About
Thanks for stopping by. If you are a beginning student of the Chinese language, it would be best to wade through the monthly archives and read my earlier blog posts first. Those articles provide bits of introductory material to help lay a foundation for tackling the words and sentences presented in the later articles. You could also get a copy of “Learn Chinese through Songs and Rhymes” to obtain a fair understanding of the Chinese language and sentence structures. Whether you are taking a Chinese class or a self-paced study course, it’s always good to supplement it with additional reading material. I hope you find these weekly articles helpful.
I’ve added many tags to the blog posts to help you look for specific Chinese words or terms. For example, if you would like to know how to say or write “Happy New Year” in Chinese, simply enter “Happy New Year” in the Search box then click on the “Search” button to call up the related articles.
This link will take you to my Author Page at amazon.com.
Currently there are two children’s eBooks in English and one Chinese language instruction book.
“Learn Chinese through Songs and Rhymes” is for learners in middle school and up. It is written in English and features simplified Chinese characters and pinyin.
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Gallery – Art for Charity
Good Fortune 福 (fú)
7 x 7 Lydia Lin
Crocus Bookmark 2×6.75
Lydia Lin
Amaryllis 11×14 Lydia Lin
良 (liáng) 2×2 Lydia Lin
Gardinia 8×8 Lydia Lin
Merry Christmas Poinsettia Card Lydia Lin
May 22, 2012 @ 02:34:39
Dear Ms Lin,
So sad to read about the loss of your dear mum. A mum is the dearest person we have here on earth. No one can replace her. I will say a prayer for her and for you.
A.B.
May 22, 2012 @ 19:57:59
Thank you very much. Your kindness is deeply appreciated. Bless your heart.
Jul 16, 2012 @ 05:33:03
Great blog. I have been wanting to learn Chinese for years and tried different methods to get the basics. However, childrens books and pictures are always the best.
Jul 16, 2012 @ 20:09:34
I agree. If only there were 30 hours to a day, then I might be able to get started on a few other projects on my to-do list.
May 08, 2013 @ 09:52:59
Dear Ms. Lin,
Thank you for your contributions to the Chinese learning community.
We were wondering if you have noticed a trend with Chinese learners, that is they may learn to speak/understand Chinese, but few learn to read/write Chinese?
On this note, we would like to raise awareness on this issue and help students learn to read/write Chinese, thus we created an app called nommoc.
Would you share your comments on this topic and perhaps help spread the word?
All the best,
The Nommoc Team
http://www.nommoc.com
May 10, 2013 @ 12:55:07
A good way to make use of the time waiting for a bus or commuting on a train. The guide lines will help the student place the strokes for each character in the correct relative position when copying from the displayed master character. Providing the definition for the character as well as sample words using the character is a plus in this Nommoc App. Maybe in your next version you could also show the stroke order for each character? Will there be a “deluxe” version in the future that also includes the default pronunciation of each character as well as the sample words?
May 08, 2013 @ 10:14:34
Just found this blog. A great resource! Thanks for the time and effort, will be sure to come by often.
Oct 17, 2013 @ 09:50:44
Good news, we have added the stroke order animations for the 2500 most common Chinese characters to nommoc. Sample words are also in nommoc now. We are working on some additional features, which we will include the most common radicals and HSK vocab. All the best!
Feb 05, 2014 @ 10:24:02
In the post of 05 February 2014, at the end is the story about the ‘pineapple’. The story ‘works’ for the Taiwanese dialect.
Does the story also ‘work’ in the standard simplified Mandarin, if so how?
Feb 05, 2014 @ 13:28:45
Hi David,
The story does not work for Mandarin Chinese as pineapples are called 凤梨 (fènglí). Now you can see how different dialects can sound totally different and seem like different languages altogether. In this case, though, the vowel sound of the first syllable in these two pronunciations are the same, and the consonant sound of the second syllable stays the same.
May 15, 2014 @ 13:34:26
I just discovered your site looking for a poem’s meaning (游子吟). Your detailed explanation of the poem was amazing. I liked how you explained each word/phrase. Poems are hard to understand even if you know the language, so just having a line by line translation of the poem is not enough to really understand how the poem was pieced together. Thank you very much! I will definitely bookmark your blog for future reference.
May 15, 2014 @ 15:05:50
Hi Jenna,
Thank you for your kind comment. I agree that classical Chinese poems are generally not easy to understand because of the compact form and the explicit or implicit allusions made.
Jun 28, 2014 @ 08:20:41
Dear Ms Lin,
I read that some Chinese characters (called “bound”) can never occur alone.
In what C-E dictionaries can I find an indication that the character is “bound”?
Chinese words usually have two syllables the first character is usually the meaning of the word, the second syllable (character) is usually same or very similar meaning, but not always and sometimes are entirely different ! What C-E dictionaries give the meaning of the second syllable.
I find this very confusing !
Best regards,
David
Jun 28, 2014 @ 14:57:43
Hi David,
First of all, relax. In classical Chinese, most of the characters occur alone, and only the well educated people were able to correctly interpret the terse and dry writing (except the poetry and well crafted essays). The four-character idioms did help add some variation and interest to the language. The spoken Chinese language is quite different from the classical written language in that, for one thing, it is much wordier. If you were to only use monosyllable words in a conversation, you would sound very stiff. Furthermore, many Chinese characters share the same pronunciation. Your listener could easily misunderstand you. In modern times, written Chinese has incorporated spoken expressions that involve polysyllable words, a variety of modifiers and a familiar syntax. The purpose of a language is to get ideas across. The clearer and easier to understand, the better. Each of the two characters that make up a two-syllable word has its own meaning, although some characters are not used stand-alone in modern Chinese. These two characters contribute to the word in some way. As you mentioned, the second character may have a similar meaning as the first character to corroborate the idea represented by the word. Often the first character is a descriptor for the second character, as in 白天. Just as often the second character is a unit of measure, such as in 三年. I think of them as compound words. As another example, 吃饭 includes a verb and an object. If a character only occurs in bound form, you will not see it by itself in a document. Often these are terms used as a name for an object or organism, such as 蚂蚁. And obviously, you wouldn’t use particles like 的 and 了 by themselves.
According to the description provided in “Free and Bound Characters” at https://www.pleco.com/manual/abc.html the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary labels the bound morphemes.
You might also be interested in reading Sections 3.1 and 3.2 at
http://books.google.com/books?id=aXjB8vdnbVgC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=bound+Chinese+words&source=bl&ots=7SGNqQPIdh&sig=524Zw-JiuDKsA-YIQmtHc4YSw4o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1QivU-HWOIv6oAS3moKIAQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=bound%20Chinese%20words&f=false
and chapter 2 at
http://books.google.com/books?id=gwmz7BOQrB0C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=bound+Chinese+words&source=bl&ots=CqtNq5gcCw&sig=czvZnkIetubWhk_8E6VMFrpNQww&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KwuvU8bWH4n9oASgj4KACg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=bound%20Chinese%20words&f=false
Jul 23, 2014 @ 10:43:55
Hi Lydia, I just want to write to say that I am a huge fan of your articles – I am so happy that I found this site. I finally decided to order your book “song and rhymes” online and I will let you know how it goes.
Thank you for the effort you put into this.
Jul 23, 2014 @ 12:16:02
Hi Rob,
Thanks for writing. Your comment has put a big smile on my face. 🙂
Mar 05, 2015 @ 23:52:14
Hello Lydia,
How are you? I was looking for Chinese learning information online and found your site. Really awesome!
It’s funny. We are now making an infographic about Chinese learning and we ask 30-50 bloggers the Top Three Resources they use to learn Chinese. A short feedback is good enough.
Can I send you an email to give you a bit more details(can’t find the contact page)? Either way, Thanks Lydia and love your awesome content!;)
Cheers,
Yang
Mar 15, 2015 @ 13:55:38
Hi Yang Yang,
Thanks for visiting. I am a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese and learned to write Chinese at school. I do look for good Internet resources to refer to my readers. Many bloggers who are learning Chinese themselves have listed the resources they rely on. Please see some of the links provided on my blog site.