Dear Dim Sum - A fun Chinese learning blog

[rolling piggy]

Hello everyone,

Thought you might find some interests in my blog with Chinese lessons: "Dear Dim Sum" at http://deardimsum.com/,'>http://deardimsum.com/, for friends and family who are starting from scratch.

I am a Chinese native speaker and a designer. I've been wanting to put those two skills together to make a visually engaging and easy to use Chinese learning site for a while:'0

I will update the blog everyday, with audio pronunciations, in a hopefully fun and engaging way.

It's free to use the blog. In exchange, perhaps you can give me suggestions and feedbacks on the blog in comments!

You can also subscribe to the blog to get email notifications when new posts come out:")

Thank you and happy learning!

http://deardimsum.com/

[roddy]

Good luck. Please install Pinyinput and be careful with your finals. 星 isn't xin ;-)

[imron]

Be careful with tones also. Standard pronunciation (at least on the mainland) for 星期 is xīngqī (two first tones) not xīngqí (first tone, second tone).

[rolling piggy]

Thank you for your suggestions! I will be more careful with double checking pinyins and tones. I guess sometimes just relying on being a native speaker is not enough:')

[skylee]

Standard pronunciation (at least on the mainland) for 星期 is xīngqī (two first tones) not xīngqí (first tone, second tone).

Looks like xīngqí (first tone, second tone) is the standard in Taiwan.

[roddy]

Having had a look at your about page . . .

My husband and mother-in-law want to learn Chinese so they can communicate with my parents, eventually.

Are you teaching them? I'd like to see some blog posts about that. Or get them to come along and join us, we're mostly friendly.

PS What on earth is that Taiwanese dictionary site doing with the pinyin tone marks?

[David Wong]

xing1qi2 is pretty much standard where I grew up. That's not the only "non-standard" pronunciation by speakers who speak my dialect. It's a wonder mainlainders can understand anything I say.

[jbradfor]

Looks like xīngqí (first tone, second tone) is the standard in Taiwan.

Thank you! That's how I remember pronouncing it, and I thought I was going crazy when I saw it as two first tones.

BTW, if we're picking on her pinyin, isn't the 不 in 对不起 qingsheng? ;)

[imron]

Looks like xīngqí (first tone, second tone) is the standard in Taiwan

I suspected that might be the case and vaguely recall discussing it in some other thread (hence qualifying my comment with 'on the mainland').

[xianhua]

Dim Sum? Mandarin?

Your English is native-like too so I'll hazard a guess you moved to the States when you were under 10.

[rolling piggy]

@ Roddy, Thanks for the invite! I am new to this community and I already love it! Since my husband and mother-in-law are starters with Chinese, they might find discussions on this forum to be a bit too advanced for them, for now. If I have the option (authorization from you guys:') of bringing in my Chinese lessons blog to this site, I'd love to be a more integrated part of this community!

Never thought tones can come with such interesting controversy:') It's great.

@ xianhua, I came to Chicago when I was 21. hehe. I have been here for 8 years now though:)

[daofeishi]

I came to Chicago when I was 21. hehe. I have been here for 8 years now though:)

Your English is impressive, especially if you didn't start practicing it in a native environment before you were 21. Perhaps you should consider starting a blog on how to learn English for Chinese native speakers too. It looks like you have mastered a lot of grammatical structures that adult Chinese learners of English struggle a lot with.

[rolling piggy]

Thank you!! My parents are trying to learn English, so a blog might them (and others like them) a lot:') It's not easy to teach English though... Although I might know how to say it, explaining it to others might be difficult - I guess that's where my husband can help:')

If I start the blog, I will for sure share with you guys!

[Lu]

This could grow into a great learning resource if you manage to keep it up (that will be the hard part I think, so jiayou!)

One more thing that roddy already mentioned: there's a program called pinyinput, you can download it from the forums. With it, you can write pinyin with tone marks (automatically put in the right places). I think that would help improve the site.

[rolling piggy]

Thanks Lu! You are absolutely right - keeping it up is the key. I haven't been very good at this growing up, but I shall do my best with this blog:')

Thanks for reminding me of the Pinyinput. It's such a cool tool but unfortunately it doesn't work with Macs and I don't have a PC.

[renzhe]

You can also use mdbg, there is a pinyin input link on the left.

Just enter pinyin (with tone numbers), and it will output it with proper tone marks which you can copy to your page.

[skylee]

I second renzhe.

[tooironic]

This resource is great too for inputting pinyin (and it's online so you don't need to install anything). Good luck with your project!

[rolling piggy]

All great recourses! Thanks guys! I am excited to try them out on the blog.

[Koxinga]

To make it even more useful, can you give example sentences as well?

Since I'm not too familiar with Chinese idioms, I can only imagine how 不三不四 is used.

As for the audio, you should add a pause after you say something so the listener can repeat after you.

Good luck with the project.