Tag Archives: reading

Learning languages: Can I learn (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) without learning to read and write?

I am often asked question is whether it is possible to learn an Asian language without learning the script. My answer is that it depends on how you intend to use the language. Continue reading

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Learning Mandarin: the first 2 months

Charlie is British and just started learning Chinese. He keeps a blog of his learning experiences at discoveringmandarin.blogspot.com. He was so kind to write a guest post for this blog, and share his motivations and experience of learning the language … Continue reading

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Traditional vs. simplified Chinese characters

The topic of simplified vs. traditional Chinese characters can be confusing if you are new to the Chinese language. The difference between these two written forms of Chinese is not to be confused with the difference between the Chinese dialects of Mandarin and Cantonese: both can basically be written in either simplified or traditional characters. In this post, I’m giving some background as to what the difference is, why it occurred occurred and where each writing method is used. Continue reading

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How to write Mandarin in Western script

When you first start learning Mandarin, you need a way to make notes and memorize. Since the Chinese language has thousands of characters, you would end up in a sort of chicken-and-egg situation. Luckily there is Hanyu Pinyin (Mandarin written in phonetics) which employs the same roman characters as are used for English and other European languages. Continue reading

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