Category Archives: Chinese

All about learning Mandarin Chinese




How to Pronounce Chinese Names

 

How to Pronounce Chinese Names

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~zhuxj/readpinyin.html

 
I see names like ‘Qin’, ‘Xu’, ‘Zhu’, and I am not sure how to say Chinese names like these.
What you see is pinyin, literally ‘spell out the sound’.  It’s a system for romanizing Chinese ideograms, used in mainland China for Mandarin, a.k.a. putonghua.
Different systems are used in Hong Kong,Taiwan, and Singapore, where the following is not applicable.

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Practice these 20 Words for Awesome Chinese Tones

From lingomi:

If you’re like most Chinese learners, you probably make tone mistakes now and again. I know I’ve made plenty. Sadly, most Chinese textbooks don’t have a section on how to get better tones (kind of odd, if you think about it). Once, when I was preparing for a televised debate in Chinese (a story for another day), a teacher mentioned I was having issues with my 4th tone. Then she told me the 20 words I needed to practice to dramatically improve my tones. That’s right, you can get better tones by spending 5 minutes a day practicing 20 words. Continue reading