In Mandarin, “一点儿 yìdiǎnr”、“一下 yíxià”、“一会儿 yíhuìr”、“有点儿 yǒudiǎnr” all mean a little. Do you know how to use them the right way? Learn how to differentiate them in this article, and then test yourself via this quiz in...
If you’re living in Singapore, or if you’ve travelled to Singapore before, you must have been puzzled/ annoyed/ amused (or all of the above) by the Singlish used here. Regardless of your attitude toward Singlish, if you...
Hmm… Is kitty waiting for me at the back door? Or the behind the door? In Chinese, word order is very important. In this article I’ll attempt to deal a bit with some common words that can...
Here’s a little prelude to the upcoming Mandarin Weekly video. Have you heard of these two expressions? 1) 不大不小 bú dà bù xiǎo 2) 没大没小 méi dà méi xiǎo If you’ve learnt a little Mandarin, you probably...
Did you get the answer to the quiz in the last post? The question was the title of the post itself. What does “调调琴 种种花 练练调” mean, and how should you pronounce it? Here’s the answer: 01...
How did you find the post on ‘怎么’? (The Why and How of ‘怎么’ zenme) Let’s now have some practice on that. Listen to the following questions and choose the appropriate answers. (In order that this also...
You probably know that ‘怎么’ (zenme) means ‘how’, but are you aware that it also has the meaning of ‘why’? So how do you know when it means ‘how’ and when it means ‘why’? Also, when it refers...
Finally got down to revamping this blog. Well, as with many other things in life, you can find lots of reasons for things you do or not do, but if they end up sounding like mere excuses...
