Chinese Unveiled: Learn Chinese with Joeru

This is a common mistake for foreign learners. "我 剛剛 學這個生詞” The student was trying to say, "I just learned the vocab." Well, it seems correct to most foreign learners because if you look up in a dictionary you will find the translation for 剛剛 is "just". So why is the sentence incorrect? First of all, whenever you want to express the idea " just " in Chinese, always be careful, there are probably more than 4 different adverbs in Chinese for just , and, unfortunately you cannot use them freely. Let's then take a closer look into these two words: 剛剛 and 剛 . 1）剛剛： It's a time word , which means it's a noun , referring to the time not too long ago from the time you speak , could be a few seconds ago or up to a few hours ago, depends on the context. Grammatically speaking, you can use this word just like the way you use 昨天. For example: a. ...

For Beginners: 1. Well, just like learning any other language, it's a life-long task to master Chinese. So be patient. (In fact for Chinese, once you have overcome the pronunciations, it wouldn't be that difficult at the very beginning.) 2. "Why do I learn Chinese?" This is probably the most stupid question ever. Of course there can be motives such as living in a Chinese-speaking country, doing business with Chinese...etc, but never set a limit for yourself. 3. Do set up clear and down-to-earth objectives for each stage of your studies, for example "being able to read 80% of the characters I learn in class", "being able to order food in a restaurant" or "being able to ask for directions on the street"... 4. You can never learn Chinese without leaning characters!! Either simplified or traditional. Trust me!! I'll have to write an article to explain why. 5. The Chinese accent spoken in every Chinese-speaking country is absolu...