Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles tagged with ‘Synonyms’

  1. Dealing with Chinese characters you keep mixing up

    The more Chinese characters you learn, the harder it becomes to keep similar characters distinct. If you’re not careful, a pair or group of characters can generate a lot of extra work and frustration. The solution is to trace your errors and figure out why you get the characters wrong and, then deal with them decisively!

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  2. Dealing with near-synonyms in Chinese as an independent learner

    Near-synonyms cause major headaches for language learners and it’s especially hard for Chinese learners due to the lack of adequate resources in English. This article suggests some ways of handling the problem of near-synonyms when learning Chinese.

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  3. Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese

    The normal thing to do when we learning characters or words is to focus on deepening our knowledge, researching components and understanding more about what we’re trying to learn. Some problems can’t be alleviated this way, however, instead they call for horizontal vocabulary learning, i.e. to putting the character or word into context and to compare it with similar characters or words. Only then can we grasp the bigger picture.

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  4. The Chinese-Chinese dictionary survival guide

    This article is about using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, both from a personal point of view and in a more general sense. The goal is to provide tips and tricks for using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, traps to avoid and other things that will be helpful for learners who intend to move from English-Chinese to Chinese-Chinese.

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