As a fully paid-up member of the cult of Vivian Ling, I've been using this newish (2020) book to try to force myself to speak better Chinese. There are lots of 'advanced' grammar patterns which might be HSK4/5/6 (say) which I understand without any effort but never use in normal speech, even though native speakers do all the time.   And that is what Essential Mandarin Chinese Grammar is designed for. The introduction:   Quote This book is designed for learners who are motivated to boost their skills beyond the current level, perhaps even up to a professional or university graduate level. For such motivated learners, this book aims to make the study of Chinese grammar efficient and interesting. It provides a systematic overview of the grammar with a special focus on issues and pitfalls that affect English speakers.   Introduction continues: Spoiler      Do not blame yourself if you feel your current grasp of Chinese grammar is weak. The current trend in teaching foreign languages has shifted away from the old-school grammatical orientation to a modern communicative approach. Both methods have their pluses and minuses, and the ideal approach actually combines the two. The advantages of the communicative orientation are clear in the early learning stages; however, its disadvantages begin to emerge at the intermediate level. The opposite is true of the grammatical structure approach.       Students who have learned Chinese mainly by following the communicative approach often find themselves acquiring more sophisticated vocabulary at the intermediate level, while lacking the grammatical frameworks to hang it on. Some may actually be able to use their newly-acquired vocabulary, but lack self-confidence and feel as though they are “winging it.” Some may choose to simply to stay within their “safety zone,” using only the tried-and-true can’t-go-wrong sentence patterns they already know, while avoiding the more complicated patterns that make one’s language lively and articulate. This book aims to remove this bottleneck, and to provide you with the grammatical apparatus to continue building your proficiency in Chinese beyond the beginner level.       Learning a foreign language is a two-pronged “fact-act” endeavor. Knowing the “facts” of the language is essential, but putting that knowledge into action is the real key to building communication skills. This book provides both the “facts”—in the form of grammatical explanations—as well as the materials for practicing the “act,” in the form of copious usage examples and exercises with answer keys. Explanations of grammar points are unavoidably abstract or technical, but the examples that follow the explanations make them concrete and clear. The answer keys are intentionally located immediately after the exercises to provide quick feedback.   Everything explained in the book comes with multiple examples, and all have good clear audio (downloadable for free on publisher Tuttle's website).   The chapters in first half of the book deal with lots and lots of Basic Grammatical Features, an example below:   Spoiler     The second half, which I'm finding particularly useful, is Chinese Sentence Constructions You Should Know. There are 250+ constructions, which I already know but rarely or never actually use. I'm slowly using the audio to try to internalise the example sentences and hopefully use the structures in normal everyday speech. Examples:   Spoiler     Unless I messed up my search on here, I haven't seen this book mentioned on the forums - or anywhere else. Not only are the contents great, but the huge number of example sentences and their accompanying audio might mean this book hits the spot for others too?   Comes in paperback and digital editions. Link: https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/china/essential-mandarin-chinese-grammar Free audio download: https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/essential-mandarin-chinese-grammar

Hi Everyone. Anyone help me on translation. 任何人都可以帮助我 谢谢

Hi to all,   I am new to this forum and also to the Chinese language   to facilitate my lerning I would love to take notes to improve my vocabulary. Like in this example     the challenge is how to type this efficiently on my work Windows 10 or (God's forbids) my private Mac   I am testing quickpinyin and also Pyninput. They both actually work, but do not solve my problem of switching to a Chinese keyboard to type the Hanzi (and to make it worse, Microsoft Chinese keyboard is not QWERTZ like my German keyboard so I have to change keyboard and remember the different positons of the letters every time)   Before I try every possible combinations is there somebody out there who has a more elegant solution ? Ideally, a keyboard with a quick switch between english/pinyin and Chinese/kanzi   or somebody who can teach me how to setup the right combination of tools ?   I tried a few things.... Microsoft Chinese keyboard allows a quick toggle between Hanzi and English, does not support Pinyinput or Quickpinyin other keyboards support both Pinyinput or Quickpinyin but of course do not allow Hanzi   as I said above I can try to fix it on Windows, or on Mac. Or both 🙂   any idea is really welcome ! Keep the forum going strongly! Angelo        

I'm discovering a very interesting phenomenon for myself, and I wanted to see if anyone else experienced it too, or if it's a common thing!   I was born and raised in English speaking country, so English is my first language.  My brain thinks in English.  Also, I am reasonably fluent speaking Cantonese because of the environment I grew up in. I never learnt to read and write chinese growing up. Last year, I started to learn to read and write chinese by watching TVB shows with Chinese subtitles.   These days, when my eyes see Chinese characters, they immediately register in my brain as English words.  For example, when my eyes see 我想吃飯, I "pronounce" these words as "I want eat food", not as the cantonese "Ngo Seung Sick Fan".  When reading Chinese characters, there is no longer any Cantonese voices in my head...they are all English.   This got me thinking.....does that mean English is now a new Chinese dialect for me?   It's basically like how when 潮州 people read 我想吃飯, the words are immediately pronounced in the  潮州 dialect in their head.   潮州 people don't translate the words to mandarin before translating it into  潮州.  That's basically happening for me, except Chinese characters go straight to English pronunciation. I remember people saying the beauty of the Chinese writing system is that it can be used with any dialect.  How you write and how you pronounce can be completely different, which makes it possible for so many different ethnic groups in China and overseas to communicate with each other. Other examples of pronouncing Chinese characters/phrases that goes on in my head:   你是高手 - Pronounced as "You are Elite Level" 分久必合，合久必分 - Pronounced as "Divided for long time must unite, united for long time must divide" 名不虛傳 - Pronounced as "Reputation is not fake" 花拳繡腿 - Pronounced as "Flowery fists embroidered legs" - (looks good, but not practical)   Curious if other people pronounce Chinese characters in a non-Asian dialect?  Like pronouncing Chinese words in Hebrew, Russian, German etc...?  Is this a common thing for "Chinese as a second language" person?

Hi, as the title says, I'm looking to get through an HSK level 1 within 1 month, keeping goals low so far   Any advice or reading material would be appreciated   Cheers, Dan

Just out of curiosity, are there any books in traditional characters printed and sold in mainland China? Or maybe books that were originally published in Taiwan or Hongkong, are they available in bookstores in mainland China? 

Hi friends. I want to come to china to study Chinese precisely guangzhou. Does one know any good Chinese language school I can enroll in? I don't know a single Chinese. I prefer to stay in guangzhou. Thanks.

This YouTube video did an analysis of the HSK6 past exam question: the writing section of the 5th exam paper in 《汉语水平考试真题集（六级）2018版》.  I have this book, and the questions therein are quite similar to the actual exam.     They enumerated 515 words from this article and categorize them (I assume they count duplicates, and use the HSK2.0 standards).   In the first column, they list the number of HSK words at each level.  They find the HSK words split as follows: HSK1 (36%), HSK2 (15%), HSK3 (11%), HSK4 (10%), HSK5 (12%), HSK6 (5%).   The second column has four entries: (a) 重组词汇 (3%) [e.g. 环保 = 环境保护] and 减字词汇 [e.g. 部 = 部门] (9%) which are different variants of HSK words, (b) 基础词汇 (10%) which are non-HSK words but everyone knows [e.g. 天], (c) and 超纲词汇 (9%) are the extra-curricular words [e.g. 订单 and 满怀信心].   So in this one article alone, there were 46 extra-curricular words, which is more than the number of HSK6 words (i.e., 25).    

Hello I was wondering if anyone could please help me with the writing on this porcelain vase as well as the tag on the bottom? Thank you      

I have really needed to translate a news report about something that is important to me for ages. My chinese listening is not good enough. I know if I have chinese text i can translate it easily with google translate. Is there a way to translate audio as well. Its a news report so it pretty standard mandarin pronunciation. Thanks for your help.