Mandarin has been a struggle for me. A long, hard, off and on struggle. I originally bought a $300 Rosetta Stone course nearly 15 years ago, and any time I felt like I was finally making progress the capstone lessons always humbled me. Truly felt like I was getting nowhere. So I decided to go to China for my 30th birthday, see if it would help motivate me to redouble my efforts and learn. Nope. Had a lovely time, though; met a stray cat on the Great Wall, followed a dog to a small neighborhood park, and watched some workers plant trees in Nanjing. Even have some genuine silk ties I bought in a silk factory store! About six years later I decided to try my hand at Mandarin again, because for as badly as I failed in my first attempt there are certain words that are seared into my memory. This time I'm using duolingo since it usually understands my attempts at pronunciation, and I'm supplementing that with HSK1 level readers and writing practice books. I genuinely felt like I was making progress, until "我会乘出租车去火车站" showed up in the lessons. It broke me. Turns out when the lessons feature a variety of words with different sounds, It's manageable. But when "ch" makes up roughly half the sounds in the sentence........ And now with this tone test, I got a lot of them wrong. Feels hopeless, man. Anyhow, I'm still looking forward to going to Chengdu for my 40th birthday. Hopefully by then something akin to actual learning will have happened!

😵‍💫😥😭

Put Your Head On My Shoulder

课程很有用

Linguistic approach in teaching! Great 👍

32/40. Mostly mixing up the 2nd and 3rd tones.

Hi Grace, I want to have diagram picture of the mouth shape, is there any chance I can get them? where can I find it?. Thank you

When natives regularly speak like this and make fun of non-fluent people who sound out each word as properly as possible but fail to understand a native when they talk like this is just sad lol

Amazing effort you're putting into this. And very well explained. Glad I found your channel.

May our CREATOR Blesses ye We need such works.Thannk ye a lo

美女。谢谢课程有趣

got 4.5/9

Thank you miss! So informative and to the point 😊😊😊

Ecclesiastes 7:3 Sorrow is better than laughter; it may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding. Proverbs 14:13 Laughter might hide your sadness. But when the laughter is gone, the sadness remains. If you want to know the Truth follow Jesus.

Hum..."xiéxié ni"....bu shi "xièxiè ni".....

Grace you make lovely videos. I watched this interview today and it matches a course I am taking. All of the tools he mentions are used in the course Mandarin Blueprint. I am not certain he took the course or perhaps learned what they outlined and assembled it himself. Either way, his dedication and proficiency are awe-inspiring. Thank you again for sharing.

So is this correct (a hypothetical situation at a dinner table)?: - Do you eat beef? 你吃不吃牛肉？ - I eat beef, but Today I don't eat beef, I eat chicken.　我吃牛肉，　但是今天我沒吃牛肉，　我吃雞肉我

kzfaq.infoB6-IEC967lg What about 来了 in this example? I'm a native Chinese speaker but can't find a proper explanation that works with any other verbs (e.g. at 4:15 if she said 醉了 instead of 快醉了, it certainly means "(you're) already drunk" instead of "(you're) almost drunk").

So 了 is kind of like the word “already”?

My husband is from Tianjin, only 30 minutes from Beijing, there is such a distinct difference between the Beijing accent vs. Tianjin accent. It's really so interesting to hear the linguistics and how they are so different. Beijing seems to be much more of a short cut when talking. Thank you for sharing!

在动漫里我经常听见＇我要杀了你＇，为什么有＇了＇在这种地方呢？

Wow, this is very helpful. Even though I'm ethnic Chinese (another nationality) and speak Mandarin, there's a tendency to be influenced by English or Westerners who speak Mandarin saying that 了 = past tense, when in my mind I know it's not. It's actually an East and South East Asian feature, unlike those of the western languages with obligatory past tense formation. I also love that you took the trouble to put both Pinyin and Zhuyin, and even Chinese and Taiwanese pronunciation, this wins my heart as I'm learning Taiwanese Mandarin standard and Zhuyin. Keep it up. ❤

Hi I’m new to learning mandarin , where are you located? I want friend to learn native way of speaking mandarin. Xaijian

Wow, thank you for this great explanation. The pictures really helped too!

❤❤❤

nice video... I missed a few. I am trying to help my ears know the difference in sound of tu and cu. Any ideas?

when i learn Mandarin, we had to learn the ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈ ㄉ ㄊ ㄋ ㄌ ㄍ ㄎ ㄏ ㄐ ㄑ ㄒ ㄓ ㄔ ㄕ ㄖ ㄗ ㄘ ㄙ ㄚ ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ㄞ ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄦ and write them in traditional word we didn’t know abc nor have a clue back in the 70s having native tongue in fu chen, it was somewhat easier to pick up and during late 70s to early 80s we learn cantonese by using it plus mum is Cantonese and made it easier all my friends were Cantonese back in Viet Nam

I found this are very helpful. Thanks a lot Grace ❤

more videos about formal chinese please! :) <3

就 and 已经 are very interchangeable?? Or not?

The sentence particle hou1 is very similar to "hor" in Singaporean Mandarin (same origin in Hokkien and/or Cantonese). In Singapore, people use hor even in the other languages like English and Malay!

Tai bang le!! Will's skills are awesome, high five!!

Feichang hao! Really liked this video, very useful and easy to implement! 🤩

Oh…I’ve wondered about this topic before. I think I understand it better now! Thanks! Also, best of luck with your master’s thesis💪I really appreciate your hard work making all these videos even when you’re busy with studies. I’m also studying, but I don’t think I could do that haha

Hi Grace, I really appreciate your videos. They are always well thought out and useful. 谢谢你!

Can you give an example where 昨天 and 了 are used in the same sentence please?

Perfect explanation! Simple, concise and accurate. 👍🏻

谢谢老师，现在知道怎么用得好「了」字。

5:19 I can't hear the difference because I'm 南华人 😭😭😭 it sounds like you just said 心 twice.. is it just the position of the front of the tongue being lower? or is the shape of the rest of the tongue subtly different as well?

Hi Grace, I was wondering why are there two 了 in the following sentence? 我学中文学了几年了

tai xie xie le. je ge shi pin hen you yong!

了其實與其說是過去式，其實比較像完成式。如果沒有要強調完成，可以完全不加了。

No one seems to struggle between the 1st tone and 4th tone except me. For example, In "zaizang", when it is spoken quickly, it sounds like two 4th tones to me.

這部影片非常有幫助喔！

It would have been interesting to know about Will's background because it is hard to gauge whether what he has achieved (an amazing level of proficiency in Mandarin) is down to inherited talent, e.g. a particularly high IQ? Did he work at the same time? How much time did he apply to the task each day? Otherwise a really informative interview.

说这么复杂 。四个声调看到啥都唱一下就完了。A都可以用4个声调唱唱。

Great video. I'm about to start self learning Mandarin and these tips will be very useful. Thank you.