Is there a way to measure how much a new language is a part of you, or maybe, how much you have accepted that language into your system? I don’t know about you, but for me, when there is a need for some interjection and I spout it out in a foreign language, it is an indication that the language no longer feels that foreign to me anymore.
yǒuyuán qiān lǐ lái xiānghuì, wúyuán duìmiàn bù xiāngféng 有缘千里来相会，无缘对面不相逢 have connection thousand li come meet, no connection face-to-face don’t meet Fate brings people together 缘分 yuánfèn, or just 缘 yuán, is a term we use an awful...
Singapore will be 50 years old tomorrow. Here is the Happy Birthday song in 3 languages. Happy Birthday Singapore! Here’s how to say Happy Birthday in Chinese: zhù nǐ shēngri kuàilè 祝你生日快乐 And in Japanese: o tan...
If you had to choose just one children’s song in Mandarin to learn, let it be this one! It is popular not just among Chinese speaking communities, but also in Korea, since it is where it originated,...
How should you introduce yourself in Mandarin, and how should you ask people for their names? Here are the audio files, and below, the explanation. Get the order right First of all, in Chinese, surnames come first,...
Are you aware that for the Chinese, it’s double Valentine’s this year? CNY ends today, the 15th of the first month. This day is called 元宵节 (Yuánxiāo Jié) or 灯节 (Dēng Jié – Lantern Festival). It is...
Today is the first day of Chinese New Year. May you have an eggplant on the horse! This is indeed a weird New Year greeting. Well, it’s actually part of a series of trending CNY greetings this...
It seems that we have only just welcomed the New Year, and yet very soon, we are going to celebrate it again! This time, the Chinese New Year. With New Year close on the heels of Christmas,...
Family ties are of great importance to the Chinese, and huge emphasis is given to terms of family members, including relatives. However distant a relative may be, you can be almost sure that there is some specific...
Let’s learn some simple Mandarin greetings that you can use daily. Probably what comes to mind when we mention Mandarin is the phrase “你好”nǐ hǎo, which means ‘hello’. 01 ni hao You can use it when you...
