Learning Mandarin with Greg

When I watch Chinese movies, I’ll often hear chéngyǔ These are idioms that are relatively common sayings, but their meaning is much deeper than the words that are spoken.

And simillarly, there are cases in Zen Buddhism that are known as Koans or [gōng’àn] Koan . These are paradoxical anecdotes or riddles, presented without solutions. They demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and provoke enlightenment.

In both cases, I hear Chinese people throw these into conversations, and I’m often left looking up what on Earth they are talking about.

2025-05-10

If you are interested in learning Mandarin, this page is regularly updated with my best current advice on how to learn.

#1 Tip - Mandarin Blueprint

I wish I could pay to work with a live tutor every day, and I wish I had the flexibility work-wise to do so. But I can’t.

For my daily learning, the absolute best resource I’ve ever found, is Mandarin Blueprint. Luke and Phil have provided an amazing resource. What I particularly like is that they weren’t native speakers. That might seem odd but it’s very hard for a native speaker, no matter how good they are, to imagine what it’s like for you to learn.

2021-06-14

I’ve made a few posts lately about measure words. In the first post, I discussed measure words for people, and in a later post, I discussed measure words for animals. Today, I want to round this out with measure words for different parts of the body.

Again, it’s possible with many of these to just use the standard measure word 个 (Gè) but you’ll sound a lot better if you use the appropriate specific measure words.

2021-04-09

In a Chinese learning Facebook group, a friend posted this simple Chinese joke. I thought I’d share it.

The core word you need to know is:

怕 (Pà) which means “fears” or “is afraid of” (in this context).

And from there, I think you can work out the rest of the joke. (Never spoil a joke by explaining it too far).

2021-04-02

In an earlier post, I started discussing measure words, and talked about the common measure words for people. In this post, I’ll look at measure words for animals.

In English, we have many of these and they are confusing e.g. a flock of geese, but a murder of crows, etc.

While you could use the standard measure word 个 (Gè) for animals in Chinese, you’ll sound a lot better if you use the appropriate specific measure words.

2021-03-26

While I like the process of learning a language, I also love learning about the culture associated with the language. I find festivals and celebrations especially interesting.

If you have Asian friends (from a wide variety of countries), many will have treated April 4th this year as a special day.

清明节 (Qīngmíng jié) is Tomb Sweeping Day. It’s pronounced like ching ming, jair but the words literally mean “clean bright festival”.

2021-03-19

I often hear people saying that a difficult part of learning Mandarin is getting used to all the measure words. There are a bunch of them, but I actually think it’s easier than in English.

Does any English-speaking person really know all the collective nouns for things i.e. a flock of geese, but a murder of crows, etc.

Chinese has one standard measure word:

个 (Gè). It’s pronounced a bit like the “ge” in “gert”, and has a sort of guttural sound, and definitely not like the “ge” in “german”.

2021-03-12

Mandarin tends to be more terse than English. Often it’s really right to the point. One area where it differs from English, is how we use the word “and”.

The word that translates closest to “and” is:

和 (hé) - It’s pronounced closer to “her” in English.

In some cases, it works exactly like in English:

她和我会去超市。(Tā hé wǒ huì qù chāoshì.) - is literally “she and I will go supermarket” - so the meaning is easy to guess.

2021-03-05

One thing I’ve come across in Mandarin that I don’t recall striking often in English are words that have multiple meanings, and the meanings are the opposite of each other. They do exist in English, and are called Janus words or sometimes contronyms, antagonyms, or auto-antonyms.

An English example is the word “sanction”. It can mean to give official permission or approval for (an action), but it can also mean to impose a penalty on. Another example is “seed”. If you seed a lawn, you put seeds into it. If you seed a tomato, you remove the seeds from it. Others are less obvious like “trim” which could mean to add extras to the edge of something, or to remove them. But there aren’t a lot of these.

2021-03-01

I was doing some SQL Server work the other day and I got to thinking about how we number the weekdays. In the culture where I grew up, Sunday was considered the first day of the week. But in many Asian cultures, Monday is considered the first day of the week. And the names of days in Mandarin reflect that just.

星期 (Xīngqí) means “week” - literally “star period”

And logical as ever, the Chinese then name the days in relation to that:

2021-02-26