快答」，请点击这里, 这亦包括往期的翻译求助帖.

此贴为以下目的专设：

• 翻译求助
• 取中文名
• 如何用中文表达某个概念或词汇
• 及任何可以用一个简短的答案解决的问题

您也可以在我们的 Discord 上寻求帮助。

社区成员：请考虑将评论按“最新”排序，以方便在贴子顶端查看最新留言。

关于翻译求助

如果您需要中文翻译，请在此留言。

但是，如果您需要的是他人对自己所做的长篇翻译进行审查，或对某些语法及用词有些许疑问，您可以将其发表在一个新的，单独的贴子里。

hey y'all. i’m a japanese major, but i'll be starting chinese classes as well at my school next fall. since i'll be taking two languages at once, i’m hoping to begin studying vocab now. (although i'll be starting in 101, i do already have some experience studying chinese, so i understand basics like pinyin and pronunciation, and then ofc stroke order because of japanese, so i'm not likely to screw myself over practicing incorrectly lol)

my school uses the integrated chinese textbooks, and i’m wondering how many chapters are usually covered in a semester? i know different schools pace differently, but i’m curious to know anyones experience working through the chapters as a college course. i'm at a large school with a big language program, so it will be on the faster side. also, how many characters are introduced per chapter? are they traditional or simplified? do you learn to write every character as you learn them?

i can only find super general information on the class curriculum, and i cant find a clear breakdown of the lessons, so anything you can share is appreciated!!

Hello everyone! I'm looking for spectrograms or other evidence-based visualizations of tone pairs as spoken in standard Chinese, at a normal, conversational pace. I'm having trouble finding a complete set of data -- there are plenty of spectrograms on the 'net for single tone pairs, and there are a few tantalizing web posts that have a few tone pair spectrograms, but none that I've found that have a complete set of all twenty, with perhaps a few common three-tone combinations thrown in for good measure. Has anyone seen data like this out in the wild? (I have university library access if its paywalled!)

More information about why I'm looking for spectrograms below:

I've studied something like four years of Mandarin Chinese and reached a very functional level that I'm happy with — so at this point I'm focused on polishing up what I've got rather than learning too many new things.

One issue I've run into is imitating the tone patterns that native speakers use. My Chinese phonology skills are pretty good on the syllable and word level — my aspiration is impeccable and I can /x/ like a Scot — but I can still have some trouble being understood.

So far in my learning journey, I've mostly focused on shadowing to pick up how multisyllable intonation works in Chinese, so I've definitely mastered the sentence-level intonation patters of the most common Chinese phrases. However, once I get out of my comfort zone and need to produce unusual and unique sentences, I need to drastically slow down to make sure that I'm understood.

When I was studying Japanese, I found pitch-accent spectrograms extremely useful for fixing this kind of problem — somehow, looking at the data solidified the rules I had already picked up on through shadowing into my brain, and I didn't have much of a problem with intonation after that. For this reason, I was wondering if there were any spectrograms covering phrase and sentence-level intonation in Chinese — hopefully such data can provide me the tools to fix the patterns I already know how to hear firmly into my brain.

I’ve studied mandarin for 4 years and sometimes I will help my 10 y.o niece with her chinese homework since it gives me chance to practice and improve my grammar as well, but sometimes she gives me weird sentences like below:

10月8日星期三，老师讲了兴趣爱好。玛丽喜欢看京剧，麦克喜欢玩电脑并在电脑上学习普通话。罗兰热爱音乐。田中对书法感兴趣。

This is my revision for her homework, but I’m not sure whether I correct it properly:

这个星期三，10月8号，我们在上中文课。老师给我们讲了关于兴趣和爱好，并让我们讲述我们自己的爱好。 玛丽说她喜欢看京剧，麦克喜欢玩电脑并在电脑上学习中文。罗兰热爱音乐，而田中对书法感兴趣。

I think the mistake she made are:

1. The date format? It just feels weird, but I’m not sure how to revise it.
2. Lack of context, so I put “我们在上中文课” after the date.
3. “老师讲了兴趣爱好” this whole sentence feels 别扭 for me, probably it will be more correct if we say “老师给我们/学生讲了关于兴趣爱好”？
4. ”学习普通话”， I changed it to “学习中文”

Any input will be appreciated, thank you so much!

Hi! Could anyone help me read this note, it’s for some type of tea I believe.

I posted earlier but the picture didn’t attach, attaching here!

Thank you so much!!

[Picture] 你好！我叫Kai。我十五岁。我是汉语学生。我不是老师。我是巴西人。 他是中国人吗？ 不，他是美国人。 我爱我妈妈和爸爸 一只猫，三只狗，五个人。 女儿，儿子，妈妈，爸爸 我们都是俄国人。 那是谁？ 你叫什么名字？ 你好吗？ 我叫Wang，你呢？ 她是我的朋友。 同学。 再见！ 对不起 不客气 谢谢 你是哪国人？ 咖啡喝茶。

I’m looking to buy an inexpensive replica of an oracle bone. Does anyone know where I could get one?

I just had a confusing experience using a speech-to-text chinese language app. I attempted to say "你想教我什么?" which I believe should mean "What do you want to teach me?". Unfortunately it seems that 教 is a homophone for 叫, and the application interpreted my sentence as "What do you want to call me?" I was unable to get the application to correctly interpret my meaning as 教 until I said "你想教对我什么?" though I think that is not technically grammatical.

Is my understanding of the two meanings correct and what would native chinese speakers do to clarify these two meanings?

EDIT

Someone briefly posted (and then apparently deleted?) a comment saying that the correct tone for 教 is actually "jiāo". I tried that and it worked. It looks like this is a character that may actually have more than one tone? I was confused because google translate only showed the 4th tone and not the 1st tone. But both tones appear to have a definition of "to instruct". What would be the correct usage of the 4th tone for this character? Somebody clarified this in the comments.

Hello! I have a question for those of you that have some experience with these east asian languages. I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for five years, now around B2-C1 level. I want to enroll in a university degree in modern languages and literatures next year, for which I have to choose a main languaje for study (I will choose Chinese) and a secondary one (which can be Korean as well as some foundations of Japanese).

In your experience, is it useful to know some basic notions of these to languages to further enhance my knowledge and contextualization of the Chinese language and culture? By useful I mean, besides the obvious usefulness and fun of learning a language to communicate, if there are also academic benefits for someone who is trying to study Chinese language and literature seriously. Or perhaps points of intersection in the history of these languages and literatures that I might not be aware of. Any advice will be very welcome!

If it helps, my mother tongue is Spanish.

Hello,

I'm trying to learn to use better grammar. One sentence structure that confuses me is 是。。。的. From my understanding, it is used to emphasize a part of a sentence. But my question is why? When do I need to use this grammar? And does it matter if I never do?

For example:

我昨天是做特别的晚饭的。

我昨天做特别的晚饭。

As far as I can see, these sentences are the same. Why use this particular grammar structure? I've seen people use it in mundane conversations where there is no need to emphasize anything. Is there a rule that I'm missing?

EDIT: Changed "地铁“ to ”特别“

I'm looking for a list that has just the words that have been added to (3.0) HSK 1-6 that aren't already in the old (2.0) HSK 1-6. Have you seen one? I can only find complete lists and my computer's too slow to sort by itself. It's ok if it's not entirely fixed yet.

Edited to add: My situation is that I'm finishing up HSK 6 (2.0) and I want to learn what I'm missing in the whole list to prepare to take the higher level HSK test in the next year or two. (no rush)

No point un-learning what I know that's no longer on the test, and at this level I don't mind if something swapped levels if it's still HSK 6 or below. I'm just interested in what to add to fill in gaps.

Sorry, I made a mistake on the title. I meant to write “number one” and not “zero”

My name is Altynai. I tried searching on two sites on the internet and this is what I got. 腌乐禔奶 阿尔特奈 In my language my name means Altyn–gold, ai–moon, maybe it's important...

Hello! I have been looking for intensive one-on-one language programmes in China for this summer. I was thinking of doing a two-week course (six hours per day). There are some excellent options that many have shared here (mainly KEATS, CLI, Omeida). However, looking at them, I am not sure they are the right fit as 1. my level is quite high and I was hoping to practice 普通话, so I was thinking mainly of northern China, 2. most schools seem to be very keen offering all-inclusive packages to their students and creating a close-knit community (which makes sense, as the majority of the students are very young) and they are based small cities/town where entertainment options outside the school are limited. But I am old (over 30) and I like my independence and the possibility to venture out and explore new cities, go to concerts, movies, theater etc. (even if I don't understand much). So, this said, do you have any recommendations? Thank you!

Does anyone have a study plan for Chinese? Like in what order do you learn each thing, pronouns, plural, characters, question, vocabulary, etc?

Hello all! Sorry if that title is a little janky, but I have recently acquired a gig to be in Taiwan for 18 months teaching English. I would be taking classes at MTC for about a year, and I would live in Taipei.

This wouldn't be my first rodeo with language learning. I am a trained linguist and speaker of a few indo-european languages, but this will be my first introduction to Mandarin. I have glanced at the wiki and at a few other posts about Taiwan/MTC and I have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of information this wiki has.

The style I am quite comfortable in language learning is repetition of some simple phrases to get me jumpstarted for conversational interactions like ordering food or accidentally bumping into somebody. Are there any resources (textbook, video, whatever exists) where I can learn these before I go? I am really hoping to learn as much Mandarin as possible while there and I want to start off on the right foot.

Sometimes I try to say something, but the other person doesn't understand fully what I mean. I can usually work my way around this by maybe using different words or body language. The problem is I never learn anything from it. I know I made mistakes but I'm not sure what. How can I ask the person to repeat what I originally (in attempted Mandarin) asked a few moments before in their native language (irl Mandarin)? In English, I could hear someone saying maybe "How do you say it?" or "Teach me how to say.." Of course this assumes the other person is a willing participant in teaching me.

The easier (more conversational) the better heh

Just purchased it yesterday and the concept of it seems really fun! Want to know other people’s thoughts as the game is pretty new still.

I searched but all the links from the past were dead.

(Idm if it's a streaming service I need to pay for)

Thanks

I've been taking Mandarin courses through Coursera, and I am currently working on the HSK 3 course from Peking University. I've noticed that the remaining courses aren't particularly lengthy, and I feel that I still won't have an expansive vocabulary by the time I finish the series. I've been looking into the Mandarin Companion Graded Readers. Would anyone recommend resources for learning outside of just HSK courses? What kinds of things should someone at the HSK 3 level know before continuing with levels 4 - 6?