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Fun facts about Mandarin Chinese for people who know nothing about the language!

1 - Characters in Mandarin are called “Hanzi”

2 - The word for “month” in Mandarin is the same as for “moon” : 月

3 - Speaking of months, they don’t have their own names in Mandarin in the same way English months do. Instead, they’re called Month 1, Month 2, etc!

4 - The same goes for days of the week, too, except Sunday, for which there are two different names

5 - In Mandarin, there is no separate word for “my” or “yours” - you simply add 的。It means “belonging to”, so if you put 我 (me) and 的 together, it becomes “my”.

6 - There are guidelines/unofficial rules for how to write Hanzi! For example, the frame of a character is written before the contents, and strokes that span the whole character are written last!

7 - Characters are made up of radicals - smaller portions that have their own meanings! For example, if you look closely at 她 (she), you’ll see it contains 女 (woman)!

8 - The word for “he” and “she” is pronounced the same (tā) but written differently (她 for she and 他 for he)

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The 然's

突然，虽然，忽然. and the other 然's can often get mixed up, so here's a quick explanation of some of the most common ones!

突然 (Túrán): This means suddenly or unexpectedly

居然 (Jūrán): This kind of means suddenly, but more in the sense of "surprisingly" or to suggest disbelief at something that happened.

忽然 (Hūrán): This also means suddenly or unexpectedly, but it has a more stronger connotation.

既然 (Jìrán): This is a conjunction meaning "since" or "now that"

既然the weather is great, let's go out!

既然 you aren't busy, let's go watch a movie.

不然 (Bùrán): This means "otherwise" or "or else";

You should study, 不然 you won't do well on the exam.

虽然 (Suīrán): This means although or even though.

虽然 I'm not good at singing, I still like to go to the karaoke.

当然 (Dāngrán): 当然 means certainly or definitely and can be used as a reply:

Can you help me with A? 当然!

自然 (Zìrán): This can mean nature or naturally.

China's 自然 is very beautiful.

She speaks Chinese 得很自然.

仍然 (Réngrán): This can mean "still" or "yet".

I仍然 haven't read that book.

依然 (Yīrán): Similar to 仍然, this also means still" or "yet" but it's usually used in more formal and literary works, whereas 仍然 is more often used in spoken language.

果然 (Guǒrán): 果然 can be used to mean "indeed" or "as expected"

This movie is 果然 interesting.

竟然 (Jìngrán): This is an adverb used to suggest surprise or something unexpected.

He竟然forgot her birthday.

显然 (Xiǎnrán): This means "clearly" or "obviously".

This soup 显然 hot.

偶然 (Ǒurán): This means "accidentally" or "by chance".

We 偶然 met at the same cafe.

How many other 然's do you know about? Drop a comment!

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Yes, this makes sense.

Wait. What do you mean the 4th tone indicates it's pointing out something and the 3rd tone shifts the word from that to which and thus turns it into a question??

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如果你呼唤孤独和星星，我就会来到你身边。

Rúguǒ nǐ hūhuàn gūdú hé xīngxīng, wǒ jiù huì lái dào nǐ shēnbiān.

If you call for solitude and the stars, I will come to you.

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带着自由，我一遍遍数着日落.

Carrying freedom, I count the sunsets again and again.

(Dàizhe zìyóu, wǒ yībiàn biàn shùzhe rìluò)

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This character (永) evolved from a drawing of a long river, but you can also use this philosophical mnemonic: there is an ETERNITY (永) trapped in a DROP (丶) of WATER (水).

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强国不必法古

To build a strong nation, it is not necessary to follow ancient principles.

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What do you mean i am not fluent in [LANGUAGE] immediately. that is so unfair

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High quality bilingual Chinese-English Periodic Table of Elements (PTE)!

Notes on things you may not know: the Chinese characters can help you understand more about chemistry than you knew before.

Any character with 金 or 钅is a metal, and any character containing those two or 石 is solid at room temperature (STP).

Any character with 气 is a gas at room temperature.

Any character with 水 or 氵is a liquid at room temperature. There are only two, 溴 Br and 汞 Hg.

The characters are pronounced usually very loyally to their sound component. Examples: 氢 is pronounced like 轻；锂，里；钠，呐；钾，甲；铷，如；铯，色；钫，方. However, this table works very well with Pleco's OCR, so if you're not sure, it is super easy to draw or scan the character to look it up. You may notice that both 锡 and 硒 are both pronounced the same as 西; to differentiate, if the need to arises, you can always say something like 锡纸的锡 or 石字旁的硒.

The last 15 characters are not type-able yet (except for 镆 because the character was in use prior to its being used as a chemical), so I had to manually make them using the components. I used a square to ensure their proportions, but if any of them look off, let me know. I'm not sure why, but the first time I built them in the program I was using, the sound component had chromatic aberration on it. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until I had built all 14, so that was a lot of additional work. I fixed them, but if you see that on any others, lmk.

Since those last 15ish are not type-able and since font compatibility is still iffy, here are the Unicode and Wiktionary pages for those characters so that you can copy and paste and look up their pronunciation.

Rf - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Db - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Sg - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Bh - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Hs - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Mt - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Ds - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Rg - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Cn - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Nh - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Fl - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Lv - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Ts - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Og - Wiktionary and Unicode pages

Is colourblind friendly. A lot of PTEs use colours to differentiate, but the colours can even be hard to discern for me, someone who does not have any colourblindness. So in addition to the type-colour, I also included a symbol. Originally, I chose roman numerals, but for some reason, the day before I posted this, the font changed and it got messed up. I couldn't tell what happened, so I switched them to Chinese numerals, and they're in order of when they show up.

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The Chinese periodic table

In Chinese, every element has a monosyllabic name with a character assigned to it. This makes the Chinese periodic table really cool, because every box has a unique character.

However, the monosyllabic names may cause confusion because many are homophones. New characters had to be created specifically for the recently discovered elements. Some of them do not exist in Unicode.

Some patterns can be observed in the table:

All gases have the 气 (steam) radical.

The liquid elements (mercury and bromine) have a 水 or 氵(water) radical.

All metals except mercury have a 金 or 钅(metal) radical.

Solid non-metals and metalloids have the 石 (stone) radical.

(Originally posted on Quora.)

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This is my goal with Mandarin Chinese. I'm 17 days into learning. I'm using Hanly, Pleco, Duolingo, YouTube, etc but I haven't started reading books. I plan to start books for children and read one a day to work my way up. One of my goals is to read Orwell's 1984 because it's one of my favorite books and I've nearly memorized it. I also want to read Pedro Paramo because I'm curious how that would be translated from Spanish to Mandarin.

Don’t fear unknown words

(Note: With this post I just want to share thoughts and tips based on my own experiences and observations. If you have a different opinion that's fine. Language learning is an very individual process. Everyone has different goals and preferences. Try different things and do what works best for you.) Reading is an effective way to increase your vocabulary. But the really interesting books are often very difficult for a language learner (especially if you have little to no experience with native level books). Looking at a page full of unknown words can be intimidating. And if it’s a physical book, reading even a few pages takes ages if you need to look up many words. Reading texts above your current level can be slow and difficult.

From time to time I see language learners who tend to avoid books for natives and keep studying from textbooks or apps to “prepare“ themselves until they are “ready“. And I understand their decision. Textbooks and language learning apps provide structure and present the language in manageable chunks. They are an important first step and they can be a great resource for intermediate learners. Please use them to learn the basics and as a reference but keep in mind that they can only get you to a certain level. It’s obvious, but books for native speakers are not written with language test levels in mind (in the case of Japanese the JLPT). A book for natives can contain words of all levels. For example: The language used in books for a young audience is usually easier than for adults, but even books for kids can contain words that are not in your textbook. On the other hand, novels for adults contain not only abstract and specialized words but also many common words you probably already know. To put it simply: There are no strict levels in the "wild". That’s why you need to learn to deal with the language outside of textbooks. These resources help but they just can’t teach you everything. I mean, it would be extremely unrealistic to expect that you just need to study enough textbooks or completing all levels of your language learning app and then you are able to understand any novel for adult natives without look ups. If you want to learn to read at the level of an adult native speaker, you need to face this challenge and start reading these books at some point — and I mean many of them. No matter how much you prepared yourself through textbooks and apps, you will run into a ton of new words and phrases. This is intimidating at first, but there’s no way around it. You learn simply as you go by trying your best to understand and looking up words, phrases and grammar points. If you are only used to textbooks and apps, it’s absolutely normal that you struggle for quite some time. Don't worry! It gets easier the more you expose yourself with content for native speakers.

What is intimidating today will feel normal for you in the future. Keep going, don’t fear challenges, be open minded and take your time — and you will be able to tackle more and more difficult content.

Tips and recommendations

I myself am at a point where I’ve read around 100 books in Japanese. Many of them were manga, the rest were light novels, novels and a few non-fiction books. The level of difficulty of these books varies. I started with easier books and tried to read more and more challenging ones. I also regularly play video games in Japanese. A few examples:

Manga

名探偵コナン (has full furigana, it’s quite challenging but you’ll learn a ton of expressions and words from a wide range of real wold topics, strongly recommend it)

ナルト (typical battle shonen manga, full furigana, much easier than コナン)

Silver Spoon (full furigana, lots of specialized vocab and therefore difficult, but also very fun)

バクマン (one of my favorites, very enjoyable but also difficult)

らんま 1/2 (I love this series, it has full furigana and is one of the easier manga I've read so far; just be prepared that it contains a bunch of "fantasy" words like attack names etc.)

Novels and Light Novels

ハイキュウ 小説版 (this was challenging at first because the author uses a quite rich vocabulary, the stories are not very complex though)

名探偵コナン (I’ve read several novel versions of the Detective Conan movies, the writing style is quite easy to understand, they cover various topics and they have full furigana, I strongly recommend them)

ハリー・ポッター 1 to 4 (the beginning was hard and sometimes I was a bit lost what happens but the overall difficulty is okay; there are also audiobooks on Audible)

変な家 (I really enjoyed this one, the first chapters are quite easy, only the last one was suddenly very difficult)

Games

Animal Crossing (easy and relaxing game, full furigana)

Ace Attorney (one of my favorites, no furigana, challenging at first but now at Ace Attorney 3 I can play it with only occasional look ups)

Even though I’ve read quite a number of books, I’m far from fluent. I'm currently reading several books: 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口, リング and ソードアート・オンライン 1. Even with all my experience, there are many new words in all of them. Maybe I should be better at this point, but it is what it is.

However, this is no reason to panic. I think that it’s important to not fear unknown words. New words are not a barrier, they help you grow. Instead of worrying about all these unknown words I take my time, look up words and follow the story. I can enjoy these books even though I don’t understand everything and need to look up many words.

To me, it’s about the journey, not the goal.

Some tips and strategies

Pick a book you’ve already liked reading in your native language (or after watching the movie). This way, you can be sure that you will like the story. This makes looking up many words more bearable. Plus, knowing the story makes it easier to understand the novel in your target language.

If possible, choose the ebook version. Reading digitally makes look ups faster and therefore less frustrating. Because it’s almost effortless you can look up many words without burning out. And by looking up more, there are more opportunities to learn new words.

Decide how many words you want to look up per page depending on your needs. Looking up words digitally is fast and almost effortless. This way it’s not hard to look up every word you don’t know. But if this is too much for your taste, just set a limit that makes reading more comfortable for you. You could try to look up only the 3 most important/interesting words per page and see how it goes. Change the number depending on how you feel or how difficult the book is.

It’s okay to not understand 100%. Progress is better than perfection. As long as you read regularly and look up at least some new words, your vocabulary will grow. Don’t worry too much about every single word you don’t know.

Being able to guess words from context is a valuable skill. Try to understand from context first and look up what seems necessary afterwards.

Don’t let yourself get discouraged right away just because you encounter several new words per page. If you start a new book, try to read at least the first chapter. The prologue and the first chapter are usually the hardest, because you need to get used to the authors writing style and the story.

Take as much time as you need. If you lack vocabulary, reading speed is nothing to worry about at this stage. Build up your vocabulary first.

Even if the overall level of difficulty is okay, there can always be paragraphs or chapters where your comprehension suddenly drops. That’s completely normal. Do your best to understand the gist, look up some words and then move on. Focus on the things you can understand.

You don’t need to learn everything the first time you read a book. Don’t worry too much about rare and specialized words, yet. Try to focus on more common words first. Since they come up more often and in different books, they are more useful at this point. Later when you are more advanced, looking up and learning these rather rare words is less overwhelming than in the beginning where everything is new.

A flashcard program like Anki helps to remember words you've encountered during your reading sessions. But instead of adding all new words I recommend to add only words you've seen at least a few times. I put the Japanese word together with an example sentence on the front and the meaning on the back. I use it only as a supplement. My daily Anki sessions are between 10 - 15 minutes long. I want to use most of my learning time for reading and listening -- this is where I really learn new words (= by repeatedly seeing them in context). Anki just helps me to build up familiarity with words I already recognize. Anki is not a must, of course. If you really can't stand it, don't use it. Just make sure that you read and listen regulary.

Graded readers can help to get used to reading in your target language. However, the gap between graded readers and easier books for natives can still be quite significant.

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Oh to have been born later. I'm glad these accommodations are available these days.

accommodations i’ve had approved as an autistic college student

helloooo today i finally had a meeting with the disability office and have accommodations after 2 years of being in college without them. im autistic and have cptsd/dissociative issues and had a hard time finding what was even available to me to request for accommodations so i wanted to make a list to help anyone else who might be having trouble.

• Priority registration

i get to register for classes earlier each term to make sure i can create schedules that’ll work for my routine

• Extended time on assignments

self explanatory i think? was also offered extended time on tests or a separate room to take them but testing isnt where i struggle

• Flexible attendance

as long as i email beforehand i dont have to stick as strictly to professors attendance policies

• Alternative formats

if i buy a physical textbook i can request the ebook/pdf/audiobook for free to have multiple methods of studying depending on what works for me on a given day

• Note taking

allowed to audio record class and send to a service called messenger pigeon who will give me a transcript of the class and professional notes based on it

• Access to lecture notes

able to access professors lecture notes prior to class/instruction

• Devices

allowed to have phone/ipad/laptop for social buffering and notes in classes that may have policies against electronics

• Flexible participation

no cold calling, option to work alone for group projects/assignments, not required to present in front of class

if anyone has any questions lmk these are just what i have been able to get at my school so far! hope it helps

edit: this is blowing up so fellow autistics, students, language nerds, etc pls be my mutual i want friends lol my dms are also open any time !!

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Andor coded

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What do you mean I don't have time to learn all the languages