“Roughly speaking” in Chinese
The Chinese are famously pretty vague in giving answers. As most will readily admit, they prefer to offer estimations rather than specifics, especially if there may be consequences involved. Instead…
Why does Chinese have more collective nouns than English?
One of our users recently pointed out that the translation of certain sentences in our app could be more precise. The example pointed to was: “我想喝酒(wǒ xiǎng hē jiǔ)” which…
How Is an Online Chinese Course Going?
If you aren’t lucky enough to live in an area with low cost Mandarin schools, or 1-1 private teachers, chances are you’ve already taken your search for tuition online. There…
Translating “can” into Chinese: 可以 (kě yǐ), 会 (huì) and能 (nénɡ)
As you get a little more confident with learning Chinese, some of the initial problems such as tones, characters and strange pronunciations the mouth seems to refuse to make start…
8 Things You Might Not Know About Chinese New Year
You might have heard a few things about Chinese New Year already. You’ve probably heard about the firecrackers and maybe even the money in red envelopes that older members of…
Interesting Idioms & Slang that use Monkey in Chinese – 猴 (hóu)
According to the Chinese zodiac, the Monkey (猴, hóu) is the ninth of the 12-year cycle animals. 2016 is the Year of the Monkey (猴年, hóu nián) starting from February 8,…
Tiger Stories and Idioms in Chinese
Once you have grasped the basics of Mandarin, you will discover that one of the most interesting, if complex areas to study is chengyu. Chengyu are four character idioms which…
Master the Art of ‘Picking Up’ in Chinese: Translations You Need to Know!
Stop giggling at the back! When you saw the title, did you think we were diving into the world of dating and romance in Chinese class today? Well, instead we’ll…
Tackling the two opposite meanings of 让(ràng)
This article covers the character 让(ràng), a word with two virtually opposite meanings in Mandarin: to permit; to yieldto make someone do/feel something; to have someone do something. Tackling these…