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1500 questions
21
votes
2 answers
How do new Chinese characters get added to the language?
For example there are characters such as 熵 which as far as I know only means one thing - in this case entropy - and which have to have been deliberately added by some person or organization. An earlier example is the character 逛, which according to…
Master Sparkles
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20
votes
1 answer
What's this new Chinese character which looks like 座?
I keep seeing this new Chinese character on social media:
What is this?
Mou某
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20
votes
8 answers
Where to practice speaking Chinese?
Living in Utah, I find it quite difficult to find places to practice speaking Chinese, especially Cantonese. Apart from accosting people in stores and other public places when I happen to hear them speaking Chinese and bugging servers in Chinese…
Zann Anderson
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20
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2 answers
How do I decide whether to use 還是/还是 or 或者
還是/还是 (háishì) and 或者 (huòzhě) seem to have very similar meanings:
還是/还是: or; still; nevertheless
或者: or; possibly; maybe
When I want to say 'or', how to I choose which to use, and are there any hard and fast rules about this? Furthermore, are…
Cocowalla
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20
votes
5 answers
How widespread is the use of 妳?
When addressing a female, do I have to use 妳 instead of 你?
How common is the usage of 妳?
dusan
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20
votes
8 answers
What's the difference between 星期X and 周X?
When accepting an answer, I noticed that the example used the word 周三 for Wednesday, but in my grammar, the days of the week are 星期一, 星期二, etc...
They seem both correct but, what's the difference? Is one more common, or are they simply used in…
Alenanno
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19
votes
4 answers
Why use 的 at the end of a sentence such as 我一定會去看他的?
I'm looking for confirmation of the way I'm parsing a sentence with 的 at the end, and I'd appreciate some background or other examples of this usage.
I found this sentence on tatoeba.org:
我一定會去看他的。
I'll certainly go and see him.
The sentence is…
Don Kirkby
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19
votes
7 answers
Stative verbs in Chinese: only for adjectives?
I've recently discovered that in Chinese, adjectives can function as verbs. An answer on this site stated that "all adjectives in Chinese can function as verbs".
This was obviously an interesting discovery for a Chinese learner like me, and I…
Alenanno
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19
votes
3 answers
What is known about the new HSK 3.0 (2021) format?
I found a brief note on Wikipedia that since 2020, HSK is going to be restructured. It links to a tweet, which shows a page in Chinese. Is there any more information compared to what Wikipedia currently states? If not, are there any educated guesses…
d33tah
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19
votes
1 answer
Meaning of "~~" at the end of a sentence
I see quite often a few "~" characters placed at the end of sentences, especially in e-mails, texts, and social networks.
Is this an informal exclamation or an emphasis mark?
For example, the sentence below was extracted from a Facebook…
Shlublu
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19
votes
4 answers
"Baby" vs "宝贝" - coincidence?
I am interested if the phonetic similarity between the English "baby" and the Chinese "宝贝" (baobei) is purely coincidental.
Mike Chamberlain
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19
votes
5 answers
How do we know what characters correspond to Chinese names?
Recently I've asked "How do we choose the correct characters for a westerner name?", and now, I'm facing a similar, yet kind of different problem, which I think applies to any westerner or Chinese student at a beginner level.
There are two…
Alenanno
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19
votes
3 answers
Is there a literal meaning of 对不起?
对不起 is one of the first phrases any student learns.
We learn it as a set phrase, and don't question why it has this meaning.
But we also learn the phrases;
听得懂 - "hear and understand"
听不懂 - "hear but don't understand"
So is there a literal meaning…
Matthew Rudy 马泰
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19
votes
2 answers
Why do the names of some Chinese companies consist of "repeated" words?
I'm referring to the repetition of names such as "Dangdang" and "Renren." Why is this the case?
Tom Au
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19
votes
9 answers
Why Cantonese is considered as a dialect of Chinese?
Can someone explain why Cantonese is considered as a dialect of Chinese, instead of a language? It is also for any language exist in China, both land and Taiwan (Cantonese, Hunanese, Fujianese, Taiwanese, etc.).
AFAIK, dialect is differ from…
mrjimoy_05
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