大家好，

Question for everyone. I'm a beginner learner, and I have started to take notes on my laptop and phone when I'm not studying with pen + paper. I'm not yet ready to rely solely on 汉字 for understanding, though I hope to get there eventually.

How do you personally do this with your notes? The problems I have with writing characters + pinyin, or characters + pinyin + english definition, is that:

- Characters + pinyin + definition is comprehensive, but very verbose

- Characters + pinyin means I'm writing everything twice

- There's a lot of keyboard input shuffling, going between pinyin input and english keyboard

- Writing pinyin with tone marks like dàjiā hǎo is more concise, but it's slower to type than da4jia1 hao3

- Writing pinyin like da4jia1 hao3 is verbose and visually unappealing

- Sometimes I know most the words, and only need pinyin for a subset of the sentence

I figure the veteran language learners here must have some advice. I'm definitely overthinking this, but at the same time, I figure I could spend 10 minutes making this post to learn a better way from others.

When doing physical notes, I keep an extra line below each character where I put pinyin, only as necessary

I feel like I've hit a wall in my learning at HSK 4. Nothing seems to stick anymore.

I am 'self-taught' though, so I'm not following a certain course or getting feedback from anyone.

What does a typical day of learning look like for you? How long do you study?

Hi everyone,

I'm French and I've been learning Chinese on and off for a few years. One thing I struggled with was that it was hard for me to get exposed to the language and therefore, I would lose motivation a lot (I'm mostly, if not exclusively, interested in the culture). Anyway, as I also love video games, I have tried to find games that I could do to get the exposure in parallel to some classic methods (which I feel are pretty much mandatory, sadly). My Chinese language partner told me about a MMORPG called Jian Wang 3, which is similar to games like World of Warcraft. This means that through it, you can connect with natives and play activities together. In fact, most of the natives in this game never had a chance to talk with a foreigner at all, and once I logged on, many were crazy about it. The community in this game is very welcoming and they will take the time to explain all the little cultural things in the game, including the numerous events inspired by real-life festivals. Many activities will also challenge your oral comprehension as they require you to understand what the leader tells you (usually in chinese as their English is pretty bad). If there is a misunderstanding however, they will do all they can to clear it.

Anyway, if you like online games and want more chinese exposure, I strongly recommend trying this game. My written comprehension is around HSK4 (I think it changed, so I would say around 1K words) and my oral comprehension is in fact almost non existent, but I can still get through it because the other players will do their best to help. If you're interested in chinese internet culture and memes, it's really optimal. However, the process of signing up is quite annoying. If you want more details, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Below I share a video one of my friends in the game made about me recently, which should give you a feel of what this game is about (As I said my written comprehension is not the best so there could be mistakes in the translation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMaTmsoSkhk

I’m seeing this phrase quite frequently. Can someone explain to me what this means?? Google translates it as photon therapy which doesn’t make too much sense to me. Thank You!!

I’ve been working through HSK 4 characters and have run into quite a few that look similar enough that, when viewing side by side, I am confusing them for each other.

Has anyone found that learning the radicals of characters has made a substantial difference in their ability to memorize/recognize characters?

I’m also wondering if there’s comprehensive list or Pleco file of common characters that look similar. Happy to hear any thoughts!

Hi, I was born and raised overseas to a Chinese parents. My mandarin ability? Let’s say it’s like your average ABC in syd/melb trying to speak Chinese to their distant relatives. I can speak but can barely read and write and would like to learn mandarin used in the business setting because my parents believed that mandarin is now crucial in business in the upcoming years. Can anyone recommend me a podcast to start with? Thank you so much!

Hello everybody, I'm just watching the movie Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring (1992) which revolves around two theater pieces. There is a scene I really don't get, so I wanted to ask if maybe someone could explain the meaning and joke of it for me.

The related theatre scene starts at 15:05 and the specific scene I mean starts roughly at 25:30 lasting a few minutes. They are quarrelling about the husband being lazy and not catching big enough fish. The joke starts with the husband replying something with 什么呢 , then the wife also uses the phrase, then they switch to alternately saying repeatedly 那个那个那个，这个这个这 and stuff like that. But from that point on I don't really understand anymore what they are talking about. It ends with all of them running around the stage, pretending to want to kill themselves, making summer saults and weird dances. I don't get at all what's going on here. Could maybe someone with more cultural/lingual knowledge explain the joke about the scene and the meaning of their acting out in the context of the scene?

https://youtu.be/uySft-IlhJg?si=FM-iuuN-HR8A67Fz

Hello, due to various reasons, I'm changing my first and last name. I'm Chinese-American, so I've chosen the surname Ling for myself, using the Chinese character 凌. I like that this character has the meaning "rise high" or "transverse," but I see that it can also mean "insult" or "maltreat."

My grasp of the Chinese language is primary school at best, so my question is: How much does 凌 have a negative versus positive connotation? Thanks in advance.

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。

1. Is the flashcard system the main/biggest bang-for-buck aspect of Pleco? Does it use SM2 or a custom algorithm?

2. I'm confused about how it (Placeo's flashcard system) works... Upon paying, does it come with 'decks' premade? I.e., starting with basics "hello, my name is.." and then it gradually expands each day? Or do we need to physically scroll through the dictionary and manually add every single word we want in our flashcard system?

Thank you

Can someone explain what the meaning and the use of a semantic variant character is, the 甚 to 什 and the 箇 to 个, to give a few examples.

If someone no longer needs it, I would like to purchase the license

Around about a month ago I made a post asking r/languagelearning if learning a new language has opened up a new side of the internet for them and got some interesting responses. Mandarin Chinese has always interested me but I don't see myself traveling to the country anytime soon and there aren't many Chinese people where I live so I'm curious what the Chinese side of the internet is like as that's where I'd be using the language most.

Some comments on my post suggested Mandarin due to how isolated the ecosystem is and how different it is from the rest of the internet. This, alongside the fact that I was already interested in the language, sparked the idea for this post.

I'm curious what the modern internet is like (internet culture), how much high quality media there is in the language compared to English (movies, shows, music etc.) and what the experience has been like for foreigners learning Chinese and experiencing it for the first time.

Looking forward to hearing about it all :)

I am fascinated by the Chinese language, specifically Mandarin. I would love to learn it. I don’t have any particular use for it so it is just for the fun of it. I also think it would be a useful skill to be able to communicate with huge chunk of the world population. I intend to get a teacher on preply for 2 hours a week. If I only did these two hours plus another hour self study a week, how far would I expect to get after 5 years? Would I be able to travel around in China with ease of communication after 5 years of doing this work?

A bit of context. I am in my mid 30s with a full time job hence the casual effort. I speak English and Persian.

I have been studying chinese for almost 45 days, and it's just self study at random sites, so almost finished hsk 1 words and grammer but i still feel that i'm not that good with conversations and written chinese so i'm searching for a book that has conversations written only in chinese and there is pinyin with translation after it.

Is it kind of like comparing english in the caribbean and US to the UK. Or is it like trying to understand a different language? To take a country for example how different is Taiwan Chinese from mainland Chinese?

Hi I’m looking on 起点 for urban novels as a beginner (HSK2-3) preferably with the audiobook available on the platform. Do you have any recommendations?

i have a presentation for my chinese conversation class that requires me to speak about my family for about two minutes

the first thing i say in the script in this presentation is 我家有五口人, with 口 being the measure word for family in this specific instance… but i also want to add my extended family to this presentation since i don’t have too many

i think what i’m struggling with is measure words. i read on a chinese grammar website that you usually say “亲戚” to refer to your extended family. i know 个 is usually what you use to measure family, so would the sentence for “i have 15 people in my extended family” be:

我家有十五个亲戚人

or would it be

我家有十五口亲戚人

or is it something else entirely? i appreciate any help :)

Thoughts on these two Mandarin schools?

After some extensive research on a few Mandarin Chinese schools (with Online group sessions), I've narrowed it down to two. 1.) Silk Mandarin 2.) GoEast Mandarin

PROS:

• Silk: seems to have a solid learning management platform and a nice interface for learning.
• GoEast: VIP representatives have been amazing at laying out all the information up front, being open about classes, scheduling, price, and allowing me to try out classes prior to joining. I do like they use Zoom (managed by Zoom) and not a proprietary video system (e.g., Preply).
• Both have in-person classes if traveling through Shanghai.

CONS:

• Silk and GoEast: Since all courses are on Chinese standard time and America bounces back and forth between EDT and EST, it can be difficult to find suitable times for attending online courses (not being too late in the US East Coast).

• GoEast: User portal/Learning Management System seems to be a bit dated. Material colors could be a little more clean and vibrant.

Other than described above, I can't find any issues with either one. I just want to find a school with consistent online group classes (where there are enough group members each semester in each class). I need the speaking interaction between more than myself and the teacher.

Q: Has anyone had any experience with either schools above? If so, Why did you like it?

I've read some of their materials and now I'm seriously considering buying their 1 year plan now that it's black friday. Is it a good investment for a begginer?

Edit: bought it! thank you, everyone!!!

On pleco and on my book it say they all mean street or road! I'm feeling really dumb, not gonna lie.

Hi! Would you recommend Pleco Basic Bundle over the "file reader addon" in order to read books (like Harry Potter) I just don't understand what difference would the basic bundle with its additional dictionaries make in the reading books process. Would it translate any words better??

p.s. and is there anything analogues, but better (or cheaper) to read books?

Hi i’m from singapore. I studied mandarin until i was 11 then stopped. My speaking abilities is stuck at a that stage and reading ability is non existence. My father’s side of my family is from Hong Kong and they can speak canto and english so there’s a communication errors when speaking to them. But every time I go there (once every 2 years) I feel like a failure cause my cousins speak english, mandarin and canto.

But at this point, I speak enough mandarin to live in Singapore but I can’t read anything. Then there’s canto where I only know how to say thanks.

I’m entering the workforce soon so I feel like I should improve on my mandarin but I still feel like I should study canto since I have family who speaks it.

But also in sg, I can’t think of anyways where learning canto would help me.

Sorry for ranting. I’m just not sure on which I should work on.

im drowning myself

Does anyone know if there is an equivalent to freaking/fricken/ fucking in Chinese?

I’ve heard some duoyin like a kid saying that in repeat. But different accents, however i can’t seem to find translations online. What does it mean?

If y’all know the duoyin audio please help me link it too :)

《竹里馆》 The Bamboo Hut

王维 Wang Wei
独坐幽篁里，
Sitting in among bamboos alone,
弹琴复长啸。
I play on lute and croon carefree .
深林人不知，
In the deep woods where I'm unknown,
明月来相照。
Only the bright moon peeps at me.

（This translation was translated by Xu Yuanchong, a well-known Chinese translator and literary prizer）
【白话译文】

我独自坐在幽深的竹林，一边弹琴一边高歌长啸。没人知道我在竹林深处，只有明月相伴静静照耀。

Trans：I sat alone in the deep bamboo forest, playing the guqin and singing loudly. No one knew that I was in the depths of the bamboo forest, only the bright moon shining quietly.

【知人论诗】Knowing the people and Knowing the poetry

王维晚年隐居蓝田时期。王维早年信奉佛教，思想超脱，加之仕途坎坷，四十岁以后就过着半官半隐的生活。正如他自己所说：“晚年惟好静，万事不关心。”因而常常独自坐在幽深的竹林之中，弹着古琴以抒寂寞的情怀。诗人是在意兴清幽、心灵澄净的状态下与竹林、明月本身所具有的清幽澄净的属性悠然相会，而命笔成篇的。

In his later years, Wang Wei lived in seclusion in Lantian. Having embraced Buddhism early in life and possessing a transcendent mindset, coupled with a tumultuous career, after the age of forty, he led a life that was half-official and half-reclusive. As he himself put it, "In my later years, I only cherished tranquility, indifferent to all matters." Thus, he would often sit alone in the deep bamboo groves, playing the guqin to express his feelings of solitude. The poet composed his works in a state of serene and clear-mindedness, naturally resonating with the inherent tranquility and purity of the bamboo grove and the bright moon.