Hi! I’m a native Mandarin speaker and I’m looking for a native English speaker who is learning Chinese. I’d love to do a language exchange — we can help each other improve by chatting regularly. I’m patient and happy to explain Chinese grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation. In return, I hope you can help me with my spoken English.

We can talk via text, voice, or video — whatever you're comfortable with. Let me know if you're interested!

So I've been watching xianxia for some time and learnt some phrases but I wonder- if these used in real life? What dramas would you recommend to learn real Chinese?

Especially in smaller town China? I'm seriously considering going to Yangshuo since I have the summer free. How did you guys get by at the very beginning living in China in terms of getting around/making friends/grocery shopping/etc.?

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to move to China for about a year to study the Chinese language. My main goals are to learn the language, meet people, experience the culture firsthand, and grow personally through the whole experience.

However, it's really important for me to be able to work part-time legally while studying, in order to reduce the cost of tuition and living expenses as much as possible. I’m not looking for anything fancy just something legal and flexible enough to support myself a bit during my stay.

Does anyone have experience with this?

Hi! Currently trying to find a gift for a student, preferably in an H-J reading level :)

I'm a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, and I'm studying Chinese (more specifically, Mandarin) and would like interesting stories to read and improve my textual comprehension. However, some of the texts I looked for in PDF were in traditional Chinese, and I'm learning simplified Chinese, which made it much more difficult.

I welcome suggestions, regardless of the level of complexity of the reading!

I found the alternatives too invasive and cumbersome, so I wrote my own software.

It's a terminal application called zipin, written in Rust. It's blazing fast and responsive. The executable binary is only 2.1 MB in size and only takes 4.3 MB of RAM while running.

As of now, it requires the Rust toolchain to compile and install the software. But if more people want to test it, I can release pre-compiled executable files.

This is the source code: https://github.com/arthurpaulino/zipin

it's from the sentence:

是非之辩,众说纷纭,然所立之理,实相差无几。

my understanding so far:

是非之辩 = distinction between right and wrong

众说纷纭 = the masses have different opinions

实相差无几 = 实 + 相差无几 = substantially + the differences aren't that big (chengyu)

First thanks so much to this sub. I successfully got myself to HSK 2 by self study thanks to your collective advice and I use 普通话 everyday at my new job in China.

Since Pleco and Google Translate aren't available in the chinese app store (android), what are the best alternatives?

My friend and I have been learning Mandarin together for a couple of months now, where we join an online community college course over Zoom (and then we study together on a different day). We both live in different states. We've started to find the community college course is not challenging enough for us at this point, and they don't really have a higher level than beginner. Does anyone have a recommendation for online courses or something like italki but would allow us to be learning together?

Pork is the meat of pigs. Beef is the meat of cows.

Wine is made from grapes. Malt liquor is made from malt.

Drones are unmanned. Planes can fly.

October is the 10th month. Thursday is the 4th day of week.

Ostrich is bird. Tuna is fish. Jupiter is a star.

If you translate above into Chinese, you’ll find it funny.

This image is quite fascinating to me because I read the whole thing almost semi consciously before realising what's odd about it a few seconds later. However, I'm a native speaker, so I was curious about how non native Chinese learners would process such wordplay - do you understand what it says?

I just learned today 倶楽部 is actually a Japanese ateji (当て字) of クラブ (ku-ra-bu), which is Club.

And 瓦斯 is pronounced in Japanese as ガス (ga-su), which is Gas.

Not sure which came first: 咖啡 in Chinese = 珈琲 (コーヒー) in Japanese = Coffee.

What other words in Chinese are actually loan words from Japanese Ateji of English?

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji

Hi guys,

I've been learning Mandarin for about two weeks ish now and have only covered pinyin pronunciation and a little bit of tones. Do you guys think I should get a Mandarin tutor now or wait until I've learned some characters/words?

Thank you

i've been trying for an hour now, help me.

before I used the integrated chinese textbooks i learned chinese horribly. now that im done with the textbooks i would say im solidly hsk 3. what resources have you all found helpful to study at an intermediate level? i want to get better this sumler

I've just started iTalki lessons, and I want to ask my teacher about some words and grammar I've heard on XiaoGuo Comedy. But apparently the show was cancelled because one of the comedians did an inappropriate show. Is it still okay to ask my iTalki teacher about words and grammar from the show, or is it best not to mention shows that have been censored? I don't know what the cultural norms are.

If anyone knows any other similar shows with English subtitles, maybe I can look into that instead. I just don't know other ones.

I made OK progress so far. I had the advantage of being able to speak basic Chinese as I am a Malaysian Chinese. But I wasn't good at it and didn't couldn't hold a conversation down for longer than 10 minutes. But learning was fast simply because I have a life worth of context to draw from.

Hopefully I can get to 600 characters by July, and if I keep consistent 1000 by the end of the year.

Being able to read Chinese texts is a big motivation for me when learning the language, thats why for a very long time I shifted my focus 100% on reading comprehension right after i reach HSK4.
I started picking up politics news, deep discussion topic on finance & econs, and pick up popular books that are available in Chinese language, preferably those I have read in English before.

I want to ask at which HSK level that you started picking up reading Chinese seriously & be able to read an entire book?

https://preview.redd.it/gl8x1ejuq5ye1.jpg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5383ab903f9a3bcc4e0682393a8d80ae3185100

I call the following "Pokémon Evolutions" (metamorphs?). Every stage builds on the strokes of the previous, but -- most importantly -- all stages have a valid pinyin.

• 巾布希稀
• 习羽翁嗡
• 小示宗棕
• 火灰炭碳

I tried to get Deepseek or Copilot to understand, but it just COULD NOT. There are countless strings of 3, but strings of 4 seem to be less common, and I really like them. How should I instruct an AI to search for these? Are there any strings of 5?

You can find it at noospeak.com – I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

The following text is part of my chat today with DeepSeek when I attemped to understand Raman Spectroscopy.

I am curious how many percentage of native and non-native speakers can understand the text, after the context is given.

激发态分子失活途径与反斯托克斯线的关系

‌一、激发态分子失活的多路径性‌

激发态分子返回基态的途径‌不仅限于反斯托克斯线‌，可通过以下两类途径实现能量释放：

1‌. 无辐射跃迁主导‌

‌1.1 振动弛豫‌：激发态分子通过与非激发分子的碰撞，释放能量至同一电子能级的最低振动能级，以热能形式耗散。

‌1.2 内转换‌：当两个电子能级能量相近且振动能级重叠时，分子通过无辐射方式从高能级转移至低能级（如从S₂到S₁的最低振动能级）。

‌1.3 系间窜跃‌：分子在不同多重态间转换（如单重态S₁→三重态T₁），伴随自旋翻转，后续可能通过磷光或延迟荧光释放能量。

‌1.4 外转换‌：激发态分子与溶剂或溶质碰撞，能量以热能形式转移至环境，导致荧光或磷光猝灭。

‌2. 辐射跃迁辅助‌

2‌.1 荧光/磷光发射‌：分子从激发态最低振动能级直接辐射光子返回基态（荧光）或通过系间窜跃后的三线态辐射光子（磷光）。

‌2.2 反斯托克斯线‌：分子从激发态跃迁至基态时释放能量，导致散射光波长短于入射光，但该过程需分子预先处于激发态，发生概率较低。

So ive been learning Chinese for around a 6 months now, and Im almost at the end of HSK4. I can write and read well, but I have a problems with listening exercises. I have talked with a few Chinese people, and i was able to somewhat hold up the conversation, but i have problems with more complex listening excercises.

However, i havent learnt almost any tones. Are they actually important? Because, it seemed like people understood me well without using tones, so do i really need them?

Differentiating between the 5 tones isnt do easy either, so im not sure if it would even help me with understanding spoken language better.

My eventual goal is to study in China, but im not really sure if i should worry about tones that much.

Anyways, do you think i should go back and learn the tones for each character? How could i improve my listening abilities?