中文秘诀 | The Secret of Chinese
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- Some Thoughts on the Polysemy of Chinese VerbsWhereas in English, the meanings of verbs tend to come from the sorts of objects involved and the desired result of the action, Chinese verbs tend to define a different kind of prototype, or template, to which actions of various different types can be matched, even though they seem in our ‘English mindset’ to be very different, unrelated kinds of events.
- ‘Me and You’ or ‘You and Me’?
A quick one for today. The other day I heard an Indonesian Chinese speaker refer to her (paternal) grandparents as “奶奶爷爷”. This immediately struck my ear as strange, as it’s usually said as “爷爷奶奶”. It then got me thinking about how it’s funny that languages tend to have fairly fixed order for what sounds most natural with ‘A and B’ sorts of noun-phrases. - Chinese Learner’s Checklist: 10 Things Everybody Gets WrongAs a Chinese teacher, over the years I’ve come to see that there are particular topics and language points that students seem to have a ‘mental block’ with, to the point now where I can usually predict in advance which particular content will prove to be a stumbling block with most students. In this post, I want to give you a quick checklist of some of those, so you can make sure that you are okay with them.
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Chinese Learner’s Checklist: 10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong
As a Chinese teacher, over the years I’v…
The General Pattern of Chinese Word Order & the Pre-Verbal / Post-Verbal Split
So whilst Deliveroo is processing my order, I …
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中文秘诀 | The Secret of Chinese 