Archive for the ‘Explanations’ Category
Sunday, December 17th, 2006
See also: Top 10 measure words to know
As a friend who recently arrived in China said, "Yes but do they really USE all of those measure words?" I don't know about all. But yes, unfortunately, they do use a great deal of them.
These are all the measure words I have ...
Posted in Explanations, Listening, Vocabulary | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
You may have noticed that a whole lot of words end with a neutral toned "zi 子." What does that "zi 子" thing mean? I think it means just that: "a thing."
This is only my theory, but I think because the Chinese language is a homonym minefield that has so ...
Posted in Explanations | 10 Comments »
Friday, September 22nd, 2006
In my first year of studying Chinese I learned (by doing it wrong in front of Chinese friends) that there are rules for where to put tone markings in words with more than one vowel. The official rules, according to Mark Swofford's very helpful site, are:
A and e trump all ...
Posted in Explanations | 4 Comments »
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