Welcome to the Asian style of education where you learn to ignore the obvious fatalistic nature of the task ahead or wallow in the corner questioning your life choices for 12 hours.

Agreed! This is probably the single most meaningful bit of condensed language video to be found anywhere.

Well, if that were true, Chinese people would be able to communicate only through writing :q But they clearly can communicate through speech as well, so there _must_ be some way for them to distinguish between all those different meanings when they talk, since they don't draw Chinese characters in the air while speaking :q I think the reason why this seems so "difficult" is because such presentations usually only show you single characters, which represent syllables in speech, but they're not full words. Complete words usually consist of two syllables or more. If a single syllable can be easily confused with its homophone, they add another character that means pretty much the same, but has a different syllable associated with it, so now those words _can_ be distinguished. Imagine someone took English language and tried to show it as very difficult to learn, because multiple words have the syllable "con": like "con·trol", "con·nec·tion", "con·sti·tu·tion", "con·tact" etc. (oh, and did I mention that ever-present syllable "tion" too?") ;) I bet that it would sound as confusing to someone trying to learn English.

Bon Bon Yes, I take your point that people don’t have speech bubbles above their heads when speaking Chinese! haha My ‘in real life’ Chinese teacher actually told me that learning characters “is a monumental waste of time” and to just learn pinyin. I also have all of the Chinese Zero to Hero courses though, and they seem to encourage the use of characters throughout. I don’t know enough about the Chinese language to have a strong opinion, I muddle through with Pleco... just like everyone else I reckon :)

@@AW-cu8by I agree that learning Chinese characters is not _necessary_ if you just want to be able to _speak_ Chinese. However it's good that they show the characters in this course, because this way you're learning them on the fly, without even realizing, by simply seeing them frequently enough and starting recognizing them when you see them again. At least it's better this way than if they didn't show you the characters at all, because that way you would never learn them unless you learned them somewhere else. Also they're pretty necessary if your communication with Chinese people is limited to text chats, or if you want to read Chinese books, because unfortunately they still write in hanzi, even if they type them in pinyin :q

We don't really think about it much. You just pick up the differences. Although typing 时势 with pinyin could be a pain.

The textbooks and workbooks (along with the CDs) are not included in the purchase of our online course. Since we're not affiliated with the HSK publishers, you'd have to purchase them on your own through their official website or third party sellers. Visit this link for more detail regarding the textbooks: chinesezerotohero.com/textbooks-workbooks/ After purchasing the online course, you'll be able to access the videos through your multiple computers or phones. You can control the speed of the audio playback. You can access the course in Europe with no issues, but in China the website may be slow due to the Chinese internet restrictions, so you may need to use a VPN in China.

Thank you. I was wondering how to write this is Putonghua without all those pesky intonation marks. Not! 《施氏食狮史》 石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。 氏时时适市视狮。 十时，适十狮适市。 是时，适施氏适市。 氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。 氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。 石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。 石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。 食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。 试释是事。 To my astonishment the Google Translate robot, e.g. translate.google.com/?source=gtx_c#auto/en/%E6%96%BD%E6%B0%8F%E9%A3%9F%E7%8B%AE%E5%8F%B2 does a fine job of making this comparatively understandable.

“Shī shì shíshī shǐ” shíshì shī shì shī shì, shì shī, shì shíshí shī. Shì shí shíshìshì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì shī shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shíshì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, shì shǐ shì shì shí shì. Shí shì shì, shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shì shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì.

@@TheDavidlloydjones nice one, very hard to copy paste