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Archive | March, 2012

Top 10 Tweets of March

By on March 29, 2012 in Top 10 Tweets of the Month

If you follow us on Twitter (@FluentU), you may have noticed that we’ve recently gotten into the habit of tweeting various Chinese words, expressions, slang, and idioms, along with a handy definition and example sentence. Essentially, our goal is to share some of the useful, interesting, funny, and of course – relevant, things we bump [...]

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Chinese Learner Interview Series: Jacob Gill

By on March 26, 2012 in Chinese Learner Interview Series, Chinese Learner Interviews, Chinese Learning Tips

For the third entry in our Chinese Language Learners Interview Series, we had a discussion with Jacob Gill of iLearn Mandarin. The exciting twist on this interview is that Jacob is not only a language learner himself, but an aspiring Mandarin teacher as well. Jacob is currently in the process of earning an M.A. in [...]

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Chengyu For Close Game or Race

By on March 22, 2012 in Essential Chengyu

The Knicks narrowly won their 5th straight game in a nail-biter under their new coach! And Romney seems to slowly be pulling away with the Republican nomination for the US presidency, but things were up in the air for a while. In these types of competitive situations, you can use the chengyu 不相上下 (bù xiāng shàng [...]

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Chinese Learner Interview Series: Benny Lewis

By on March 19, 2012 in Chinese Learner Interview Series, Chinese Learner Interviews, Chinese Learning Tips

For the second installment in our Chinese Language Learner Interview Series, we’re featuring Benny Lewis of Fluent in 3 Months. Benny is full-time language learning enthusiast who has devoted himself to learning languages effectively, enjoying himself while he does it (gasp!), and sharing his tips, tools and experiences along the way. Benny has tackled numerous [...]

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Hot on Weibo: Top 10 Chinese Pet Phrases

By on March 15, 2012 in Chinese Slang 101, Chinese Vocab 101

Want to know the most used Chinese phrases? It’s your lucky week - the hot topic on Weibo is “What’s your pet phrase?” (#你的口头禅是什么?#) 你(nǐ): you 口头禅(kǒu tóu chán): pet phrase 是(shì): to be 什么(shén me): what The top 10 Chinese pet phrases in all their glory, based on official stats: 10. 没意思(méi yì si): boring. Eg.: “how was [...]

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Chinese Learner Interview Series: Kellen Parker

By on March 12, 2012 in Chinese Learner Interview Series, Chinese Learner Interviews, Chinese Learning Tips

For the first in our interview series we had a conversation with Kellen Parker of Sinoglot. Kellen is a published linguist with a background in linguistics and philosophy. He spent time wrestling with languages like Albanian and Arabic before coming to China and re-focusing his efforts on Mandarin, as well as more than one Chinese dialect. He’s the [...]

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Hot on Weibo: Use One Phrase To Prove You’ve Been to School

By on March 8, 2012 in Chinese Vocab 101

On Feb 28, 楸楸 (qiū qiū) sent out a simple tweet. It went viral with over 12,700 retweets. It continues to be a hot topic (话题 – huà tí) on Weibo (#一句话证明你上过学#). The tweet? “用一句话证明你上过学” “yòng yī jù huà zhèng míng nǐ shàng guò xué” “Use One Phrase To Prove You’ve Been to School” In case you [...]

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Chinese Language Learners Interview Series

By on March 5, 2012 in Chinese Learner Interview Series, Chinese Learner Interviews, Chinese Learning Tips

There’s no doubt that people like to talk about language learning – we should know! The blogs, forums, comment sections, and tweets that make up the internet’s Chinese language “learnosphere” are alive with discussions about learning Chinese. From every corner of the web, every learner has their own tips, tricks, tools and experiences that make [...]

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Check Out Reader, a New Chinese Reader

By on March 4, 2012 in Chinese Learning Tips

Our friend Steven Daniels of 3000 Hanzi gave me the opportunity to check out his new product called Reader. What we love about Reader is that helps you save time through annotation-assisted reading. But it also has significant improvements on top of existing options like Wenlin or MDBG Reader. Some of these include a built [...]

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Chengyu for Why Starbucks Wins in China While Others Fail

By on March 2, 2012 in Essential Chengyu

We know China’s a huge market … … where well-known multinational brands like Ebay, Groupon, and Best Buy go to die. But for Starbucks, China’s one of their most profitable markets. The reason for their success? They adjusted to local conditions with things like green tea flavored drinks and larger outlet sizes. In other words [...]

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