Foreign Languages

A 2021 Review of Youdao’s Language Translator Device Multilingual Dictionary Pen

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Youdao’s Dictionary Pen 3 is the most modern iteration of a smart way to increase your Mandarin learning. When I started this article a few days ago, the Dictionary Pen 2 was the only one you could actually get in the US without specially importing it. That said, either way, you can run a “pen” across a page and have a modern translation of text as well as dive into each character, word, and phrase in the block of text.… Read the rest

A Review of Zhou Xiaogeng’s “Essentials of Chinese Lexicology”

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Zhou Xiaogeng’s Essentials of Chinese Lexicology is a great vocabulary book for learning Mandarin. It focuses primarily on the rules and forms of word formation. This isn’t just a vocabulary book, and it isn’t a linguistic analysis of word formation, but it’s somewhere in between with a focus on practical learning. It’s a great tool for students of Mandarin at all levels.… Read the rest

Do Learn in Your Sleep Methods Really Work?

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Like every overachiever in high school, I had always wondered if there was some way to use sleep for something productive. You spend a third of your life asleep, is there some way to get an edge from it? The idea of learning in your sleep via dreams is ancient, but how much of the real world actually bleeds over?

Pretty much everyone has a memory of “learning” something in their sleep and recalling it later.… Read the rest

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Learning a Language

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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis) is one of the most major breakthroughs in modern linguistics. It states that your thinking is effected or affected by the language(s) you know. How you see and experience the world is a product of your linguistic understanding of how to express it. Two people seeing the exact same sunset will have a different interpretation of the exact same experience if they speak two different languages.… Read the rest

Learning Chinese: Using the HSK

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The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (汉语水平考试, HSK) is a standard language test in the PRC for testing levels of standard Mandarin. While the test is largely accepted, it still has its critics and criticisms (such as being too standard). Even if you don’t bother learning for the test, knowing how the test is put together and what the levels mean can make a massive difference for learning Mandarin.… Read the rest