Chinese learning notes
Longer pieces on the parts that actually trip people up. Tones, characters, numbers, festivals, and how long things really take. One article at a time, each on a question a beginner would actually search for.
Chinese characters: how many you need
Eighty-five thousand characters exist and you will never need most of them. How the system is built, what the frequency curve looks like, and why the first 500 do three quarters of the work.
Chinese festivals: the full year
Almost every Chinese festival follows the moon, which is why none of them land on the same date twice. The whole year in one table, with the Chinese name, the 2027 date and the food for each.
Chinese New Year, day by day
The holiday is a week, the festival is fifteen days. What happens on each of them, how red envelopes actually work, and the greetings you can use without sounding like a textbook.
The 12 Chinese zodiac animals
Every animal with its Chinese name and pronunciation, the years each one covers, and the rule that decides what you are, including why a January birthday usually gets it wrong.
Mid-Autumn Festival, explained
The second family dinner of the Chinese year. Why the moon carries so much weight, what goes into a mooncake, and why nobody eats a whole one.
Chinese numbers, from one hand to one billion
Chinese can count to ten on a single hand, and it has no word that means million. The two different words for two, the zero rule, and the four-digit grouping that no amount of character practice will fix.
How Chinese names actually work
Surname first, given name second β and almost all of the identity sits in the given name. How the system is built, the six traps foreign learners fall into (transliterating your English name is one), and how to check a name before you commit to it.
Chinese tones explained for total beginners
mΔ, mΓ‘, mΗ, mΓ β four different words. What each tone actually sounds like, the two tone-change rules worth learning on day one, why textbook tone 3 is a lie in real speech, and how to practise without a teacher.
Is Chinese hard to learn?
Yes β but not in the places you were warned about. The FSI's own hours, the parts of Chinese that are genuinely harder than Spanish, the parts that are much easier, and a realistic 90-day sequence for 30 minutes a day.
What goes here. One article at a time, on questions beginners actually search for β how to say something, why a rule works the way it does, what to study next. If a piece cannot be useful on its own, it does not get published.
No posting schedule to announce: new pieces appear when they are worth reading. The free learning materials β pinyin chart, Core 500 wordlist, 642-card library β are always there in the meantime.