A smarter way to learn Mandarin Chinese that is fun, efficient,and memorable. Have you ever taken a Chinese course? Try a different way.
Have you been inundated with repetitive memorization and endless handwriting practice? Are you baffled trying to look up new words and characters spending hours trying to make sense of stroke numbers and radicals? Cornerstone Chinese breaks down the characters and grammar of the language into sensible and logical parts, explaining the history and culture of China in the process. Our approach is ba
11/10/2013
男(man) and女(women) are the most important characters, because inability to distinguish these two in public places could lead to serious embarrassment. 男 has a field(田）and a plough (力，means strength ), symbolizing no other than a man in acient times, for women never engaged in planting activities back then.
11/10/2013
男(man) and女(women) are the most important characters, because inability to distinguish these two in public places could lead to serious embarrassment. 男 has a field(田）and a plough (力，means strength ), symbolizing no other than a man in acient times, for women never engaged in planting activities back then.
To conquer the four tones within an hour: a o e i u ü ai ei ui ao ou iu ie üe er an en in un ün ang eng ing ong . what I have just listed are the vowels of chinese pinyin. and tones can only be placed on vowels. So familiarize with the four tones of each vowel, then you will have no difficulty in pronoucing any spelling.
16/09/2013
月means the moon, whose original shape was like the picture below, when it is used as a radical, most of the characters having it are related to human body. Such as 脑（nao3, brain),肚（du4, belly), 肝（gan1, liver), 肥（fei2,fat), 肺(fei4, lung), 肩（jian1, shoulder), 肛（anus)....
nouns and verbs are the first invented words in any language, as they were the most expressive ones in the comunication of primitive people. So how to deal with the nouns and verbs results in many different patterns of grammar. If you think one grammar is difficult, just focus on the point I have stated above, and also take into consideration of abreviation. that's all you need.
疒is the radical for disease, so any character having 疒in it is definitely related to disease, such as 疤痕（scar), 癌(cancer),疗（to cure), 疯（insanity) ,疼痛（pain),
10/09/2013
犭is shape of a dog(the picture below), in another word, it is the original shape of 犬. Now it is only used as a radical, so any character having this is definitely related to animal. Like 狗（dog)，猫(cat)，狮(lion)，猎(to hunt),狼(wolf) ........
09/09/2013
means square-shape, whose original shape was like the picture below , originally means the shackle fixed to human neck, which was a square-shaped , that can be seen very often in chinese dramas
29/08/2013
the picture below is actually the original shape of the character 心，which was figured out by an American. According to his theory, two of the three dots represent ni***es, while the third one represents belly button. Now he is hired by Beijing Normal university, specializing in studying hieroglyphics. Amazing.
06/07/2013
大 means big, it is a person describing something big to someone else.
26/06/2013
乃 means to be, its original shape is like the shape of breasts. can you see the similarity?
24/06/2013
皿hieroglyphics, means basin-kind container for water, whose orginal shape was like this