Hi to all,   I am new to this forum and also to the Chinese language   to facilitate my lerning I would love to take notes to improve my vocabulary. Like in this example     the challenge is how to type this efficiently on my work Windows 10 or (God's forbids) my private Mac   I am testing quickpinyin and also Pyninput. They both actually work, but do not solve my problem of switching to a Chinese keyboard to type the Hanzi (and to make it worse, Microsoft Chinese keyboard is not QWERTZ like my German keyboard so I have to change keyboard and remember the different positons of the letters every time)   Before I try every possible combinations is there somebody out there who has a more elegant solution ? Ideally, a keyboard with a quick switch between english/pinyin and Chinese/kanzi   or somebody who can teach me how to setup the right combination of tools ?   I tried a few things.... Microsoft Chinese keyboard allows a quick toggle between Hanzi and English, does not support Pinyinput or Quickpinyin other keyboards support both Pinyinput or Quickpinyin but of course do not allow Hanzi   as I said above I can try to fix it on Windows, or on Mac. Or both 🙂   any idea is really welcome ! Keep the forum going strongly! Angelo        

I'm discovering a very interesting phenomenon for myself, and I wanted to see if anyone else experienced it too, or if it's a common thing!   I was born and raised in English speaking country, so English is my first language.  My brain thinks in English.  Also, I am reasonably fluent speaking Cantonese because of the environment I grew up in. I never learnt to read and write chinese growing up. Last year, I started to learn to read and write chinese by watching TVB shows with Chinese subtitles.   These days, when my eyes see Chinese characters, they immediately register in my brain as English words.  For example, when my eyes see 我想吃飯, I "pronounce" these words as "I want eat food", not as the cantonese "Ngo Seung Sick Fan".  When reading Chinese characters, there is no longer any Cantonese voices in my head...they are all English.   This got me thinking.....does that mean English is now a new Chinese dialect for me?   It's basically like how when 潮州 people read 我想吃飯, the words are immediately pronounced in the  潮州 dialect in their head.   潮州 people don't translate the words to mandarin before translating it into  潮州.  That's basically happening for me, except Chinese characters go straight to English pronunciation. I remember people saying the beauty of the Chinese writing system is that it can be used with any dialect.  How you write and how you pronounce can be completely different, which makes it possible for so many different ethnic groups in China and overseas to communicate with each other. Other examples of pronouncing Chinese characters/phrases that goes on in my head:   你是高手 - Pronounced as "You are Elite Level" 分久必合，合久必分 - Pronounced as "Divided for long time must unite, united for long time must divide" 名不虛傳 - Pronounced as "Reputation is not fake" 花拳繡腿 - Pronounced as "Flowery fists embroidered legs" - (looks good, but not practical)   Curious if other people pronounce Chinese characters in a non-Asian dialect?  Like pronouncing Chinese words in Hebrew, Russian, German etc...?  Is this a common thing for "Chinese as a second language" person?

Hi, as the title says, I'm looking to get through an HSK level 1 within 1 month, keeping goals low so far   Any advice or reading material would be appreciated   Cheers, Dan

Just out of curiosity, are there any books in traditional characters printed and sold in mainland China? Or maybe books that were originally published in Taiwan or Hongkong, are they available in bookstores in mainland China? 

Hi friends. I want to come to china to study Chinese precisely guangzhou. Does one know any good Chinese language school I can enroll in? I don't know a single Chinese. I prefer to stay in guangzhou. Thanks.

This YouTube video did an analysis of the HSK6 past exam question: the writing section of the 5th exam paper in 《汉语水平考试真题集（六级）2018版》.  I have this book, and the questions therein are quite similar to the actual exam.     They enumerated 515 words from this article and categorize them (I assume they count duplicates, and use the HSK2.0 standards).   In the first column, they list the number of HSK words at each level.  They find the HSK words split as follows: HSK1 (36%), HSK2 (15%), HSK3 (11%), HSK4 (10%), HSK5 (12%), HSK6 (5%).   The second column has four entries: (a) 重组词汇 (3%) [e.g. 环保 = 环境保护] and 减字词汇 [e.g. 部 = 部门] (9%) which are different variants of HSK words, (b) 基础词汇 (10%) which are non-HSK words but everyone knows [e.g. 天], (c) and 超纲词汇 (9%) are the extra-curricular words [e.g. 订单 and 满怀信心].   So in this one article alone, there were 46 extra-curricular words, which is more than the number of HSK6 words (i.e., 25).    

Hello I was wondering if anyone could please help me with the writing on this porcelain vase as well as the tag on the bottom? Thank you      

I have really needed to translate a news report about something that is important to me for ages. My chinese listening is not good enough. I know if I have chinese text i can translate it easily with google translate. Is there a way to translate audio as well. Its a news report so it pretty standard mandarin pronunciation. Thanks for your help.

Hi everyone!   I'm 26F currently working in Guangzhou, China and I want to take a break from working and learn Chinese language instead. I was learning the language part-time by myself, but I realise that the progress is too slow, and actually I need to take time off and properly study the language in a university.   I saw that there are Confucius Institute Scholarships available to study Chinese, but the information available about it is quite limited.   Can someone please help answer these questions -    1. Can I apply for CIS whilst being in Mainland China? I'm scheduled to take HSK3 and HSKK1 exam in October 2024 and ideally want to study Chinese language program Feb '25 onwards.    2. I already hold a Master's degree from Peking University, but haven't applied for CIS before, am I still eligible?   3. I understand that CIS requires a CI to recommend you, but I'm already based in Guangzhou, so how can I go about this?    4. What would be the overall procedure to apply for scholarship? I know this might be a repetitive question, but given my case, I'm not sure what guidelines to follow.   Thank you so much.   

As the title says. I've tried looking everywhere online for the bottle but can't find it. Sadly don't have the box anymore. Any information about this would be greatly appreciated!!