Articles published in November 2015
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Learning to hear the sounds and tones in Mandarin
Learning to hear the difference between tones in Mandarin can be difficult for adult learners. In this article, I introduce two effective ways of overcoming this problem, as well as my own research project, which is meant to help students and will be available soon.
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How to verify that you use the right Chinese font
For second language learners, using the wrong font can make learning characters very confusing. In this article, I will help you verify that you have the right fonts installed and discuss what happens if you don’t. This is a follow-up to an earlier article about Chinese fonts for students.
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Chinese character variants and fonts for language learners
Chinese character variants and regional font standards can be really confusing for language learners. As if simplified/traditional wasn’t enough, characters can look different depending on the font used or where the text was printed! This article will help you understand what’s going on.
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One year of language challenges on Hacking Chinese
Hacking Chinese Challenges has now been online for more than a year and it’s time to take a step back to evaluate the service. Have you tried it out yet? What did you think? This article contains a short survey as well as some of my own reflections about the past and future of language challenges.
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