Bemused ramblings some dude says on the internet
I had previously written about a couple common Chengyu (成语) and decided to follow up with some more which I have heard more commonly in speech. I plan to keep going with this series and add a few more literary Chengyu as we progress.
对牛弹琴 – dui4 niu2 tan2 qin2
This Chengyu literally translates as “playing a lute to a cow” or metaphorically in English as “casting pearls before swine”.… Read the rest
One of the biggest breakthroughs I made in school was learning how to learn more efficiently. Many of my classmates would spend hours at a time sitting in the library or across campus staring at the same textbook and going through the same notes over and over. In the beginning I felt I was just being lazy or maybe I had ADHD or something because no matter how I tried, I couldn’t do it.… Read the rest
I previously wrote a post about what I look for in language learning materials, but I didn’t really go into a huge amount of detail about how to actually use the materials themselves. This article aims to explain my process for learning a language and what worked for me in order to achieve fluency in Mandarin. I use and have used the same techniques and methods for other languages as well, so this will in no way be limited to Chinese only.… Read the rest
Chengyu (成语 – Cheng2 yu3) are fixed phrases used in Chinese which typically (but not always) consist of 4 characters. Most of these phrases are based on stories from literature or history. Chengyu tend to be literary or classical Chinese rather than modern Chinese which can make them a little bit harder to understand or remember when starting out.… Read the rest
I wrote an article about using FOSS tools to learn Chinese, but sometimes all you have in front of you is a browser. Let’s just assume everyone is using a full-fledged browser and nothing like Edge or Internet Explorer. I am going to cover Chrome (and by extension Chromium and derivatives) as well as Firefox.
These specific plugins are extremely useful for portable copies of the programs for study only, or for scenarios where you have limited access.… Read the rest
Free, Open-Source Software (FOSS) is one of my passions in general, but there are some great pieces of FOSS software which can be used to learn Chinese (or pretty much any other languages). There are programs to help you with vocabulary and flashcards, as well as free dictionaries which are useful even as a professional translator. All of these programs contributed heavily to my ability to learn Chinese.… Read the rest