Year: 2026

Have you listened to a recording of yourself speaking Chinese, only to find that your voice sounds unfamiliar and strange, like another person? Then...

How long does it take to learn a Chinese character or word? It varies. Some vocabulary just refuses to stick, no matter what you do. These are...

What’s the best way to learn Chinese characters as an adult foreign learner? This is a complex question we definitely don’t know the full answer...

I’ve taught many introduction courses in Chinese. Each time, I’ve felt the lack of a beginner-friendly list of the most common Chinese radicals. I...

I didn’t use spaced repetition software for my first year of learning Chinese (I didn’t know what it was back then). During my second year, I sort...

Chinese has a reputation for being hard to learn, which is true depending on what you mean by “hard”. Learning Chinese can be even harder if you...

What languages do you speak? Do you speak Chinese? We often let speaking ability stand for overall language skill and usually don’t inquire about...

Learning things by heart used to be a mainstay of language education but is now often frowned upon. Approaches to learning and teaching languages...

Chinese characters can be magically beautiful and mysterious. I still remember what it feels like to look at them and be attracted by them without...

Stroke order example for the character 顺, “sequence”. I remember learning to write Chinese characters for the first time. It was difficult to get...