Very little is known about the origins of the written Chinese language. However, one of the most common stories is about the minister of mythical Emperor Huang Di, 仓颉 (cāng jié) Cang Jie, who allegedly saw the prints of birds and animal’s feet as being distinct and individual. He then drew his own pictures of… Read More
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Many of you already know that Written Chinese has experienced a few changes over the last few years, the most significant was saying bye to our Written Chinese Dictionary app (5555). But, it’s not the end of the world! Our Online Dictionary is still alive and kicking and an essential tool for learning Chinese! If… Read More
Welcome to Episode 2 of Scavenger Sunday! This week we ‘scavenged’ for the character 中 and you guys sent us some great videos and pictures. Watch the video below to see if your video or photo was featured. If you aren’t able to access the video through YouTube, you can check out the video on… Read More
We have discussed expressing knowledge and ability in previous articles. Before moving on to giving advice and opinions, you might want to read or review our posts on 认识 and 知道 and The Three Cans: 会, 可以 and 能. Sharing your own opinions in Chinese is the next step to being able to communicate with friends… Read More
Welcome to Our Chinese Book Shop In our Chinese bookshop, you’ll find books for all levels of Chinese, from textbooks for beginners wanting to learn the basics to advanced classics available to download for your Kindle. Our list was created with the help of readers of the Written Chinese Blog, followers of Written Chinese on… Read More
This week Nora and Allen look at the 大 character. Watch the video below to see how you can win one of our NEW Written Chinese T-Shirts! Also, if you can’t access YouTube, you can always watch the video on Youku! N: Hi everyone, I’m Nora and welcome back to Scavenger Sunday! A: Hey, don’t you… Read More
WCC Dictionary – Breaking up With Pinyin WCC Dictionary – Hollie’s Story Fou Fou’s Thug Adventure WCC Dictionary Feature 5 – Chinese Radicals How I Study Chinese in My Life “On The Go” Official Written Chinese Learning Poster Mike’s Strategies for Learning Chinese WCC Scavenger Sunday Episode 12 – 下 WCC Scavenger Sunday Episode 11… Read More
Personal Pronouns in Chinese 人称代词 (rén chēng dài cí) One of the first words you probably need to learn is ‘I’ 我 (wǒ). Although in Chinese, you can often get away with missing off the 我 (wǒ) ‘I’ in spoken Chinese, it is important to use it within written Chinese. The word for ‘you’ is 你 (nǐ) and can also… Read More
Simple Chinese Ideograms or Ideographs were the second type of character that were developed after pictographs. Pictographs are characters that look very similar to the word they describe, such as 口 ‘mouth’ and 手 ‘hand’. Ideograms, on the other hand are known as 指事 (zhǐ shì) or ‘indirect characters’ and are often symbolic characters depicting abstract concepts…. Read More
有点儿 (yǒu diǎnr) and 一点儿 (yī diǎnr) basically both mean the same thing: ‘a little’. The key thing is to learn how to use them correctly in a sentence. Below, I’ll explain the basics of using 有点儿 and 一点儿. First, I’d like to look at the 点 character and its meaning. The character’s general meaning… Read More
It will only take [est_time] to read this post! Traditional Chinese characters 繁体字/繁體字 (fán tǐ zì) can be considered any Chinese character that were not modified or ‘simplified’ during the 1950s and 60s. The mainland of China now uses Simplified Chinese characters, also known as 简体字 (jiǎn tǐ zì). The 体字 (tǐ zì) that can… Read More
Welcome to Episode 4 of our Scavenger Sunday video series, were we ask YOU to send us your character pictures and videos! This week Nora and Allen look at the character 心 (xīn). You can check out the great user created videos and photos AND some 心 example sentences to try out! You can check… Read More
Check out Episode 6 of WCC Scavenger Sunday with our glamorous hosts Allen and Nora. Watch it on Youku here if are unable to access YouTube! This week our lovable duo talk about the character 手 (shǒu), including some practical phrases and common uses of the character. A: Hey everyone, I’m Allen. Welcome back to… Read More
Written by Hollie at WrittenChinese.Com So you may have read recently that the popular English-Chinese dictionary, Nciku was taken offline. Regular users are now redirected to Line Dictionary; a ‘fresh start’ for Nciku. Sadly though, people moving to Line will find many of the functions that they loved about Nciku are now gone. Perhaps finding… Read More
Hollie and Nora here! We’ve been in China for a long time and have spent many years learning Chinese. Today we wanted to create a list of DON’Ts when learning this language that we wish we would have had at the beginning. This is a spin-off post from our recent podcast episode TWCC145, so if… Read More
Written by Liz老师 from GoEast Mandarin. What are Chinese Interjections？ Most often, face-to-face or verbal communication is more effective than written expressions. This is because our facial expressions and changes in tone add to the meaning we want to reveal.For example, although most interjections have only one character, they convey different meanings when expressed differently. Usually,… Read More
Although learning to write Chinese characters with a pen or pencil can really help you to remember how to read, and obviously write characters, sometimes it’s nice to change things up a bit! It’s kind of fun to use your mouse or finger to ‘draw’ or write on your computer screen, which is exactly what… Read More
New year, new goals and new ways to get bored of your goals within a week of starting…. Excuse my pessimism, but we’ve all been there, from losing weight to spending more time with the family. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good your intentions are, other things take priority and we just say “I’ll start… Read More