This is Part 2 of the story. Read the First Part Here. The Good Old Qualitative Approach Hmm, how to even go about doing this? A somewhat straightforward approach would be to simply ask people if they think English is hard to spell or not. But who knows why people have any opinion? And who…

What’s up with the Anglo-Saxons? Hi friends. I’ve noticed a funny thing, and it made very curious. You could say that my language spidy sense (yes “spidy!”) started tingling. The very same sense that got me into languages to begin with so many years ago. So what was it? It was this: English speaker seem…

So what is pinyin? Pinyin is a writing system for Mandarin Chinese, based on the latin alphabet, that uses letters to represent sounds. Just like in English, or Italian the letter <p> represents the sound /p/, the letter <r> represents the sound /r/, and so on. “But wait!”, I hear you say. “The R-sounds…

Don’t learn characters, and don’t do tone drills. These probably sound like unlikely things for any Mandarin teacher to say, and yet I am saying just that. Let’s take a closer look. Don’t bother with characters When you first set out to learn Mandarin, the first essential thing you need…

We have already seen that grammar doesn’t just mean changing the form of words. check out our previous posts here. This is one thing that grammar can do (and some languages do a lot of it). But grammar can mean many more things. Come let’s have another look. Isn’t Chinese grammar optional? “Never mind…

We’ve already talked about the idea that Chinese has no grammar: See “The surprising truth about Chinese grammar”. This topic is both important and fun because it is repeated so often, by Taiwanese and foreigners alike. Let’s have another look! The surprising truth about Chinese grammar, 2 Chinese is so unique it’s hard for us to learn…

Let’s take a look at some widespread myths about Chinese, and also do some myth-busting too. Come along. — Chinese doesn’t have grammar! There is something I hear all the time, from foreigners and native Chinese speakers alike. It is this claim: “Chinese doesn’t have any grammar.” Do you agree? To me, as a linguist, as a language learner, this statement is a great mystery. I find myself thinking: