How to Learn Chinese: My Top 6 Tips
TL;DR Summary Start Chinese by listening heavily and getting used to the sounds and tones. Later, build a daily habit of learning characters (10–30/day) using spaced repetition. Don’t drown yourself in rules…
Korean vs Japanese vs Chinese
Korean, Japanese, and Chinese—what are the similarities and differences between these three languages? How should we approach learning them? To what extent does knowing one help with the others? Based on my…
Tips to Help You Learn Mandarin
I studied Chinese in 1968. At the time I was working for the Canadian Government, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce’s Trade Commissioner Service to be exact. Canada was preparing to recognize…
Chinese Grammar is Not Difficult
The first thing about Chinese is that it’s not as difficult as people say. It has certain difficulties. I would say difficulty number one is the characters. It’s a lot of…
Learning Cantonese: How I Went About It
I lived in Hong Kong from ’68 to ’70, two and a half years, but my main task for the first year there was to learn Mandarin. Thereafter I worked at the…
