In French, when we talk about something that is almost impossible to understand, we say, “C’est du chinois.”  (Literally, “it’s Chinese” in English).  Actually, Chinese is not as difficult to learn as it seems to be.  Firstly, the grammar is very easy for beginners.  There are no genders, verb conjugation, and plurals in Chinese.  You […]

Language is a skill.   Learning a language is like learning to drive.   When learning to drive, before hitting the road, you must know about cars, their functions, road signs, driving rules, etc.  After that’s done, you practice driving on the road and in traffic to deal with all kinds of situations.  With practice, you […]

The number of hours of lessons you should take every week depends on your study time and your budget.   Although your class time is limited, you can find ways to use it in a more efficient way.  For example, you can decide to do two-hour lessons every week.  If you take lessons face to face, […]

Whether you should learn Chinese characters or not depends on your objectives.  If you are a beginner and want to be able to communicate in Chinese as soon as possible, it would be better if you focus on speaking without learning to read and write so that you can progress more rapidly.  You will learn […]

Mandarin is the official standard language of China.  It is based on the Beijing dialect.  Most Chinese people can speak Mandarin, since everyone must learn to speak it at school.  In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai where people come from different parts of China, they usually talk to each other in Mandarin in order […]