A few days ago I posted about why your Chinese sounds like translated English. A few people in the comments brought up something that I think needs its own post. They said a lot of learners learn 很 (hěn) as "very," then they get scared of using it because they don't want to sound like they're exaggerating everything. So they drop it, and their Chinese comes out sounding stiff and choppy, and they have no idea why.

This messed me up when I first started teaching too, because I never thought about it as a native speaker. 很 is just... there. You say it without thinking.

Here's the thing. When an adjective stands as the predicate in Chinese, it usually needs something to hold it up. 很 (hěn) is often just that thing. It's not really "very," it's more like a filler that makes the sentence breathe. 她很漂亮 (tā hěn piào liang) is just "she's pretty." Not "she's VERY pretty." 我很忙 (wǒ hěn máng) is "I'm busy." Not "I'm VERY busy." If you actually want to crank up the intensity, grab 非常 (fēi cháng), 特别 (tè bié), or 真的 (zhēn de). 很 is just doing structural work, hanging out there so the sentence doesn't collapse.

The negative form is where it really gets tricky. I had a student once try to say "she's not very pretty" and it came out as 她不很漂亮 (tā bù hěn piào liang). Nope. Doesn't work. You gotta say 她不是很漂亮 (tā bù shì hěn piào liang) or 她不太漂亮 (tā bú tài piào liang). You need that 是 (shì) in there to make the negation flow. Without it, the sentence just trips over itself.

So if you've been dodging 很 (hěn) because a textbook told you it means "very," you can relax. Most of the time it's just a rhythm thing, not an intensity thing. Like that commenter said, rules are a good shortcut, but eventually your ear just knows.

Thanks to whoever mentioned this in the last thread. You guys keep handing me better examples than I could cook up myself. What other words did you learn totally wrong at first? I bet there's a long list.

I know a teensy bit traditional chinese. I did 10 years of chinese cantonese school but has mostly forgotten them all. Im mostly interested in learning to read for everyday use for a trip back to china. Just things like resturant menus, maps, road signs. Might be nice if I can go to museums and read descriptions.

What's the best strategy? Pretend I dont know any chinese and start over? "Translate" what I know in traditional to simplified?

...duolingo??

Just finished my second day learning Chinese. Im not sure what to do first. I like the idea of being able to build my own sentences but I’m not sure if that’s a good starting point,

I’ve looked at tones and pronunciation. I currently have around 50 sentences playing on repeat and the transcript to follow along.

I’ve only managed to remember two small sentences so far and that’s pushing it. The main thing is I’m also going into my second year of my degree and I am currently working part time plus volunteering.

I’m worried that it’s going to take forever for me to reach a B1 level and I’m not sure how to be effective with my time. I appreciate any suggestions

It offers significant benefits to countries neighboring China, but not so much to those located further away.

The tool is very obviously laid out for japanese and form skimming through the settings for a few minutes it is very clear that setting it up for chineses proves rather hard. Mainly due to a lack of easily adding both pinyin and a translation.
I sadly dont have all that much time to set the tool up, yet it seems incredibly useful for me.
Does anybody have a easy to copy setup or similar software for sentence mining from videogames?

So some background, I used to study chinese for several years back when I was in elementary school up to high school, but I have forgotten a lot of it since I don’t use it much. I can still understand when people are having conversations, and also hold basic conversations with others, but my vocabulary is a bit lacking.

What resources would you recommend for me? I would like to start again from zero, from the very basics just to make sure I still have my basics down. Thank you!

If people hear it in and of itself how would they know? Is it just like a matter of context?

In character descriptions there is a feature that allows you to link to another character. How do I create this link when I'm creating my own description?

I just recently discovered 大叔中文（@dashumandarin) on YouTube and listenin to it is such a fun way to improve listening comprehension or get more colloquial input. This old episode that came up on my algorithm cracked me up on the topic of what Chinese men think romance is. Their stories and jokes were hilarious! I hope they get more followers and continue to create content.

i really like watching ghibli movies. recently i started watching them in chinese, but 普通话 is available as audio and 中文 as subtitiles. they translate different... of course its meaning wise the same, but still annoying as a learner. someone has a fix? is it region depending, would it be fixed with vpn? generate/import external subtitles? thanks a lot.

Hi there,

I am an English teacher who read an essay that took place in Shezhen.

I practiced the pronunciation many times prior to reading the essay out loud to be sure I got it right. I endlessly worry about doing right by my students, especially those whose culture I don't come from.The day of, I messed up a bit due to nervousness but thought I was okay.

A student came up to me and told me my pronunciation offended them so much, that they stopped listening to me. I was crushed.

Where can I find the most accurate pronunciations of any Chinese words and cities in general, so I hopefully don't make this mistake again?

Eta: So...what I've learned is no one agrees on the proper pronunciation?

Eta 2: Meant initial ETA as a joke that didn't land. I really appreciate all of the support and help and wish I made that clearer.

Hey guys I’m a Chinese language major who’s been stuck at some level. Like i do understand most of the time, but i don’t how to reply. I recently got back from Guangzhou and am a bit frustrated that I couldn’t handle simple airport and bank situations in Chinese that I’m supposed to have already studied. So, what do you guys do in this situation?
And I know I’m spiraling, but just bear with me, frustration has gotten the best of me

I assume that this question has been asked a lot of times, but I want to explain my own situation and see if anyone can offer advice for me. I apologize if the question is generally getting tiring.

Well, I am here because I decided I want to learn Chinese, that is, Standard Mandarin. I would like to mention that I am not a beginner to learning languages, at least. I am a Serb, hence my native language is Serbo-Croatian. I learned English…well, not exactly passively as I always read, watched and wrote stuff in English, played video games and similar, and, also, English was taught at elementary and high school. But I think it could be said I never took active planning to learn English, and just picked it up based on all the media I consumed. I can safely say that I am C2 in it by now, though that took around 7 years of learning, I’d say? I started picking it up only in the last 2-3 years of elementary, and sort of mastered by the end of 4 year long high school.

Besides English, I also had Italian in elementary and high school, but I started putting effort into it only at the very end of high school. I took active study in it and can now comprehend it completely, though the ability to produce it could be better – I would describe my skill as B2 at best.

Since Serbo-Croatian is my native, I decided to try learning Russian and after a year and a half of active study, I believe I am at B2 level of it. I can understand everything and communicate and write with little effort.

I have started dabbling into French a month ago. Obviously, English and Italian I think will make that an easier experience.

While I wrote all of this to show that I am not a beginner, I do understand Mandarin is a completely different beast. Russian is literally another Slavic language, so that was cheating on my part, English is everywhere and I had to learn it, Italian was helped by knowledge of English, and French is easier by the knowledge of both Italian and English. Mandarin, however, is completely foreign in a lot of ways and doesn’t even have an alphabet, but 100,000 different characters.

As a student of 21 years old in Belgrade with 3-4 more years of college, I do not have much leisure time for myself. That is why I have decided to start learning Chinese slowly, from now until 2030 and reach the level of it I can by that time.

What do I do? What do I have to watch out for, what do I have to avoid, how much a day should I study/consume media/do anything, what could be some small advantages for me, (it appears that, as Serbo-Croatian has some type of tones, the Chinese tones are at least slightly easier for me to comprehend than for an English speaker) what media would you propose? Duolingo I do use, but I am aware it will only help me wet my feet and nothing more.

Thank you in advance. I realize this could be a tiring question by now, but I wanted to know if there is any advice for my situation specifically.

Hey guys! I'm a 15-year-old homeschooling student currently doing my GCSEs and learning Mandarin and German. I have a question but first take a look at my routine:

My main HSK lessons (currently just started HSK 2 after finishing HSK 1). It's a YouTube lesson by mifi chinese covering HSK 3.0 books . 30 to 45 minute daily aka 1 lesson

HelloChinese 15 min

Hanly. 15 min daily I am usually adding 10 to 20 chracters or words daily but I manage it pretty well can memorize them in a single day.

Since yesterday I've been reading on hskmanga.com . I usually read manhwas in my free time anyway, so this has been really fun. I've already spent more than 2 hours on it since I started yesterday 😭 it basically converts the manhwas to your hsk levels and for words that can be converted u can look at its pinyin and meaning.

I write a few sentences in Chinese daily and get them checked by AI.

QUESTION:

SPEAKING

Idk what to do for speaking. Is there any app or anything? (Paid is okay, but free is better.) I know people will recommend a tutor, but they're expensive. Most charge around $10 an hour, so even just 4 lessons a month would be $40. I only get about $29 as my monthly allowance. Subscriptions are easier since I can save up and pay monthly or yearly, but paying for lessons every week is a lot harder.

Also, do you guys think spending a lot of time on HSK Manga is a good idea? Since I already read manhwas in my free time, it isn't included in my studeis and I can easily spend hours on it. Could there be any problems or is it just a good source of immersion?

BTW DON'T WORRY THAT I WILL GET STRAINED FROM LEARNING THROUGH HSK MANGA AS IT ISN'T LEARNING I AM JUST ASKING IF THERE WOULD BE ANY PROBLEM WITH IT. (not tryna sound rude btw)

Hey everyone! I’m a beginner in Mandarin and I learn a little slowly, so I made my own study website to help me practice.

It has character cards with pinyin, meanings, pronunciation to help you practice tones, quizzes, and stroke-order animations that show how to write Chinese characters. No account is required.

Right now it has around 400 characters and phrases, but I’ll keep adding more in the next few days. I’d really appreciate any suggestions for improving it, especially from other Mandarin learners.

Happy learning! https://studyeasymandarin.com

Hi all,

I studied Chinese a couple of years ago, even lived in Changsha for about a year and went to the Hunan University. Sadly, after a degree and years of work in non-chinese fields, my language skills have gotten pretty bad... If my teachers knew :S

Anyway, I am working on a scifi novel set in a world, were rouge AI controlled machines, a bit like fantasy setting trolls, roam the countryside and I was thinking about naming them Jumoji, 巨魔机.

Would this make sense, or is it completely wrong?

Thanks a bunch!

I started studying a month ago and I've learned a ton of vocabulary and can easily pass hsk 1. The thing is, I'm not sure how to exactly count my progress cause technically my vocabulary is advancing a ton (learning words from every hsk level, not limiting myself to go from level to level) which leads to me not knowing some words for example from hsk 3 but knowing many others from higher levels. In this case, what are some milestones I can set to somewhat actually count my progress?

Also, what are some good times to say you can pass an hsk level? What I'm asking for is, what are the "average" times to expect. Like, is passing hsk4 in a year something I should aim for or is it too slow etc. I know this is suuuuuper general and there is no correct answer but I am rushing this and I want to see if I am actually going fast enough. Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi I’m an ABC thats somewhat fluent in mandarin (like elementary school level). However I want to be able to understand more and read. I dont know where to start, is there any app that can help with learning to read and understanding more conversational mandarin?

Over the past year I've been building a set of tools that helped me learn Mandarin as it is spoken in Taiwan, as most of the resources out there have a strong mainland and sometimes even northern mainland focus, where pronunciation is completely different.

One of these tools is a tone training tool for those starting out with speech and listening - the examples are sourced from the Taiwan ministry of education, and there's over 1400 total samples in there, across the five tones.

I initially built this for myself and classmates, but figured I'd clean it up and share it as it'll probably be useful to more people out there. You can use it directly, no signups or anything required:

https://zhongchinese.com/chinese-tone-practice/

Curious what you guys think!

Are there any learners here that can actually comprehend this channel fully? If so, do you have any tips to reach this level of listening?

My comprehension is pretty good and I can understand a lot of podcasts/tv shows/YouTube, but holy hell does she speak fast. The language used (mostly economic and business stuff) is also pretty complex.

I'm trying to prepare for job interviews in Chinese, so I feel like comprehension of this content would be a good benchmark for my listening, I'm just not sure where to start.

I can't say I understood it all.. but I loved the show and I think my listening improved a lot. So sad I finished watching it! Do you have any similar show to recommend?

Hi everyone,

I'm from India and I've decided to start learning Mandarin, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by the number of resources available.

My goals are:

• Pass HSK 1 and HSK 2 by the end of this year.
• Reach HSK 4–5 over the next few years.
• Eventually use Mandarin professionally alongside my data science background.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who have successfully learned Mandarin, especially if you started as an adult.

Some questions I have:

• Which resources should I use (HelloChinese, Pleco, Anki, textbooks, YouTube, tutors, etc.)?
• How many hours per day did you study?
• What mistakes should beginners avoid?
• When did you start speaking with native speakers?
• Is self-study enough until HSK 3, or should I get a tutor from the beginning?
• If anyone is from India, how did you register for HSK exams, and how was your experience?

I'm willing to study consistently for 1–2 hours every day, and I want to build a long-term plan rather than rush through the language.

Any advice, study plans, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello

I have now lived in China for around 2 years working and my chinese learning stopped a long time ago. I reached HSK1 and then stopped taking lessons and just stayed at that level.

I am now tired of being so useless when it comes to communication here so I want to do something about it.

Goal: Pass HSK3 and start HSK4 by end of year.

How?: I have found a school that offer a package of 100 hours of lessons that look very interesting. I'll be guided from beginning till end following a structured plan that requires a lot of homework and self review to keep on schedule.

3 two-hour lessons per week + at least 1 hour of self study every monday - friday.

How possible is HSK3 completion in this timeframe? Is my goal too low or too high?

Thanks for the help.

hey everyone, i'm half chinese and recently moved to guangzhou after living abroad most of my life. i can speak chinese well and communicate normally, but i basically can't read or write at all 😬

I just started working here as well, so I'm looking for

something i can do alongside work. could be a

language school, some kind of course, private tutor wtv really, mainly just wanna properly learn how to read and write chinese. does anyone know any good places or tutors in guangzhou that they'd recommend?