High School Mandarin Chinese I

Two first graders, two sets of symbols

On 11 February 1958, the National People's Congress in Beijing approved a scheme for writing the sounds of Chinese in the Latin alphabet, with four small marks over the vowels for the tones. Its full name is 汉语拼音 (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn), roughly "spelling the sounds of Chinese", and almost everyone calls it pinyin. In 1982 the International Organization for Standardization adopted it as ISO 7098, the world standard for writing Chinese in Latin letters. Mainland China's language law still requires primary schools to teach it, so a six-year-old in Beijing can read mā before she can write 妈 (mother).

A six-year-old in Taipei starts with different symbols. Taiwan's national curriculum expects children in grades 1 and 2 to read, spell and write 注音符號 (zhùyīn fúhào, "sound-marking symbols"), usually called zhuyin, or bopomofo after its first four symbols, ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈ (b, p, m, f). The same curriculum expects those children to recognise at least 1,000 characters by the end of grade 2. Two children, two sets of sound symbols, one language: Mandarin.

Before you say a word of it, this lesson maps where Mandarin is used and how it is written. You will compare four places where people use it every day, see how it relates to Cantonese and the other Chinese languages, and learn which places write simplified characters and which write traditional ones. Then you will write your first ten characters.

Mandarin among the Chinese languages

"Chinese" is the name of a family of languages, not of one language. Glottolog, the catalogue of the world's languages kept by linguists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, groups them as the Sinitic family. Mandarin is one member. Others include Yue, whose best-known form is Cantonese; Min Nan, which includes Hokkien and Taiwanese; Wu, which includes Shanghainese; Hakka; Gan; and Xiang.

Linguists count these as separate languages, not accents, because their speakers generally cannot follow one another's everyday speech without learning it. What holds the family together is writing. Educated writers across the family share one set of characters and a written standard built on Mandarin. Take the greeting 你好, "hello". Wiktionary's pronunciation tables give it as nǐ hǎo in Mandarin, nei5 hou2 in Cantonese (written in Jyutping, where the numbers mark tones) and lí hó in the Hokkien of Xiamen and Kaohsiung. Same two characters, three pronunciations.

If you grew up hearing Cantonese, Hokkien or another Chinese language at home, you already own part of this course. You know that the pitch of a syllable can change its meaning, and you may recognise characters on menus and signs. Mandarin pronunciation will still be new in places, and the course gives you the reading and writing that a home language rarely teaches. If your family speaks Mandarin, you will move quickly through the sound lessons and slow down, like everyone else, at the characters.

Key idea: Mandarin is one of several Chinese languages. They sound different enough to count as separate languages, but they share one writing system.

One standard, three names

Mandarin has a standard form, the one used in schools, news broadcasts and dictionaries. Different places call it by different names, and you will meet all of them.

• 普通话 (pǔtōnghuà, "common speech") in mainland China. Its language law defines the national common language and script as 普通话 and 规范汉字 (guīfàn hànzì, standardized characters). The National People's Congress Standing Committee revised that law on 27 December 2025, and the new version took effect on 1 January 2026 with the same definition. Hong Kong uses the same word, 普通話, for the Mandarin that its schools have taught as a core subject in primary and junior secondary school since 1998.
• 國語 (guóyǔ, "national language") in Taiwan, which is also part of the name of the school subject, 國語文. When Taiwan's Ministry of Education writes about teaching Mandarin overseas, it uses 華語 (huáyǔ).
• 华语 (huáyǔ) in Singapore, built on 华 (huá), an old word for Chinese. Singapore's Constitution names Mandarin as one of the country's four official languages, alongside Malay, Tamil and English.

Two more words cover the language in general. 中文 (Zhōngwén) means Chinese, especially written Chinese, and is the word you would write on a form that asks which languages you know. 汉语 (Hànyǔ) means "the Han language", after the Han, China's largest ethnic group; it appears in textbook titles and in the name 汉语拼音.

The standards are close but not identical. Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary gives 垃圾 (garbage) as lèsè, while the usual mainland pronunciation is lājī. Differences like this are few, and this course points them out as they come up.

Characters: a syllable with a meaning

Chinese is written in characters, 汉字 (hànzì, "Han characters"). Each character fills the same imaginary square, is read as one syllable, and almost always carries a meaning of its own. 中 (zhōng) means middle; 文 (wén) means writing or language. Put them together and 中文 is the Chinese language. Most words in modern Mandarin are two characters long, and one character can turn up in hundreds of words.

There is no alphabet underneath. You cannot sound out a character you have never seen, the way you can sound out an unfamiliar English word, although Lesson 9 shows the clues that most characters do carry. So learners ask the obvious question: how many do I need? Jun Da of Middle Tennessee State University counted every character in about 194 million characters of modern Chinese text. In his count, the 100 most frequent characters made up about 42 percent of all the text, the 300 most frequent about 65 percent, and the 1,000 most frequent about 89 percent.

This course teaches 300 characters, chosen for what a beginner needs rather than for raw frequency. A first-year course has to teach 妈 (mother) and 筷 (chopstick) long before the vocabulary of newspapers, so its list is not the same as Jun Da's top 300. About half of the course's characters are among his 300 most frequent, and two thirds are among his top 500.

Two ways to write: simplified and traditional

In the 1950s and 1960s, mainland China reduced the number of strokes in many common characters. The results are called simplified characters (简体字, jiǎntǐzì), and the older forms are called traditional characters (繁體字, fántǐzì). Today simplified characters are standard in mainland China and Singapore, and traditional characters are standard in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Chinese communities elsewhere use both.

Much of the time the two scripts agree. Every one of your first ten characters, 一 二 三 十 人 大 小 中 文 口, is written the same way in both. Where they differ, this course shows the traditional form beside the simplified one, as in 妈 and 媽 (mother), or 们 and 們 (the plural ending for people), which you meet in the next two lessons. Mainland China's language law itself lists places where traditional characters may still be used, among them historic sites, works of calligraphy, and handwritten inscriptions and shop signs. Lesson 10 shows how the two scripts relate and how to read both.

Pinyin and zhuyin side by side

Pinyin writes Mandarin with Latin letters and puts tone marks above the vowels: ā, á, ǎ, à. Zhuyin uses symbols of its own, thirty-seven of them in the basic Mandarin set that Unicode encodes, and writes most tones as small marks after the syllable. Here are the same words in both systems, with the Taiwan dictionary forms.

Notice three things. Zhuyin leaves the first tone unmarked, so ㄓㄨㄥ is zhōng. It puts the dot for the light, neutral tone in front of the syllable, so ˙ㄒㄧㄝ is the unstressed second half of xièxie. And where pinyin marks the tone on a vowel, zhuyin marks it after the whole syllable.

Taiwan uses both systems, for different jobs. Zhuyin is how children learn to pronounce. For writing Chinese names and places in Latin letters, the Ministry of Education's transliteration principles, revised in December 2008, say that Taiwan follows Hanyu Pinyin unless other rules apply. The same principles let people keep the spelling they prefer for their own names, and the Bureau of Consular Affairs notes that the older Wade-Giles system survives in some personal names and place names. So a classmate from Taipei may write her surname Chen in pinyin, while her grandfather's name card uses Wade-Giles.

Key idea: pinyin and zhuyin are both ways of writing pronunciation, not ways of writing the language. Everyday Chinese is written in characters.

Four places, compared

Read the table across its rows and two patterns appear. First, script and sound system do not travel together. Hong Kong writes traditional characters, as Taiwan does, but its Putonghua lessons teach pinyin, as the mainland's do. Second, Mandarin almost never stands alone. Taiwan's Development of National Languages Act of 2019 defines its national languages as the natural languages and sign languages used by all of Taiwan's ethnic groups. Hong Kong's education policy aims for students to communicate in Cantonese, English and Putonghua. Singapore's Constitution names four official languages.

What changes from place to place is mostly the name, the script and the sound symbols. The language you are about to learn is the same in all four places, and a speaker from any one of them understands standard Mandarin from the others.

Your first ten characters

These ten are simple, common and identical in both scripts. The tone numbers after each pinyin syllable are a second way of showing the tone, explained in Lesson 2; the radical is the part a dictionary files the character under, explained in Lesson 9.

Already you can read two real words: 中文 (Zhōngwén, Chinese) and 大人 (dàrén, adult, literally "big person"). And 人口 (rénkǒu), "person mouths", is the ordinary word for population: a country counts the mouths it has to feed.

The basic strokes

Every character is built from a small set of strokes, each one a single movement of the pen without lifting it. Your ten characters use these:

• 横 (héng), the horizontal: left to right, as in 一.
• 竖 (shù), the vertical: top to bottom, as in the upright of 十.
• 撇 (piě), the left-falling stroke: from upper right down to lower left, the first stroke of 人.
• 捺 (nà), the right-falling stroke: from upper left down to lower right, widening at the end, the second stroke of 人.
• 点 (diǎn), the dot: a short, slanting stroke, the first stroke of 文.
• 折 (zhé), the turn: one stroke that changes direction at a corner, as in the top and right side of 口.
• 钩 (gōu), the hook: a small flick at the end of a stroke, as at the foot of the middle stroke of 小.

The order of the strokes matters as much as their shapes. It keeps your characters balanced, it is how handwriting recognition and dictionaries expect them, and it makes fast handwriting readable. Here is the order for all ten.

1. 一: one horizontal.
2. 二: the short top horizontal, then the longer bottom one.
3. 三: top to bottom. The middle line is the shortest and the bottom line the longest.
4. 十: the horizontal first, then the vertical through it.
5. 人: the left-falling stroke, then the right-falling one, which starts a little below the top of the first.
6. 大: the horizontal, then the left-falling stroke through it, then the right-falling stroke.
7. 小: the middle vertical with its hook first, then the short stroke on the left, then the dot on the right.
8. 口: the left vertical; then the top and the right side in one stroke, turning at the corner; then the bottom horizontal, which closes the box.
9. 中: the left vertical, the turning stroke, the bottom horizontal of the box, and last the long vertical through the middle.
10. 文: the dot, the horizontal, the left-falling stroke, then the right-falling stroke.

Four rules are already at work in that list: horizontal before vertical (十), left-falling before right-falling (人), top to bottom (三), and the middle before the two sides (小). Lesson 8 collects the rest.

Key idea: a character has a fixed number of strokes written in a fixed order. Learn the order with the character, not afterwards.

Listening: ten characters, four pitch patterns

Every link below opens a Wiktionary entry. Scroll to the Chinese section and press play on the Mandarin recording, which Wikimedia Commons hosts free of charge; no account is needed. Listen to each character twice before you read the answers.

1. Open 一, 三 and 中. What does the voice do on each? Answer: it stays high and level from start to finish.
2. Open 十, 人 and 文. Answer: the voice rises, the way an English speaker's voice rises on a surprised "what?"
3. Open 小 and 口. Answer: the voice dips low before it comes up again.
4. Open 二 and 大. Answer: the voice falls sharply, like a firm "No!"
5. Now three words: 中文, 普通話 and 漢語. For each syllable, decide whether the voice stays high, rises, dips or falls. Answers: 中文 is high then rising; 普通話 is dipping, high, falling; 漢語 is falling, then dipping.

You have just heard all four Mandarin tones. Lesson 2 names them and shows you how pinyin marks them.

Speaking: your first words aloud

Alone: record yourself on your phone saying the ten characters in order, then 中文, 大人 and 人口. Play each Wiktionary recording, then your own, and listen for one thing only: does your voice go high, up, down-and-up or down in the same places? Record again until it does.

With a partner: write the ten characters on cards. One of you holds up a card and the other says the character; then swap. Next, one of you says a character and the other points to the card. Finally, say the four-place table aloud to each other in English, place by place, without looking.

Character writing: ten characters on paper

Use squared paper, or rule a page into squares about two centimetres wide. Write each of the ten characters six times, one per square, saying it aloud each time. Keep each character centred in its square and roughly the same size as its neighbours: 口 should be a compact box, not a large frame, and the right-falling stroke of 人 and 大 should reach out further than the left-falling one.

Check the order of strokes as you go. Each Wiktionary entry linked in the Listening section shows an animated stroke order near the top of the page, made by Wikimedia's Stroke Order Project; for traditional forms later in the course, the Taiwan Ministry of Education's 國語小字典 (Mandarin Mini Dictionary) plays the official stroke order for every character. Count your strokes: 一 has 1, 二 2, 三 3, 十 2, 人 2, 大 3, 小 3, 中 4, 文 4 and 口 3. Start a character notebook now, with one line per character: the character, its pinyin, its meaning and its stroke count.

Common misconceptions

• "Mandarin is one accent of Chinese, and Cantonese is another." They are separate languages in the same family. Their speakers generally cannot follow each other's everyday speech, though they share a writing system.
• "People in China write in pinyin." Pinyin records pronunciation. It is used for learning, for typing characters on a phone, for names and on signs, but everyday writing is in characters.
• "Taiwan uses zhuyin instead of pinyin." Taiwan uses zhuyin to teach children pronunciation and, since the transliteration principles revised in 2008, follows Hanyu Pinyin for writing Chinese in Latin letters unless other rules apply.
• "Simplified and traditional Chinese are two languages." They are two sets of character forms for the same language. Many characters, including all ten in this lesson, are the same in both.
• "Chinese characters are pictures of things." A few began as pictures, but most characters combine a part that hints at meaning with a part that hints at sound. Lesson 9 shows how.

What to carry forward

Mandarin is one of the Sinitic languages, alongside Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese, Hakka and others; they are distinct when spoken but share one writing system. Its standard form is called 普通话 in mainland China and Hong Kong, 國語 in Taiwan and 华语 in Singapore. Simplified characters are standard in mainland China and Singapore, traditional characters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and many characters are the same in both. Pinyin, approved in 1958 and an international standard since 1982, writes pronunciation in Latin letters with tone marks; zhuyin writes it with its own symbols and is how children in Taiwan learn to pronounce. You have written ten characters with seven basic strokes and heard all four tones. In Lesson 2 those tones get their names, their marks and their numbers.

Sources

1. National People's Congress. (1958). 汉语拼音方案 [Scheme for the Chinese phonetic alphabet; approved 11 February 1958]. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
2. Wei, C. (2025). Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (revision): Comparison chart of the 2000 text and the version revised 27 December 2025 [Articles 2, 19 and 20]. NPC Observer. npcobserver.com
3. Xinhua. (2025, December 27). China revises law on standard spoken, written Chinese language. The State Council of the People's Republic of China. english.www.gov.cn
4. National Academy for Educational Research. (2018). 十二年國民基本教育課程綱要: 語文領域－國語文 [Curriculum guidelines of 12-year basic education: Mandarin; learning performances 3-I-1 and 4-I-1]. naer.edu.tw
5. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2011). 中文譯音使用原則 [Principles for Chinese transliteration; points 2, 4 and 6; revised 18 December 2008 and 10 March 2011]. crptransfer.moe.gov.tw
6. Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan. (n.d.). 護照外文姓名中譯英系統: 4種拼音方式介紹 [Four romanization systems for passport names]. boca.gov.tw
7. Government of the Hong Kong SAR. (2024, November 6). LCQ11: Raising public's Putonghua standard [Press release]. info.gov.hk
8. Attorney-General's Chambers of Singapore. (n.d.). Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, Article 153A. Singapore Statutes Online. sso.agc.gov.sg
9. Heng, B. H. (2024, May 10). Leveraging technology to enhance students' Mother Tongue Language learning experience [Forum letter reply]. Ministry of Education, Singapore. moe.gov.sg
10. Ministry of Justice, Taiwan. (2019). Development of National Languages Act, Article 3. Laws and Regulations Database. law.moj.gov.tw
11. Hammarström, H., Forkel, R., Haspelmath, M., and Bank, S. (2026). Sinitic. In Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. glottolog.org
12. Unicode Consortium. (2026). The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0, section 18.3, Bopomofo. unicode.org
13. Da, J. (2004). Chinese character frequency list: Modern Chinese. Middle Tennessee State University. lingua.mtsu.edu
14. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 國語辭典簡編本 [Concise Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 垃圾; 重編國語辭典修訂本 [Revised Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 中文. dict.concised.moe.edu.tw
15. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 你好; 垃圾; 中文 [Entries with Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien pronunciations and Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
16. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Varieties of Chinese [background on mutual intelligibility]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Five words in one syllable

The 1958 Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, the document that created pinyin, needs only one line to show how its tone marks work. It lists five words: 妈 mā (mother), 麻 má (hemp), 马 mǎ (horse), 骂 mà (to scold) and 吗 ma, a little word that turns a statement into a question. The consonant is the same in all five, and so is the vowel. The only thing that changes is the tone: the shape your voice gives the syllable as it rises, falls, dips or stays level.

English uses pitch too, but for attitude, not for meaning. Say "Mom." flatly, "Mom?" as a question and "Mom!" as a warning, and you have one word with three moods. In Mandarin the pitch pattern belongs to the word itself. Say mǎ when you mean mā and you have said horse instead of mother. Context usually rescues the listener, but you cannot rely on it, and a tone said clearly is the difference between being understood and being guessed at.

This lesson builds the four tones one at a time, in the order most learners find easiest, then adds the neutral tone, then shows how pinyin writes them all. At the end you will run the same procedure on a second syllable and hear how every tone changes the meaning again.

Step 1: find your own five levels

In 1930 the linguist Yuen Ren Chao published a way of describing tones on a scale of five pitch levels. In the Chinese convention, 5 is the top of your normal speaking voice and 1 is the bottom. A tone is then written as the levels it passes through. The scale is relative to you. A deep voice and a high voice both have their own 5 and their own 1, and a Mandarin first tone from a bass and from a soprano are equally correct.

Find your range now. Say "ah" on the most comfortable note you can, then slide up to the top of your speaking voice, without straining into a squeak, and down to the bottom, without croaking. The top is your 5. The bottom is your 1. Your comfortable middle note is about a 3. Everything in this lesson happens inside that range.

Step 2: the first tone, high and level (55)

The first tone starts at 5 and stays at 5: mā. Think of holding one steady note, the way a doctor asks you to say "ahhh". It should not rise or fall, and it should not drift down at the end the way English words do when you finish a sentence. The University of Texas course Pitch Perfect Pinyin puts it simply: the first tone is high and remains high with no change in pitch.

Try it on the first character you learned in Lesson 1, 一 yī (one), and on 三 sān (three) and 中 zhōng (middle). Hold each for a full second. If you hear your voice sag at the end, start again a little higher.

Step 3: the fourth tone, falling (51)

The fourth tone drops from the top to the bottom, 5 to 1, quickly and firmly: mà. It is the sound of a firm "No!" or of stamping your foot. Learners from English usually manage this tone first, because English already uses a falling pitch for commands. The danger is starting it too low. Begin at your 5, as high as the first tone, and fall all the way.

Practise on 二 èr (two) and 大 dà (big). Then alternate: mā mà, mā mà. The first tone is a plateau and the fourth is a cliff that starts from the same height.

Step 4: the second tone, rising (35)

The second tone starts in the middle and rises to the top, 3 to 5: má. It is the pitch of a surprised "What?" or of "Yeah?" when someone calls your name. Keep the rise steady and let it finish high.

Practise on 十 shí (ten), 人 rén (person) and 文 wén (writing). Then string three tones together: mā má mà, high, rising, falling. If your má sounds like an English question that falls again at the end, cut the syllable shorter.

Step 5: the third tone, low and dipping (214, often just 21)

The third tone is the one learners argue about, because it has two forms. Said alone, or at the end of a sentence, it is the full third tone: it starts low at 2, sinks to 1, then rises to about 4, a dip and a climb, as in mǎ. That is the shape dictionaries give it, 214. Pitch Perfect Pinyin describes it as a curve that starts mid-low and is raised to mid-high.

In ordinary speech, though, the climb usually disappears. Before another syllable, a third tone is normally just low, 21, the half third tone. Pitch Perfect Pinyin notes that speakers nearly always use the half form when a third tone is the first syllable of a two-syllable word, and that the full curve appears mainly when the syllable is stressed. So practise both: the full dip and climb on its own, and the low, creaky half form inside words. The secret of a good third tone is how low it goes, not how high it climbs.

Practise on 小 xiǎo (small) and 口 kǒu (mouth), first alone with the full curve. Then try 小 inside a word: in 小人 xiǎorén (a mean-spirited person, literally "small person"), 小 stays low and leads straight into the rise of 人.

Remember: the first tone is high and level (55), the second rises (35), the third dips low and may climb back (214, often just 21), and the fourth falls from the top (51).

Step 6: the neutral tone

Some syllables carry no tone of their own. They are said lightly and briefly, and pinyin leaves them unmarked: the Scheme's own example is 吗 ma. This is the neutral tone, also called the light tone, and in the second syllable of 妈妈 māma (mom) you hear it after a first tone.

A neutral syllable takes its pitch from the syllable in front of it. The standard description, going back to Chao, is that it sits at about 2 after a first tone, 3 after a second, 4 after a third and 1 after a fourth. In practice that means it sounds low after mā, middling after má, rather high after a low mǎ, and lowest of all after a falling mà. You do not need to memorise the numbers. Say the first syllable fully, then let the second one fall off it, short and relaxed.

Step 7: marks, numbers and where the mark goes

Pinyin shows tones with four marks over a vowel. Many dictionaries, keyboards and word lists also use numbers, written after the syllable, and this course gives both. The numbers are only a second way of writing the same tones.

Dictionaries disagree about how to number the neutral tone: some write 5, some 0, and some, like Jun Da's frequency list from Lesson 1, simply leave the number off. All of them write the four full tones as 1 to 4.

Where does the mark sit? The Scheme says on the main vowel. In practice three checks settle every syllable:

1. If the syllable has an a or an e, the mark goes there: hǎo, xiè, mǎi.
2. If it has ou, the mark goes on the o: dōu, kǒu.
3. Otherwise the mark goes on the last vowel: guì, liù, duō.

Pitch Perfect Pinyin gives the same three patterns as ǎo, iú and uì. The letter ü keeps its two dots and takes the tone mark above them, as in 女 nǚ (woman) and lǜ (green). One trap is visual rather than spoken: the third-tone mark is a v-shaped check (ǎ), not the round cup of a breve (ă) that some fonts and keyboards offer. On a phone, hold down a vowel and choose the version with the pointed v.

Remember: a tone mark goes on a or e if there is one, on the o of ou, and otherwise on the last vowel; tone numbers are a second way to write the same thing.

The procedure again, with a changed syllable: tang

Run the seven steps on a second syllable and every tone gives a different word again. On tang: 汤 tāng is soup, 糖 táng is sugar or candy, 躺 tǎng is to lie down, and 烫 tàng is scalding hot. "The soup is hot" and "the sugar is lying down" differ only in pitch. On ba it happens a third time: 八 bā is eight, 拔 bá is to pull out, 把 bǎ is to hold, and 爸 bà is the first syllable of 爸爸 bàba, dad.

Notice what does not change. The consonant and vowel stay put and only the tone moves, so a syllable written without its tone mark is ambiguous. That is why this course never writes pinyin without tone marks, and why you should not either.

Characters to learn

These six already show how characters are built. The Shuowen Jiezi, a dictionary finished around 100 CE, explains 好 as "beautiful", made of 女 (woman) and 子 (child). Now look at the other three. 妈 puts 女 beside 马: the woman part points to the meaning, and 马 (mǎ) points to the sound, ma. 吗 puts 口 (mouth) beside 马: the mouth marks a spoken word, and 马 again gives the sound. Neither has anything to do with horses. Lesson 9 shows how far this sound-hint trick goes and where it breaks down.

The traditional forms differ only in 马 itself, which is 馬 in traditional script, with four dots at the bottom for the legs. Wherever 马 appears inside a character, the traditional form uses 馬: 媽, 嗎.

A classroom tongue twister

Generations of Mandarin learners have practised tones on this rhyme. It is traditional, and only 妈 and 马 are characters you know so far.

Count the tones: 妈 is first, 骑 second, 马 third, 慢 and 骂 fourth, and the second 妈 of 妈妈 is neutral. Say it slowly with a hand moving to show each tone: flat for the first, up for the second, down and up for the third, sharply down for the fourth. Then say it at speaking speed.

Listening: hear the tones, then name them

All of these are free and need no account.

1. Harvard's Chinese Language Program recommends the Yabla pinyin chart with audio, where clicking a syllable lets you play it in each of the four tones. Find ma and play all four. Then find tang, ba and yi, and play each set in order 1, 2, 3, 4.
2. Open Wiktionary's entries for 媽媽, 麻, 馬, 罵 and 嗎, and play the Mandarin recording on each. You will hear māma, má, mǎ, mà and the light ma; the 嗎 entry also has recordings of its rarer readings, so play the first one.
3. Test yourself before you read the answers. Open 八, 把, 拔, 躺, 湯 and 糖 in that order and write the tone number of each. Answers: 1, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2.
4. The University of Texas at Austin's Pitch Perfect Pinyin has a short recorded introduction to the tones in its Basic Information unit; play each example. Then open its practice page, where you click a two-syllable word, type the two tone numbers and press submit to be checked. Do the first twenty words, and repeat any you miss.

Speaking: tones out loud

Alone: record yourself saying mā má mǎ mà ma, then tāng táng tǎng tàng and bā bá bǎ bà, moving your hand with each tone. Play it back beside the Yabla recordings. Check three things: is your first tone really level, does your fourth tone start high, and does your third tone go low? Then record the tongue twister twice, slowly and at speed.

With a partner: one of you says a syllable from the ma, ba or tang sets in any tone; the other holds up one, two, three or four fingers. Swap after ten. Then make it harder: say two syllables in a row, such as mā mǎ or táng tàng, and have your partner give both numbers.

Character writing: six characters

On squared paper, write each character six times, saying it aloud each time. 女 has 3 strokes, 子 3, 好 6, 马 3, 妈 6 and 吗 6. When 女 sits on the left of 好 or 妈, it is drawn narrower, and its last stroke slants up towards the right instead of running flat, so it does not collide with the right half. 吗 is written 口 first, then 马, left before right.

Watch the stroke order animated before you begin. The free Chinese character dictionary 汉典 (zdic.net) plays the mainland stroke order under the heading 笔顺 (bǐshùn, stroke order) and has a play button for the pronunciation; change the character at the end of the address, or use its search box, to see 妈, 吗 and the others. For the traditional forms, the Taiwan Ministry of Education's 國語小字典 animates 馬 under 筆順播放; write it once or twice too, so that you can recognise 媽 and 嗎 when you see them in Taiwan or Hong Kong.

Common misconceptions

• "Tones are like English intonation, so they add feeling, not meaning." In Mandarin the tone is part of the word: mā, má, mǎ and mà are four different words.
• "You need a high voice to make a proper first tone." Tones are relative to your own range. A low voice's 5 is lower than a high voice's 5, and both are right.
• "The third tone always dips and rises." The full 214 curve is mostly heard alone or at the end of a phrase. Before another syllable it is usually just low, 21.
• "The neutral tone is a fifth tone with its own fixed pitch." It has no pitch of its own. It is light and short, and its height depends on the tone before it.
• "Tone marks are optional extras." Without them a syllable such as ma or tang is ambiguous. Always write and learn pinyin with its marks.

The short version

Mandarin uses pitch to tell words apart. On Chao's five-level scale, the first tone is high and level (55), the second rises (35), the third dips low and may climb back (214, usually just 21 before another syllable) and the fourth falls from the top (51). A neutral syllable is short and light and takes its pitch from the one before it. Pinyin writes the tones as ā á ǎ à, leaves the neutral tone unmarked, and puts the mark on a or e, on the o of ou, or otherwise on the last vowel; numbers 1 to 4 are a second way of writing the same tones. Your six new characters show the first pattern of the writing system: 妈 and 吗 borrow the sound of 马. Lesson 3 turns to the consonants and vowels around the tones, where pinyin's letters do not mean what English readers expect.

Sources

1. National People's Congress. (1958). 汉语拼音方案 [Scheme for the Chinese phonetic alphabet], section 4, tone marks. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
2. Teng, W.-H. (n.d.). Pitch Perfect Pinyin: Basic information [Unit 0] and practice pages. Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
3. Kenstowicz, M. (2010). Tone 2: Asian languages [Lecture 16 notes; Mandarin tones in Chao numbering and third-tone sandhi]. 24.901 Language and Its Structure I: Phonology. MIT OpenCourseWare. ocw.mit.edu
4. Harvard University Chinese Language Program. (n.d.). Pronunciation study [recommends the Yabla pinyin chart with audio]. clp.hsites.harvard.edu
5. Xu, S. (c. 100 CE). 說文解字 [Shuowen Jiezi], chapter 12, entries 女 and 好. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
6. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 媽媽; 麻; 馬; 罵; 嗎; 八; 把; 拔 [Entries with Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Standard Chinese phonology: Tones; Neutral tone [background, citing Chao 1968 for neutral-tone pitch]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Tone letter [background on Chao's 1930 tone letters and the five-level convention]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
9. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unihan database: entries for 女, 子, 好, 马, 妈, 吗 and their traditional forms [stroke counts and radicals]. unicode.org

Three readings of Xi'an

In 1974, near the city of 西安 in northwest China, the first pieces of the First Qin Emperor's army of clay soldiers came out of the ground. UNESCO's World Heritage listing says simply that the site, 35 kilometres northeast of the city, "was not discovered until 1974". Millions of visitors have come since, and many English speakers arrive saying the city's name one of three ways: "Zye-an", "Ex-ee-an" or "Shee-ahn". Only the third is close. The first two are not careless; they are what you get when you read pinyin with English letter values.

This lesson starts from those wrong readings and traces each mistake to its source, because the same few mistakes account for most of a beginner's accent. Pinyin borrowed the Latin alphabet, but it assigned Chinese sounds to the letters, just as Italian decided that c before i sounds like English ch. Learn what each letter means in pinyin, and the spelling becomes completely regular.

First, two terms. A Mandarin syllable has an initial, the consonant at the start (the x of xī), and a final, everything after it (the ī). Some syllables, such as ān, have no initial at all. Pitch Perfect Pinyin, the University of Texas course you met in Lesson 2, uses the same two terms, and so does every Chinese textbook.

Bug 1: giving the letters their English sounds

"Zye-an" reads x as z, the way English handles xylophone, and i as the "eye" of English time. "Ex-ee-an" reads x as the ks of box. In pinyin, x is neither. Pitch Perfect Pinyin describes xi as close to English she, but said with the lips spread rather than rounded and the tongue tip resting behind the lower teeth. So 西 xī (west) sounds roughly like "shee" with a smile.

The same bug hits other letters. Pinyin q is close to the ch of cheese, again with spread lips, so 七 qī (seven) sounds like "chee", not "kee". Pinyin c is the ts at the end of cats, so 次 cì (time, occurrence) begins "ts", not "k" or "s". Pinyin z is the ds of beds: 字 zì (character). And pinyin zh is not the French j of Beijing as many English speakers say it; it is closer to the j of jump, with the tongue tip curled up.

The point: pinyin letters are labels for Mandarin sounds. Read x, q, c, z and zh with English habits and the word comes out wrong even when the tone is right.

Bug 2: hearing b and p as English b and p

English separates b from p mainly by voicing: your vocal cords buzz for b and not for p. Mandarin separates them by aspiration, a puff of air. Pitch Perfect Pinyin explains that Mandarin b is voiceless and sounds like the p in speed, while p is said with a strong burst of air, like the p in pin. Hold a strip of paper in front of your mouth and say bā, then pā. The paper should stay still for bā and jump for pā.

Six pairs work this way, and English speakers who miss the puff confuse all of them: b and p, d and t, g and k, j and q, zh and ch, z and c. In each pair the first has no puff and the second has a strong one. Voicing simply does not carry meaning here. Pitch Perfect Pinyin points out that a voiced b, English style, would not change the meaning of a Mandarin word; leaving out or adding the puff of air can.

All 21 initials

Here are the initials grouped by where your mouth makes them, with the zhuyin symbol for each and an English comparison. The comparisons are approximate.

Two of these deserve extra attention. The j, q, x group is only ever followed by i or ü, and is said with the lips spread and the tongue flat. The zh, ch, sh, r group is said with the tongue tip curled up towards the roof of the mouth; Pitch Perfect Pinyin calls them retroflex. Say 西 xī and then 是 shì: the first is made with a flat tongue near the teeth, the second with the tongue tip turned up.

Bug 3: one letter i, three sounds

Most of the time pinyin i is the ee of see, with the corners of the mouth pulled back: 你 nǐ, 一 yī, 七 qī. But after the curled-back group, zh, ch, sh and r, the i is not an ee at all. Pitch Perfect Pinyin explains that this i is "only used to bring the quality of a vowel" to the consonant: you hold the tongue where it was and let your voice buzz. 是 shì (to be), 知 zhī (to know), 吃 chī (to eat) and 日 rì (sun, day) all end in that buzz.

After z, c and s the same thing happens with the tongue tip behind the teeth: 字 zì, 次 cì, 四 sì (four). So shì does not rhyme with English she, and sì does not sound like English see. If you say "see" for 四, a listener may hear 西 xī instead.

Bug 4: the u that is really ü

Mandarin has a vowel English lacks: ü, made by rounding your lips for oo while your tongue stays where it is for ee. You hear it in 女 nǚ (woman) and 绿 lǜ (green). The 1958 Scheme lets ü drop its dots in four places, because no confusion is possible there: after j, q and x, and at the start of a syllable, where it is spelled yu. So 去 qù (to go) is q plus ü, and 鱼 yú (fish) is ü with nothing in front. Read qù as "kwoo" and you have committed two bugs in one syllable.

After n and l the dots stay, because nu and lu exist with a plain u: 路 lù (road) and 绿 lǜ (green) are different words. That is the only place you need to write them.

Bug 5: the vowels that look familiar

• e alone is not the e of bed. Pitch Perfect Pinyin compares it to the uh in duh, with unrounded lips: 热 rè (hot).
• e in ie and üe is the e of yes: 谢谢 xièxie, 学 xué (to study).
• ian sounds like the English word yen, not "ee-ann": the an changes after i.
• an on its own has the a of father: pinyin fan sounds closer to English fine than to fan.
• o after b, p and m carries a hidden u: bo is said "bwo", mo "mwo".
• ou is like the o of go: 口 kǒu (mouth).
• ong needs rounded lips; it is not the ong of English long.
• er is a single vowel with the tongue curled back: 二 èr (two), 儿 ér (child).

Spelling rules: y, w, missing letters and the apostrophe

A few rules from the 1958 Scheme explain spellings that otherwise look random.

1. A syllable may not begin with i, u or ü on paper. Write yi, wu and yu instead, and use y or w at the start of longer finals: ya, ye, yao, wo, wa, yue, yuan. So the syllable for one is yī, and the w of 我 wǒ stands for u.
2. Three finals lose a letter after a consonant: iou becomes iu, uei becomes ui and uen becomes un. You still say the missing vowel lightly: 六 liù (six) is li-o-u, and the Scheme's own examples are niu, gui and lun.
3. When a syllable starting with a, o or e follows another syllable and the boundary could be misread, an apostrophe separates them. The Scheme's example is pí'ǎo (a fur-lined jacket), which would otherwise read as piao.

Back to Xi'an: the fix

Now debug the city's name step by step. The apostrophe tells you there are two syllables, so this is not the one-syllable word xiān. The first syllable is x plus i: a flat-tongued "shee" with spread lips, high and level. The second is ān: the a of father, then n, also high and level. Put them together: 西安 Xī'ān, "Shee-ahn", both syllables high, and the name means "western peace". "Zye-an" fails at bugs 1 and 3 together, reading x as z and i as eye; "Ex-ee-an" fails at bug 1 alone.

The point: almost every pinyin mistake is an English habit carried over. Fix the letter values of x, q, c, z and zh, add the puff of air to p, t, k, q, ch and c, and give the i after zh, ch, sh, r, z, c and s its buzz, and most of your accent is gone.

Zhuyin: the same sounds in Taiwan's symbols

Zhuyin divides each syllable the same way pinyin does, into an initial and a final, but gives every sound its own symbol. Unicode's code chart lists the 37 basic Mandarin symbols with their names, which match the pinyin values below.

Zhuyin has no letter for the buzzing i of shì or zì: the consonant symbol stands alone. Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary writes 支持 (zhīchí, to support) as ㄓ ㄔˊ, two symbols and one tone mark. The y and w of pinyin also vanish, because they were only spelling devices: 我 wǒ is ㄨㄛˇ, 你 nǐ is ㄋㄧˇ, 去 qù is ㄑㄩˋ and 是 shì is ㄕˋ.

Characters to learn

Add 们 to a pronoun and it becomes plural: 我们 wǒmen (we, us), 你们 nǐmen (you, more than one person), 他们 tāmen (they) and 她们 tāmen (they, all women). The 们 is neutral in tone.

他 and 她 are pronounced exactly the same. Wiktionary's entry on 她 explains that the character was originally a variant of 姐 and was repurposed as a written "she" in the 1910s, a change credited to the linguist Liu Bannong, by swapping the person part of 他 for 女. Spoken Mandarin still makes no difference. In Taiwan and Hong Kong you may also see 妳, an older written form of nǐ used when the "you" is a woman; it is rare in simplified writing.

Dialogue: who is going? (written for this course)

Two friends, 小文 (Xiǎo Wén) and 大马 (Dà Mǎ), are deciding who will go. Every character here is one you know. 吗 at the end turns a statement into a yes-or-no question, which Lesson 6 explains fully.

Read the dialogue aloud and listen to the third line. Tā qù ma could mean "Is he going?" as easily as "Is she going?" Only the written 她 settles it.

Listening: initials, finals and real words

1. Open Pitch Perfect Pinyin's Unit 4 (j, q, x), Unit 7 (zh, ch, sh) and Unit 9 (z, c, s). Play jī qī xī, then zhī chī shī, then zī cī sī, and repeat each set until you can hear three different tongue positions. Its Unit 12 plays near-identical pairs such as jīqì (machine) and zhìqì (ambition); play the first ten pairs.
2. On Wiktionary, play 七, 吃 and 次 (qī, chī, cì); then 西, 是 and 四 (xī, shì, sì). On the 吃 page, play the first Mandarin recording.
3. Dictation: play 去, 綠, 魚, 學, 熱 and 日 without looking at the spelling on the page, and write each in pinyin with its tone mark. Answers: qù, lǜ, yú, xué, rè, rì.
4. Place names: play 北京 and 青島. Answers: Běijīng, with j as in jeep; Qīngdǎo, with q as in cheese. Then play 我們 and 他們 and notice how light the men is.

Speaking: pairs that must not merge

Alone: with a strip of paper in front of your mouth, say these pairs and watch the paper: bā pā, dā tā, gē kē, jī qī, zhī chī, zī cī. Then record these sets and compare them with the Pitch Perfect Pinyin recordings: jī zhī zī, qī chī cī, xī shī sī, lù lǜ, nǐ nǚ. Finally, read the dialogue aloud twice, once slowly with every tone exaggerated and once at speaking speed.

With a partner: take turns choosing one syllable from each set above and saying it; your partner writes the pinyin. Score a point for every correct spelling, tone mark included. Then perform the dialogue, swapping roles.

Character writing: seven characters

Write each character six times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 我 7, 你 7, 他 5, 她 6, 们 5, 是 9, 去 5. Three need care. 我 begins with the short left-falling stroke at the top left, and its long hooked stroke comes fifth, before the final left-falling stroke and dot. 是 is written 日 first, then the long horizontal under it, then the strokes of the lower part from left to right. In 你, 他 and 们, the standing-person part 亻 is written first, left to right as always.

Check each one animated in 汉典 (zdic.net), under 笔顺, changing the character in the address or the search box. For the traditional 們, use the Taiwan Ministry of Education's 國語小字典. Then write the five lines of the dialogue once, from memory, and check them against the table.

Common misconceptions

• "Pinyin x is the x of box or the z of xylophone." It is close to the sh of she said with spread lips: 西 xī.
• "Mandarin b and p differ the way English b and p do." The difference is a puff of air. Mandarin b sounds like the p of speed; p has a strong puff.
• "The i of shì and sì is an ee sound." After zh, ch, sh, r, z, c and s, the i is a buzz that continues the consonant. shì does not rhyme with English she.
• "qu sounds like the qu of quick." Pinyin q is close to the ch of cheese, and the u after it is really ü: 去 qù.
• "他 and 她 are pronounced differently." Both are tā. The difference exists only in writing and dates from the 1910s.

What you now know

A Mandarin syllable is an initial plus a final, carried by a tone. Pinyin uses Latin letters with Mandarin values: x is close to a spread-lipped sh, q to ch, c to ts, z to ds, and zh is a curled-tongue j. Six pairs of initials, b and p, d and t, g and k, j and q, zh and ch, z and c, differ by a puff of air, not by voicing. The letter i is ee after most initials but a buzz after zh, ch, sh, r and after z, c, s. ü drops its dots after j, q, x and y, and keeps them after n and l. Spelling rules add y and w at the start of syllables, shorten iou, uei and uen to iu, ui and un, and use an apostrophe in words like Xī'ān. Zhuyin writes the same sounds with 37 symbols and drops pinyin's spelling devices. You can now say and write 我, 你, 他, 她, 们, 是 and 去. Lesson 4 shows what happens to tones when syllables run together in real speech.

Sources

1. Teng, W.-H. (n.d.). Pitch Perfect Pinyin: Units 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 [pronunciation tips and recordings]. Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
2. National People's Congress. (1958). 汉语拼音方案 [Scheme for the Chinese phonetic alphabet], sections on finals, ü, y and w, and the syllable-dividing mark. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
3. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor [inscribed 1987]. whc.unesco.org
4. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Bopomofo: Range 3100-312F [code chart with character names]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. unicode.org
5. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 國語辭典簡編本 [Concise Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 謝謝, with linked entry 支持 [search the site for 謝謝]. dict.concised.moe.edu.tw
6. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 她; 妳 [Glyph origin and usage notes]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
7. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 七; 吃; 次; 西; 是; 四; 去; 綠; 魚; 學; 熱; 日; 北京; 青島; 我們; 他們 [Entries with Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

A recording that disagrees with its label

Open Wiktionary's entry for 你好 and play the Mandarin recording. The audio file is named "Zh nǐ hǎo", two third tones, exactly as the dictionary spells it. Listen closely to the first syllable, though. It does not dip. It rises, like a second tone: ní hǎo. The speaker is not careless, and the file is not mislabelled. Almost every speaker of Mandarin says 你好 this way.

That is this lesson's problem. The tones you learned in Lesson 2 are the tones of syllables said one at a time. When syllables run together in speech, a few of them change, by regular rules that native speakers follow without thinking. Three rules cover nearly everything a first-year student meets: one for the third tone, one for 不 (not) and one for 一 (one). Linguists call such changes tone sandhi, from a Sanskrit word for "joining". You do not need the term to use the rules, but you will see it in dictionaries and on Wiktionary.

Rule 1: two third tones in a row

When a third tone is followed by another third tone, the first one is said as a second tone. MIT's phonology course writes it as a formula: 214 becomes 35 before 214. Pitch Perfect Pinyin, the University of Texas course, puts it in words: "Two third tones are normally not pronounced in a row." Its examples are the same greeting, nǐ hǎo, and suǒyǐ (so, therefore).

Why does Mandarin do this? Say two full 214 dips back to back and you will feel the problem: your voice has to dip, climb, plunge and climb again inside two syllables. Raising the first one smooths the line. Notice that the second syllable keeps its third tone, and if it ends a phrase it can keep the full dip and climb.

What matters here: two third tones in a row become second plus third. The first one rises; the last one stays low.

Rule 2: the half third tone

Lesson 2 introduced the half third tone. Here is where it lives. Before any tone other than a third tone, including the neutral tone, a third tone is normally said low, 21, without the climb. Pitch Perfect Pinyin notes that when a third tone opens a two-syllable word, the half form is nearly always used.

• Before a first tone: 北京 Běijīng, low then high.
• Before a second tone: 女儿 nǚ'ér (daughter), low then rising.
• Before a fourth tone: 很大 hěn dà (very big), low then a fall from the top.
• Before a neutral tone: 我们 wǒmen, low then a short, rather high syllable.

A useful way to think about it: the low part is the third tone's identity, and the climb is only an ending it adds when nothing follows. Pronounce the third tone low and short in the middle of a phrase, and you will sound more natural than a learner who carefully performs every dip.

Chains of third tones

Some phrases contain three or four third tones in a row. Pitch Perfect Pinyin's example is the name of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, 马友友, written Mǎ Yǒuyǒu with three third tones. Said in the Western order, Yǒuyǒu Mǎ, it is normally said Yóuyóu Mǎ, two rises and a final third tone. Said in the Chinese order, surname first, it is normally Mǎ Yóuyǒu: the surname stays a low third tone and only the first yǒu of the given name changes. The rule is the same; what changed is how the words group. Speakers apply rule 1 inside each group of words that belong together, and a slight pause between groups resets it.

So when you meet 我也很好 (wǒ yě hěn hǎo, I'm fine too), four third tones in a row, apply the rule group by group. The AllSet Chinese Pronunciation Wiki states the principle simply: in each group, the last third tone stays a third tone and the ones before it rise, and in natural speech a long string is broken into groups by small pauses. With a tiny break after 我, the sentence comes out wǒ yé hén hǎo; rushed together as one group, wó yé hén hǎo. Both are normal. Keep the changed syllables short and the last third tone low, and listeners will hear nothing wrong.

Rule 3: 不 (not) becomes bú before a fourth tone

不 is normally a fourth tone, bù. Before another fourth tone it becomes a second tone, bú, for the same reason as rule 1: two sharp falls in a row are hard to say. Before a first, second or third tone, and at the end of a phrase, it stays bù. Pitch Perfect Pinyin's examples are bù shuō (not say), bù néng (cannot), bù gǎn (not dare) and bú yào (do not want).

One more change: inside some set phrases 不 goes light and loses its tone altogether. 对不起 (sorry) is said duìbuqǐ, and in a question built as "is or is not", 是不是 (shì bu shì), the 不 in the middle may also turn neutral. Lesson 20 returns to those questions.

Rule 4: 一 (one) changes to fit its neighbour

一 has three spoken tones, and which one you use depends on what follows.

• yī, its own first tone, when it stands alone, when you count (一, 二, 三), at the end of a word, and in ordinal numbers such as 第一 dì-yī (first).
• yì, fourth tone, before a first, second or third tone: 一天 yì tiān (one day), 一般 yìbān (ordinary), 一直 yìzhí (straight on), 一起 yìqǐ (together).
• yí, second tone, before a fourth tone: 一样 yíyàng (the same), 一定 yídìng (certainly), and 一个 yí ge (one of something), where 个 is a fourth tone often said lightly.

Between a repeated verb, as in 看一看 (kàn yi kàn, take a look), 一 may become neutral too. The numbers 七 qī (seven) and 八 bā (eight) once changed in a similar way, but for most speakers today they stay first tone, so you can leave them alone.

What matters here: 不 is bú before a fourth tone and bù elsewhere; 一 is yí before a fourth tone, yì before the other tones, and yī when it counts, ends a word or names a place in order.

What pinyin writes and what you say

Dictionaries usually write each syllable's own tone and leave the changes to you. Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary, for example, writes a proverb that contains 一場 as yī cháng, although every speaker says yì cháng, and it writes 你 and 好 side by side as nǐ hǎo. Teaching materials differ on the 不 and 一 changes. Pitch Perfect Pinyin writes the third-tone change unmarked, nǐ hǎo, but marks the changes of 不 and 一 as they are said: bú yào, yí ge. Wiktionary's recordings are named the same way: its files include zh-búcuò and zh-yíyàng.

This course follows that common practice. Third tones are written as dictionary third tones, and you apply rules 1 and 2 as you speak. 不 and 一 are written with the tone you actually say, so 不是 appears as bú shì and 一个 as yí ge. When you look a word up in a dictionary, expect to see bù and yī instead.

Characters to learn

Together these build some of the most useful words you will learn this year. 客气 kèqi means polite or standing on ceremony, so 不客气 bú kèqi, "don't be polite", is the everyday reply to thanks: you're welcome. 对不起 duìbuqǐ, sorry, is literally "not able to face" someone. 一起 yìqǐ means together. 天气 tiānqì, sky air, means weather. 都 and 也 always come before the verb or adjective they belong to, never at the end of the sentence the way English "too" does: 我也去 (I'm going too), 他们都去 (they're all going).

Dialogue: fine, thanks, and you? (written for this course)

小文 and 大马 meet again. Under each line, the pinyin shows the tones as they are actually said, so you can see every rule from this lesson at work.

Check the changes line by line. Ní hǎo: rule 1. Wǒ hén hǎo: a small break after 我, then 很好 follows rule 1. Nǐ yé hǎo: 也好 follows rule 1, and 你 stays low. Wǒ yé hén hǎo: the chain, grouped after 我. Tiānqì hén hǎo: rule 1 again. Yìqǐ and bú qù: rules 4 and 3. Strictly, 不客气 answers thanks; 大马 uses it loosely here, as people do, to mean "no worries". In Lesson 5 you will learn the proper reply to an apology, 没关系.

Listening: hear the changes

1. Third tones in pairs. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 你好, 可以, 水果, 老虎, 洗澡 and 展覽 (zhǎnlǎn, exhibition). In each, which syllable rises? Answer: the first; the second stays low.
2. Three kinds of 不. Play 不 on its own, then 不錯 (not bad), 不用 (no need) and 對不起. Write the tone of 不 in each. Answers: bù; bú, because cuò is a fourth tone; bú, because yòng is a fourth tone; neutral in duìbuqǐ.
3. Three kinds of 一. Play 一, 一起, 一般, 一直, 一樣 and 一定, and sort them by the tone of 一. Answers: yī alone; yì in yìqǐ, yìbān and yìzhí; yí in yíyàng and yídìng.
4. Pitch Perfect Pinyin's Unit 11 plays every pair of tones in real words. Play its row of 3+3 words, from xǐzǎo to bǎoshǒu, and say each one after the speaker. Then play its 3+neutral row, which includes wǒmen and jiějie, and listen for the short, rather high second syllable.
5. Single words from this lesson: 很, 也, 都 and 天氣. On the 都 page, play the dōu recording.

Speaking: phrases, not syllables

Alone: record each phrase, then compare with the recordings: 你好, 很好, 可以, 不是, 不对, 不客气, 对不起, 一天, 一起, 一个, 一样, 第一. Then record the dialogue twice. In the second recording, speed up and listen for whether your third tones are getting shorter and lower; they should.

With a partner: one of you reads a phrase from the list using only the dictionary tones, robot-style; the other says it the way a speaker would. Swap after six phrases. Finally, perform the dialogue, then change it: replace 天气很好 with 天气不好 (the weather's bad) and 我不去 with 我也去 (I'm going too), and adjust the tones of 不 as you go.

Character writing: nine characters

Write each character six times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 不 4, 很 9, 也 3, 都 10, 对 5, 天 4, 客 9, 气 4, 起 10. Watch three details. 也 is only three strokes, and its middle stroke is a long hooked turn. In 客, the roof 宀 comes first and is wide enough to cover everything beneath it. In 起, the long final stroke of 走 runs under the right-hand part and is written last, after 己.

See each one animated on 汉典 (zdic.net), under 笔顺. For the traditional forms 對 and 氣, use Taiwan's 國語小字典 and write each twice. Then write the six lines of the dialogue from memory and check them.

Common misconceptions

• "Tone changes are a regional accent, so I can skip them." The third-tone change and the changes of 不 and 一 are part of standard Mandarin everywhere. Skipping them makes your speech sound mechanical and can be hard to follow.
• "If two third tones meet, both become second tones." Only the first changes. The last third tone in the group stays low.
• "不 is always bù." Before a fourth tone it is bú: 不是 bú shì, 不客气 bú kèqi. In 对不起 it is neutral.
• "The pinyin in a dictionary is how you should say the word." Dictionaries usually write each syllable's own tone. You apply the changes when you speak.
• "也 and 都 go at the end, like English too." They go before the verb or adjective: 我也很好, not 我很好也.

Putting it together

Tones adjust when syllables meet. Two third tones in a row become second plus third: 你好 is said ní hǎo. Before any other tone, a third tone is usually just low, without the climb. In chains of third tones, apply the rule group by group, as in Mǎ Yóuyǒu. 不 is bù, except before a fourth tone, where it is bú, and in set phrases such as duìbuqǐ, where it is light. 一 is yī when it counts, ends a word or is an ordinal; yì before first, second and third tones; and yí before a fourth tone. Dictionaries usually write the original tones; this course writes 不 and 一 as they are said and leaves third-tone changes to you. With 不, 很, 也, 都, 对, 天, 客, 气 and 起 you can now say how you are, say sorry, say you're welcome and talk about the weather. Lesson 5 puts all of it to work in greetings, names and the forms of address that go with them.

Sources

1. Teng, W.-H. (n.d.). Pitch Perfect Pinyin: Basic information [Unit 0: tone changes, 一 and 不] and Unit 11 [tone-pair review with recordings]. Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
2. Kenstowicz, M. (2010). Tone 2: Asian languages [Lecture 16 notes: Mandarin third-tone sandhi, 214 to 35 before 214]. 24.901 Language and Its Structure I: Phonology. MIT OpenCourseWare. ocw.mit.edu
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Standard Chinese phonology: Tone sandhi [background on 一, 不, 七 and 八]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Tone changes for third tones. Chinese Pronunciation Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
5. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 重編國語辭典修訂本 [Revised Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 一場官司一場火，任你好漢沒處躲 [base tones written in pinyin and zhuyin; search the site for the proverb]. dict.revised.moe.edu.tw
6. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 你好; 可以; 水果; 老虎; 洗澡; 展覽; 不; 不錯; 不用; 對不起; 一; 一起; 一般; 一直; 一樣; 一定; 很; 也; 都; 天氣 [Entries with Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
7. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 都; 起 [Character entries: stroke counts and stroke-order animations]. zdic.net
8. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 國語小字典 [Mandarin mini dictionary], entries 都, 對 and 氣 [Taiwan stroke counts and stroke order]. dict.mini.moe.edu.tw

Seven forty on a Monday in Taipei

At 7:40 on a Monday morning in September, Maya Chen walks through the gate of a high school in Taipei for the first day of a year-long Mandarin programme. She is fifteen, from Vancouver, and her grandparents speak Cantonese at home. She can understand a little of what they say, but she has never read a Chinese sentence. This lesson follows her through her first morning, a story written for this course, and stops at every place where she has to choose the right words.

The first choice comes at the classroom door. A man of about fifty is standing there with a class list. Maya has two ways to say hello. 你好 (nǐ hǎo), from Lesson 4, is the everyday greeting. 您好 (nín hǎo) uses 您, the polite form of "you", and is what you say to a teacher, an older stranger or a customer. She says 您好, and he smiles and answers 你好: he can use the everyday form to a student, but she should not use it to him.

Hello to one person, to many and to a teacher

The pattern behind 你好 is simple: a person or group, then 好 (good). Change the first part and you have a new greeting.

The 您 in 您好 is a different character from 你: it adds 心 (heart) underneath, and the Unicode database's definition of it is simply "honorific for 'you'". There is no polite form of "you" for a group in everyday speech; 你们 serves for everyone.

The core of it: greet one person with 你好, a group with 你们好, and a teacher or older adult with 您好 or 老师好.

What is your name? Two ways to ask

The teacher, whose name is Mr. Li, asks Maya the everyday question: 你叫什么名字？ (Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi?, What is your name?, literally "You are called what name?"). She answers 我叫陈美雅 (Wǒ jiào Chén Měiyǎ, My name is Chen Meiya), the Chinese name her grandmother gave her. Notice two things. The question word 什么 (shénme, what) sits exactly where the answer goes, so the answer is the question with the name dropped in; Lesson 20 shows that this is how every Chinese question word works. And 名字 is said míngzi in mainland China, with a light second syllable, and míngzì in Taiwan, where Wiktionary records míngzì as the standard reading.

A more formal question asks only for the surname: 您贵姓？ (Nín guìxìng?, May I ask your surname?, literally "your honourable surname?"). The reply drops the honour: 我姓陈 (Wǒ xìng Chén, My surname is Chen). Wiktionary's usage note for 贵姓 is blunt about this: it is used in questions and is not appropriate in a reply. Saying 我贵姓陈 would be like answering "What is your honourable name?" with "My honourable name is Chen." Its example adds a polite flourish, 免贵 (miǎn guì, "no need for honour"), before the surname.

The verbs differ too. 叫 (jiào, to be called) takes the full name or the given name: 我叫美雅 or 我叫陈美雅. 姓 (xìng, to be surnamed) is both a verb and a noun, and takes only the surname: 我姓陈.

Surname first, and the most common surnames

A Chinese name puts the surname first and the given name after it. In 陈美雅, 陈 is the surname and 美雅 the given name. The cellist known in English as Yo-Yo Ma is 马友友, Mǎ Yǒuyǒu, in Chinese order. Most surnames are one character and most given names are one or two, so most full names are two or three characters long.

A small number of surnames cover a large share of people. In February 2021 China's Ministry of Public Security reported that the five most common surnames by registered population in 2020 were 王 (Wáng), 李 (Lǐ), 张 (Zhāng), 刘 (Liú) and 陈 (Chén), together 30.8 percent of the registered population. Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior counted names as of 30 June 2023 and found a different order: 陳, 林 (Lín), 黃 (Huáng), 張 and 李 lead its list, and the ten most common surnames covered 52.79 percent of Taiwan's 23.37 million people. 陳 alone accounted for 11.21 percent.

Maya's surname shows why one surname can have many spellings in English. 陈 (traditional 陳) is Chén in pinyin. Her grandparents' Cantonese reading gives the Hong Kong spelling Chan, which is why her passport says Chan. In Hokkien and Teochew it is read Tan, the usual spelling in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and in Vietnamese it is Trần. All of these are the same written surname.

Titles go after the name

In English a title comes first: Mr. Li, Ms. Zhang, Teacher Wang. In Chinese it comes after the surname: 李先生 (Lǐ xiānsheng, Mr. Li), 张女士 (Zhāng nǚshì, Ms. Zhang), 王老师 (Wáng lǎoshī, Teacher Wang). A title can also stand alone when you speak to someone: students address a teacher simply as 老师, and in Wiktionary's definition 老师 is both "teacher" and "a term of address for a teacher".

小姐 needs care. Wiktionary's usage note explains that in mainland China the word picked up a slang meaning, so it is now used less as a polite "Miss" there; people use 女士 as a title instead, and call a waiter or waitress 服务员 (fúwùyuán). The note adds that the plain meaning survives in set phrases and is starting to return. If in doubt, 女士 is always safe.

The core of it: surname first, title after, and 贵 only when you ask about someone else.

For adults whose names you do not know, Mandarin borrows family words. Wiktionary lists 阿姨 (āyí, auntie) as a form of address for any woman around your mother's age and 叔叔 (shūshu, uncle) for a man around your father's age. A teenager meeting a friend's parents, or asking a shopkeeper for help, will often use them, and they sound warm rather than overfamiliar.

Thank you, sorry, excuse me, goodbye

By the end of the morning Maya has used every phrase in this table.

Two details. 请问 starts a question to a stranger, the way "excuse me" does in English; it is not an apology, which is 对不起. And 拜拜 is a loanword from English "bye-bye". Wiktionary gives báibái as the standard mainland pronunciation and bàibai as the standard in Taiwan: one more small difference between the standards.

Characters to learn

Eighteen characters is a long list, so look for the patterns. 谢 and 请 both have the speech radical 讠, the simplified form of 言 (words), on the left. The Shuowen Jiezi, the dictionary of about 100 CE you met in Lesson 2, explains three of the others. 问 is 口 (mouth) with 门 (door, mén) giving the sound. 姓 is 女 plus 生 (to be born), "that from which a person is born", with 生 also giving the sound. And 名 is 口 plus 夕 (evening): in the dark, it says, people cannot see each other, so they name themselves with their mouths. Whether or not that is how the character really arose, it is a memorable picture. 先生 is literally "born first", an elder, and 老师 is an "old master".

Dialogue: the first morning (written for this course)

A few characters here are not on your list yet: 这 (zhè, this), 的 (de, the possessive ending, as in 我的, my), 美雅, and 没关系. Read them from the pinyin; you will learn 这 and 的 in Module 5. Notice that 叫 is used two ways: 你叫什么名字 (what are you called?) and 你叫我李老师 (you call me Teacher Li).

Listening: greetings and names

1. Play the Wiktionary recordings of 您, 老師, 先生, 女士, 小姐, 同學, 阿姨 and 叔叔. For each, write the tones you hear. Answers: nín (2); lǎoshī (3, 1); xiānsheng (1, light); nǚshì (3, 4); xiǎojiě (3, 3, said xiáojiě); tóngxué (2, 2); āyí (1, 2); shūshu (1, light).
2. Play 謝謝, 沒關係, 請問 and 再見, and repeat each three times. Which one ends in a light, toneless syllable? Answer: xièxie, and guānxi in méi guānxi.
3. Names: play 叫, 姓, 貴姓, 名字 and 什麼, then the surnames 王 and 李. On the 陳 page (陳), find the pronunciation table and look for the Cantonese and Hokkien readings that give the spellings Chan and Tan.
4. Watch "Hello", the first episode of Legit Mando from TaiwanPlus, the international service run since 2022 by Taiwan's Public Television Service. It is free to watch on the TaiwanPlus site with no account; the same episode is on TaiwanPlus's YouTube channel, which you can also watch without signing in. Its published chapter list says the hosts teach 你好 from 0:11 and show how to write 你好 from 4:22. At 4:22, write 你好 along with them and compare their stroke order with Lesson 3's. The series uses traditional characters, as Taiwan does.

Speaking: two introductions

Alone: record two introductions. The first is to a teacher: 老师，您好！我叫... 请问，您贵姓？ The second is to a classmate: 你好！我叫... 你叫什么名字？ Then record yourself saying thank you, sorry and goodbye, each with its usual reply. Listen back for your tones in 谢谢 (the second syllable light), 没关系 (light at the end) and 不客气 (bú, rising).

With a partner: act out the first-morning dialogue, then change it. One of you is a new teacher with a surname from the most-common list; the other asks the surname with 您贵姓 and must answer questions with 我姓 or 我叫. Finally, take turns naming a person (a teacher called Wang, a man called Li, a woman called Zhang, a classmate) while the other gives the correct title in Chinese order: 王老师, 李先生, 张女士, 同学.

Character writing: eighteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Group them to make it easier: names (叫 姓 名 字), the question 什么, people (老 师 先 生 您), greetings (再 见 谢 请 问) and surnames (王 李). Stroke counts: 叫 5, 姓 8, 名 6, 字 6, 什 4, 么 3, 老 6, 师 6, 先 6, 生 5, 再 6, 见 4, 谢 12, 您 11, 王 4, 李 7, 请 10, 问 6. In 问, write the door 门 first, then the 口 inside it. In 您, write 你 on top, then the 心 underneath, which takes four strokes.

Check the stroke order animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown here for 谢) and, for the traditional forms 麼, 師, 見, 謝, 請 and 問, on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown here for 請). Finally, write your own name in Chinese if you have one, surname first, or write 王小文 and 李老师 if you do not.

Common misconceptions

• "Chinese names are written given name first, like English names." The surname comes first: in 王小文, Wang is the surname.
• "I can use 贵 to talk about my own surname." 贵 is an honour you give the other person. Ask 您贵姓? and answer 我姓...
• "Titles go in front of the name, as in English." They follow the surname: 李先生, 王老师.
• "小姐 is the safe word for any young woman everywhere." In mainland China it acquired a slang meaning; 女士 is the safe title and 服务员 is how you call a server.
• "Chen, Chan and Tan are different surnames." They can all be the same written surname, 陈 (陳), read in Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien.

Where this leaves us

You can now greet one person, a group or a teacher with 你好, 你们好, 您好 and 老师好, and leave with 再见 or 拜拜. You can thank people and answer thanks (谢谢, 不客气), apologise and accept an apology (对不起, 没关系), and open a question politely with 请问. You can ask names in two registers, 你叫什么名字 and 您贵姓, and answer with 我叫 and 我姓, never with 贵. Chinese names put the surname first, a handful of surnames cover a large share of people in both mainland China and Taiwan, and titles such as 老师, 先生 and 女士 follow the surname. Every sentence you said today had a "to be called" or "to be surnamed" verb in it. Lesson 6 adds the most important verb of all, 是 (to be), and the question word 吗.

Sources

1. The Paper. (2021, February 8). 公安部公布2020年百家姓排名：王李张刘陈依旧名列前五 [Ministry of Public Security publishes the 2020 surname ranking]. thepaper.cn
2. Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan. (2023). 112年全國姓名統計分析 [National name statistics analysis, data as of 30 June 2023], section 3, ten most common surnames. ris.gov.tw
3. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 小姐; 貴姓; 阿姨; 叔叔; 老師; 名字; 拜拜 [Definitions and usage notes]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chen (surname) [background on the romanizations Chen, Chan, Tan and Trần]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Xu, S. (c. 100 CE). 說文解字 [Shuowen Jiezi], chapter 12, entry 姓; chapter 2, entries 問 and 名. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
6. TaiwanPlus. (2021). Legit Mando, season 1, episode 1: Hello [Video and chapter list]. Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). TaiwanPlus [background on its launch in 2021 and management by the Public Television Service from June 2022]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). Character entries for the lesson's characters [stroke counts, radicals and stroke-order animations]. zdic.net
9. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unihan database, entry U+60A8 您 [kDefinition: honorific for 'you']. unicode.org

A treaty, a long name and a short one

On 3 July 1844, at the Kun Iam Temple in Macau, the American envoy Caleb Cushing and the Qing official Keying signed the first treaty between the United States and China, the Treaty of Wangxia. Its Chinese text needed a name for the United States and built one from sounds: 亞美理駕洲大合眾國, an attempt at "United States of America". Wiktionary records the short form 美國, today written 美国 (Měiguó) in simplified characters, in print by 1854. The 美 is there for its sound, the "me" of America.

美 also means beautiful, and that coincidence has persuaded generations of people that Chinese calls America "the beautiful country". Wiktionary calls this a false etymology. England got the same treatment: 英国 (Yīngguó), the United Kingdom, is contracted from 英吉利, a sound-based name for England, and 英 (flower, hero) was chosen for its sound, ying.

This lesson gives you the verb to use those names in a sentence. By the end you will say 我是美国人 (I am American) or whatever is true for you, ask other people where they are from, and answer their questions, one step at a time.

Step 1: A 是 B

The verb 是 (shì) links two nouns, the way "is" links "I" and "a student" in English. The AllSet Chinese Grammar Wiki gives the pattern as Noun 1 + 是 + Noun 2.

• 我是学生。 Wǒ shì xuésheng. I am a student.
• 她是老师。 Tā shì lǎoshī. She is a teacher.
• 李老师是我的老师。 Lǐ lǎoshī shì wǒ de lǎoshī. Teacher Li is my teacher.

Two things English speakers have to unlearn. First, 是 never changes form. There is no "am", "is", "are" or "were": 我是, 你是, 他们是, today and yesterday alike. Second, there is no "a" or "the". 学生 is "student", "a student", "the student" or "students", and context decides.

Step 2: negate it with 不

Put 不 directly before 是: 不是 (bú shì), with 不 rising because 是 is a fourth tone, as Lesson 4 showed.

• 我不是老师。 Wǒ bú shì lǎoshī. I am not a teacher.
• 他不是英国人。 Tā bú shì Yīngguó rén. He is not British.

Nothing else moves. Learners sometimes try 是不 or put the 不 at the front of the sentence; neither works, because 不 always sits right before the word it negates.

Step 3: make a yes-no question with 吗

Any statement becomes a yes-or-no question when you add 吗 (ma) at the end, with no change of word order. The AllSet wiki puts it simply: any statement can be converted into a yes-no question with 吗.

• 你是学生。 You are a student. → 你是学生吗？ Are you a student?
• 她是你的同学。 She is your classmate. → 她是你的同学吗？ Is she your classmate?

English moves the verb to the front ("Are you...?"). Chinese leaves everything where it is and adds one light syllable. Your voice does not need to rise at the end either; 吗 does that work.

Step 4: answer without "yes" or "no"

Mandarin has no single all-purpose word for yes or no. You answer by repeating the verb of the question, positive or negative. For a question with 是, that means 是 or 不是, usually followed by the full sentence:

• 你是学生吗？ 是，我是学生。 Yes, I am a student.
• 你是老师吗？ 不是，我不是老师。 No, I'm not a teacher.

You can also answer with 对 (duì, correct) or 不对 (bú duì, not correct). The AllSet wiki notes that 对 confirms whatever the question said, so to the negative question 你不是老师吗？ (aren't you a teacher?), 对 means "right, I'm not". Keep it simple for now: echo the verb.

In short: 是 links two nouns and never changes; 不是 negates it; 吗 at the end makes a yes-no question; and you answer by repeating the verb, 是 or 不是.

Step 5: add 也 and 都

Lesson 4 placed 也 (also) and 都 (all, both) before the verb. With 是 that gives:

• 我也是学生。 Wǒ yě shì xuésheng. I am a student too.
• 我们都是学生。 Wǒmen dōu shì xuésheng. We are all students.
• 他们都不是老师。 Tāmen dōu bú shì lǎoshī. None of them is a teacher.

The AllSet wiki stresses that 也 can never end a sentence. To say "me too", keep 是 as a stand-in for everything the other person said: A says 我是美国人, and B says 我也是 (Wǒ yě shì), "I am too". 我也 on its own is incomplete.

Step 6: turn the question around with 呢

After answering, you usually want to ask the same thing back. Add 呢 (ne) to the person or thing you are asking about: 你呢？ means "and you?". The AllSet wiki's example is the classic exchange 你好吗？ 我很好。你呢？

• 我是加拿大人，你呢？ Wǒ shì Jiānádà rén, nǐ ne? I'm Canadian. And you?
• 我是学生。你们呢？ I'm a student. What about you two?

呢 has a second use you will hear: said about someone who is missing, as in 你妈妈呢？, it means "where's your mom?".

Step 7: countries, cities and 人

A country name plus 人 (person) gives the word for its people. Ask with 哪 (nǎ, which): 你是哪国人？ (Nǐ shì nǎ guó rén?), "you are which-country person?".

The same pattern works for cities and regions, and people often answer that way: 北京人 (from Beijing), 台北人 (from Taipei), 纽约人 (Niǔyuē rén, a New Yorker). For ancestry rather than citizenship there is a separate word: 华人 (huárén), which Wiktionary defines as a person of Chinese descent or ethnicity. Maya, the Vancouver student from Lesson 5, can say 我是加拿大人 and also describe herself as 华人, and a Chinese Singaporean is 新加坡人 and 华人 at the same time. Lesson 25 returns to the word.

In short: country plus 人 names its people, 哪国人 asks for it, and 华人 describes Chinese ancestry wherever someone lives.

Step 8: meeting someone with 认识

认识 (rènshi) means to know a person, to be acquainted with them: 你认识他吗？ (Do you know him?). Its most useful phrase is the one you say on meeting someone: 很高兴认识你 (Hěn gāoxìng rènshi nǐ), "very glad to know you", which Wiktionary glosses as "Pleased to meet you". 高兴 (gāoxìng) is glad or happy, and 朋友 (péngyou) is friend.

Three of this lesson's words show the pattern you met with 名字 in Lesson 5. Wiktionary gives 认识 as rènshi in mainland China and rènshì as the Taiwan standard, and 朋友 as péngyou on the mainland and péngyǒu in Taiwan. In each of these words, Taiwan's standard keeps a full tone on a second syllable that mainland speech makes light, a pattern you will meet again. Both are correct; follow the one you hear most.

When 是 is the wrong verb

Now change one input. Try the procedure on "I am tall": 我是高。 It fails. The AllSet wiki is direct about this: 是 is not used to link adjectives to nouns, and 他是高 is a common learner mistake. Adjectives such as 高 (tall), 忙 (busy) and 好 (good) take a different structure, usually with 很: 他很高 (He is tall). That is the whole of Lesson 7, but remember the rule now: 是 joins two nouns, not a noun and an adjective.

Characters to learn

Look at the word families. 学 gives 学生 (student, "study-person") and 同学 (classmate, "same-study"). 中 and 国 give 中国, and 高 and 中 give 高中 (gāozhōng), senior high school. 呢, 哪 and 吗 all carry the mouth radical 口, which often marks a sound-based word. And 认 and 识 both carry the speech radical 讠, which you met in 谢 and 请.

The traditional forms here show how much simplification can change. 識 has 19 strokes and 识 has 7; 學 has 16 and 学 has 8. Yet the left-hand radical of 认 and 识 is still recognisably the speech radical, simplified from 言 to 讠.

Dialogue: where are you from? (written for this course)

At lunch on her first day, Maya meets two more students in the programme.

丹尼尔 (Dānní'ěr) is a sound-based Chinese version of Daniel, built the same way as 美国; notice the apostrophe from Lesson 3 before ěr. Count the steps of this lesson in the dialogue: A 是 B, a 吗 question, an answer that repeats 是, 也, 呢 and 都.

Listening: nationalities and introductions

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 中國, 美國 and 美國人. In 美國, does 美 dip and climb back, or stay low? Answer: it stays low, a half third tone, because guó follows. In 美國人 listen for the three syllables low, rising, rising.
2. Play 學生, 認識, 朋友 and 高興. Which three end in a light second syllable? Answer: xuésheng, rènshi and péngyou; gāoxìng keeps a full fourth tone.
3. Play the single words 國, 哪 and 呢, then say 你是哪国人？ and 你呢？ aloud, keeping 呢 light.
4. Pitch Perfect Pinyin's Unit 11 includes Zhōngguó (China) in its 1+2 row, Déguó (Germany) in its 2+2 row and Ménggǔ (Mongolia) in its 2+3 row. Play each, and note that only Zhōngguó starts high.

Speaking: an interview

Alone: record answers to these questions, in full sentences: 你叫什么名字？ 你是学生吗？ 你是老师吗？ 你是哪国人？ Then record yourself introducing two other people, real or imaginary: 他是我的朋友，他叫...，他是...人。

With a partner: interview each other with the four questions, then report to a third person or to your recorder: 她叫...，她是...人。她也是学生。 Finally, play "Is it true?": one of you makes a statement about a famous person (她是英国人); the other answers 是 or 不是 and corrects it with a full sentence.

Character writing: thirteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 国 8, 美 9, 英 8, 学 8, 同 6, 呢 8, 哪 9, 朋 8, 友 4, 认 4, 识 7, 高 10, 兴 6. In 国, write the frame's left side and its top and right side first, then 玉 inside, and close the frame with the bottom stroke last. In 英, the grass radical 艹 is three strokes in the mainland standard; Taiwan's standard writes it in four, which is why Taiwan counts 英 as nine strokes. 朋 is two copies of 月 side by side, the left one narrower.

Watch the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 识), and for the traditional forms 國, 學, 認, 識 and 興 on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 識). Then write five sentences about yourself and people you know with 是, 也, 都 and 不是.

Common misconceptions

• "美国 means 'beautiful country'." 美 was chosen for its sound, the "me" of America. Wiktionary calls the beautiful-country story a false etymology.
• "A question needs a change of word order, as in English." A yes-no question keeps the statement's order and adds 吗 at the end.
• "是 means 'yes' and 不是 means 'no' in every answer." They work as yes and no only when the question's verb is 是. Otherwise you repeat that question's verb.
• "也 can go at the end, like English too." 也 goes before the verb and never ends a sentence: 我也是, never 我是也.
• "是 is the Chinese for 'to be', so 我是高 means I am tall." 是 links nouns. With adjectives Chinese uses another structure, usually with 很: 我很高.

Summing up

The verb 是 links two nouns and never changes form: 我是学生. 不是 negates it, with 不 rising before the fourth tone of 是. Add 吗 to any statement to make a yes-no question, and answer by repeating the verb, 是 or 不是. 也 and 都 go after the subject and before 是, and 也 never ends a sentence, so "me too" is 我也是. 呢 turns a question back on the other person. A place name plus 人 names its people, 哪国人 asks for it, and 华人 refers to Chinese ancestry anywhere. 美国 and 英国 are sound-based names, whatever their characters seem to say. Lesson 7 deals with the sentences 是 cannot make: describing people and things with adjectives.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Connecting nouns with "shi"; Yes-no questions with "ma"; Questions with "ne"; The "also" adverb "ye"; The "all" adverb "dou"; Simple "noun + adjective" sentences. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 美國; 英國; 華人; 認識; 朋友; 高興 [Etymologies, definitions and Mainland and Taiwan standard readings]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Treaty of Wangxia [background: signed 3 July 1844 at the Kun Iam Temple, Macau]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Teng, W.-H. (n.d.). Pitch Perfect Pinyin: Unit 11 [tone-pair review with recordings]. Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
5. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 英; 识 [Character entries: mainland stroke counts and stroke-order animations]. zdic.net
6. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 國語小字典 [Mandarin mini dictionary], entries 英, 國, 學, 識 [Taiwan stroke counts and stroke order]. dict.mini.moe.edu.tw
7. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unihan database [radicals and traditional variants for the lesson's characters]. unicode.org

Two sentences with no verb "to be"

Episode 10 of Legit Mando, the Mandarin series from Taiwan's public broadcaster TaiwanPlus, teaches two sentences in its first minute, according to its published chapter list: 今天好熱 and 今天好冷, which its own English title renders as "It's so hot today!" and "It's so cold today!". 今天 (jīntiān) is today, 熱 (rè) is hot and 冷 (lěng) is cold. Look for the "is". There isn't one.

Now watch what an English speaker does with "Today is hot" after Lesson 6. Today is a noun, "is" is 是, hot is 热, so: 今天是热. Every word is right and the sentence is wrong. This lesson starts from that wrong sentence and a few of its relatives, works out exactly why each one fails, and ends with the handful of patterns that describe people, things and weather correctly.

Bug 1: putting 是 before an adjective

Lesson 6 ended with a warning: 是 links two nouns. The AllSet Chinese Grammar Wiki states that 是 is not used to link adjectives to nouns and lists 他是高 as a very common mistake. Wikipedia's survey of Chinese grammar explains why. Mandarin adjectives behave more like verbs than like English adjectives: 高 does not mean "tall" so much as "to be tall", so it needs no extra verb to make a sentence. Adding 是 gives the sentence two verbs where it needs one.

The fix is always the same. Remove 是 and put 很 in its place.

Bug 2: reading 很 as "very"

The fixed sentences contain 很 (hěn), which a dictionary translates as "very". So 我很忙 must mean "I'm very busy"? Usually it does not. Wiktionary's usage note gives the reason: Mandarin speakers have a strong tendency to avoid one-syllable terms, so 很 is added before one-syllable adjectives "without any actual meaning or emphasis". The AllSet wiki agrees that 很 is often "just a way to link a noun to an adjective". In 我很忙, 很 is closer to a spoken hyphen than to an intensifier, and the right translation is just "I'm busy".

When you really mean "very", say so with a word that carries weight. The AllSet wiki recommends 非常 (fēicháng, extremely): 他非常高, he is very tall. You can also stress 很 heavily in speech, but on paper 非常 is clearer.

Why this matters: 很 is the normal link between a subject and an adjective, not a sign of strong feeling. Leave it out of a plain statement and the sentence sounds bare; translate it as "very" every time and you will overstate everything you read.

Bug 3: using both, as in 她是很高

Some learners hedge their bets and keep both words: 她是很高. It is still wrong, for the same reason as bug 1: 是 cannot introduce an adjective, even one with 很 in front of it. Delete 是: 她很高 (Tā hěn gāo, she's tall). A useful test: if you could put 很 in front of the word, it is behaving like an adjective, and 是 has no place.

Bug 4: saying "not very" with 不很

To say "not busy", put 不 directly before the adjective, with no 很: 我不忙 (Wǒ bù máng). 不 negates the word right after it, as Wikipedia's grammar survey describes for verbs, and adjectives behave like verbs. To soften it to "not very", use 不太 (bú tài): 我不太忙, I'm not very busy. Wiktionary notes that 太 means "very" mostly in negative sentences, which is exactly this use. Notice the tone of 不 before 太: bú, because 太 is a fourth tone.

Look at the question column: in a 吗 question the bare adjective is normal, with no 很. Answer with 很 plus the adjective, or with 不 plus it: 你累吗？ 很累。/ 不累。 (Are you tired? Very. / No.)

Bug 5: forgetting the 了 after 太

太 (tài) means "too" or "so", and Wiktionary notes that it is often used with 了 (le) at the end of the sentence for emphasis. 太热了！ (Tài rè le!) is "It's way too hot!", and 太好了！ (Tài hǎo le!) is the all-purpose "Great!". Without the 了, 太热 sounds clipped and unfinished. Remember 太...了 as a frame, an exclamation with the adjective inside. Lesson 21 explains what this 了 is doing; for now, treat it as part of the pattern.

The finished toolkit: five ways to describe

真 (zhēn) means true or real, and Wiktionary also gives "really; truly; very" for it. 好 in 好热 is the same character as the 好 of 你好; here it works like English "so".

Words for people, things and weather

漂亮 is another word, like 认识 and 朋友 in Lesson 6, where Wiktionary gives a light second syllable on the mainland, piàoliang, and a full tone in Taiwan's standard, piàoliàng. 有意思 behaves like an adjective even though it is built from the verb 有 (to have) and 意思 (meaning): 中文很有意思, Chinese is very interesting.

Characters to learn

Several of these carry their meaning on their sleeve. 冷 has 冫, the two-stroke ice radical. 热 has 灬, the four dots that are the fire radical when it sits at the bottom of a character. 忙 has 忄, the form 心 (heart) takes on the left. And the two forms of love differ in a way people like to point out: traditional 愛 has 心 (heart) in its middle, while simplified 爱 replaces the lower half with 友 (friend). 非常 is literally "not ordinary", which is a good way to remember that it means extremely.

Dialogue: a hot afternoon (written for this course)

Find every adjective in the dialogue and say which pattern it uses. Notice the one 是 that remains: 他是我的好朋友的爸爸, which links two nouns, "he" and "my good friend's dad". 可是 (kěshì) means "but", 课 (kè) is a class, which you will learn to write in Lesson 17, and 真的吗 is "really?".

Listening: adjectives and exclamations

1. Watch episode 10 of Legit Mando, free on the TaiwanPlus site with no account, or on TaiwanPlus's YouTube channel. Its chapter list puts 今天好熱 and 今天好冷 at 0:11 and the hosts writing both sentences at 5:30. At 0:11, repeat each sentence after the hosts, copying their pitch on 好: in 好熱 it stays low, a half third tone, before the fourth tone of 熱. At 5:30, write the sentences with them; they use the traditional 熱, and you can compare it with 热.
2. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 忙, 冷, 熱, 高, 矮 and 帥, and write the tone number of each before you check. Answers: 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4. On the 冷 page, play the first Mandarin recording, lěng.
3. Play 漂亮, 可愛, 非常 and 有意思. Which one has a light final syllable? Answer: 漂亮, piàoliang, and the si of yǒuyìsi.
4. Play 太, 真, 很 and 愛, then say 太热了, 真冷, 很忙 and 我爱中文 aloud with the right tones.

Speaking: describe three people

Alone: choose three people you know or have seen, such as a friend, a teacher and a famous person. For each, record three sentences: one with 很, one with 不 or 不太, and one exclamation with 真, 好 or 太...了. Example: 她很高。她不太忙。她真漂亮！ Then describe today's weather the same way.

With a partner: take turns asking adjective questions with 吗 (你累吗？ 中文难吗？ 今天冷吗？) and answering with 很, 不 or 不太. Then play "Fix it": one of you says a sentence with a deliberate bug from this lesson (我是忙), and the other corrects it out loud (我很忙).

Character writing: twelve characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 太 4, 真 10, 忙 6, 累 11, 可 5, 爱 10, 漂 14, 亮 9, 非 8, 常 11, 冷 7, 热 10. In 太, the dot is written last, after 大. In 非, write the two vertical strokes in order from the left, each followed by its three short horizontals. In 热, the four dots of 灬 go from left to right along the bottom, after everything above them.

Use the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 爱), and for 愛 and 熱 use Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 愛). Then write the five-pattern table from memory with one example of your own for each row.

Common misconceptions

• "Every English 'is' becomes 是." 是 links nouns. With adjectives Mandarin needs no verb "to be": 我很忙, not 我是忙.
• "很 always means very." In a plain statement 很 is usually just the link, added because Mandarin avoids a bare one-syllable adjective. For real emphasis use 非常 or stress the word.
• "Not very busy is 不很忙." Use 不 alone for "not" (我不忙) and 不太 for "not very" (我不太忙).
• "太 means very, so 太热 means very hot." 太 means too or so, and it usually comes in the frame 太...了: 太热了.
• "In a question you also need 很." A 吗 question usually uses the bare adjective: 你忙吗？

What to remember

Mandarin adjectives work like verbs, so they never need 是. A plain description uses 很 as a link, usually without the meaning "very": 我很忙, 今天很热. For real emphasis use 非常; for exclamations use 真, 好 or the frame 太...了. Negate an adjective with 不 alone, soften it with 不太, and ask about it with the bare adjective plus 吗. With the twelve new characters you can talk about how people look and feel and what the weather is like. Module 3 now turns from speaking to the writing system itself, starting with the strokes and the rules for their order.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Simple "noun + adjective" sentences; Connecting nouns with "shi". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 很 [usage note]; 太; 真; 漂亮 [Definitions and Mainland and Taiwan standard readings]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese grammar: Adjectives; Negation [background on adjectival predicates and the copula]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. TaiwanPlus. (2021). "It's so hot/cold today!": Legit Mando, episode 10 [Video and published chapter list]. youtube.com
5. TaiwanPlus. (n.d.). Legit Mando, episode 10: It's so hot today! Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com
6. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 爱; 热 [Character entries: mainland stroke counts, components and stroke-order animations]. zdic.net
7. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unihan database [radicals and traditional variants for the lesson's characters]. unicode.org

A standard for 8,105 characters

On 1 March 2021 a new national standard took effect in mainland China. Its number is GF 0023-2020, its title is the Stroke Orders of the Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters, and it comes from the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission. It replaced a standard from 1997. For each character in China's 2013 table of standard characters, it gives the stroke order twice: stroke by stroke, and as a string of numbers. Taiwan has its own authority. The Ministry of Education's stroke-order website, 國字標準字體筆順學習網, animates the official order of every character in its standard and publishes seventeen basic rules for working it out.

Two governments maintain stroke-order standards for good reasons. Stroke order is part of how children are taught to write: Taiwan's curriculum asks pupils in grades 1 and 2 to learn the basic strokes and their order. Dictionaries count strokes by it. A character written in the right order also comes out balanced. In fast handwriting, strokes run into each other in ways that only make sense if the order is shared.

You learned the order of your first ten characters in Lesson 1 as a list. This lesson gives you the system behind it, so that you can work out the order of a new character yourself. You will write three characters step by step, then a fourth where the same rule gives a different answer.

Step 1: name the strokes

Every stroke belongs to one of a few types. Wikipedia's article on strokes lists the basic names, and you met most of them in Lesson 1.

The code column uses the mainland system of five stroke categories. Code 1 is for horizontals and rises, 2 for verticals, 3 for left-falling strokes, 4 for dots and right-falling strokes, and 5 for every stroke that turns. Strung together, these digits make the stroke-number form of stroke order that the 2021 standard uses. The online dictionary 汉典 (zdic.net) prints the same kind of code under the heading 笔顺 for every character.

Step 2: read a stroke code

A code is a recipe. The code for 木 (mù, tree) is 1234: horizontal, vertical, left-falling, then the right-falling stroke, which the code counts with the dots. The code for 日 (rì, sun) is 2511: the left vertical, the top and right side in one turning stroke, the middle horizontal, and the bottom horizontal that closes the box. And 心 (xīn, heart) is 4544: a dot, a long curving stroke with a hook, then two dots.

A code tells you the type and order of the strokes, not their exact shape or position, so always check it against an animation or a printed model. What it gives you is a way to check yourself without a teacher. If you wrote 日 as 2151, with the middle line before the frame was finished, the code shows you exactly where you went wrong.

Step 3: two characters side by side, 木 and 林

林 (lín, woods, grove) is two trees. Its code, 12341234, is simply 木 twice, and it shows the first and most basic rule: left before right. Taiwan's rule list puts this first, with 川, 仁, 街 and 湖 as its examples. Write the whole left-hand 木 before you start the right-hand one.

The shapes change, though, even when the code does not. The left 木 is squeezed narrower, and its last stroke shrinks from a long right-falling stroke to a short dot, so that it does not run into its neighbour. The right 木 keeps its full spread. This is why copying characters from a printed model matters even when you know the order: parts change shape according to where they sit.

Step 4: an enclosed character, 日 and then 田

A box gets three moves. First write the frame's left side, then its top and right side together. Then write whatever is inside, and finish with the bottom of the box, like closing a lid. Taiwan's rules call this writing the outside first and the inside next, with the bottom stroke that seals the opening written last; its examples are 日, 田, 回 and 國. The mainland codes agree. 日 is 2511, and 田 (tián, field) is 25121: frame left, frame top and right, the inner horizontal, the inner vertical, and the closing bottom stroke.

The same move works for 目 (mù, eye), 25111: frame left, frame top and right, two inner horizontals, closing bottom. And it explains 国 from Lesson 6, where the whole of 玉 goes inside the frame before the bottom stroke closes it.

Step 5: a middle that stands alone, 山 and 水

Some characters have a vertical stroke in the middle that does not cross anything. Taiwan's rule 6 says that such a vertical, on top or in the middle and not crossing other strokes, is written first, and it lists 上, 小, 山 and 水 as examples. The code for 山 (shān, mountain) is 252: the middle vertical first, then the left side with its turn along the bottom, then the short right vertical. The code for 水 (shuǐ, water) is 2534: the hooked middle vertical first, then the stroke on the left that turns, then the two strokes on the right. You met the same pattern in 小 in Lesson 1.

The changed input: 十 against 上

Now apply "horizontal before vertical", the rule you used for 十 in Lesson 1. 十 is 12: horizontal first, then the vertical that crosses it. Taiwan's rule 4 says horizontal goes first when a horizontal and a vertical cross, or meet with the horizontal on top. The character 上 (shàng, up), which you will write in Lesson 9, also has one vertical and some horizontals, so you might expect the horizontal first. But in 上 the vertical does not cross the long bottom stroke; it stands on it. That makes rule 6 apply instead, and 上 begins with the vertical: vertical, short horizontal, long horizontal. Two characters made of the same kinds of strokes, two different orders, because the strokes meet differently.

Bottom line: stroke order is not a list to memorise character by character. It follows from how the strokes meet, so check whether they cross, enclose, or stand apart before you choose a rule.

The rules, collected

Taiwan's Ministry of Education publishes seventeen rules; the most useful nine cover almost everything you will write this year, and the mainland standard follows the same principles.

1. Left before right: 林, 你, 好.
2. Top before bottom: 三, 字, 星.
3. Outside before inside, when a frame is open on one or two sides: 月, 问, 句.
4. Horizontal before vertical, when they cross or the horizontal is on top: 十, 木.
5. Left-falling before right-falling, when they cross or meet: 人, 大, 文.
6. A vertical that stands apart in the middle or on top comes first: 山, 水, 小, 上.
7. The bottom horizontal of a stack that a vertical touches often comes last: 王, 里.
8. A closed box: frame, inside, then the bottom stroke: 日, 田, 目, 国.
9. A dot on top or upper left comes first; a dot at the bottom, inside or upper right comes last: 文 begins with its dot; 我 ends near its dot.

Where the mainland and Taiwan standards differ

For the great majority of characters the two standards agree. A few differences are worth knowing, because they change stroke counts in dictionaries.

• The grass radical 艹. The mainland standard writes it in three strokes, and Taiwan's writes it in four. That is why 汉典 counts 英 as eight strokes and Taiwan's 國語小字典 as nine.
• The ear radical 阝. It is two strokes on the mainland and three in Taiwan, so 都 has 10 strokes in one count and 11 in the other, and 哪 has 9 and 10.
• The dot of 戈. In characters built on 戈, such as 我, the mainland code puts the dot last (我 is 3121534, ending in 4). Taiwan's rule 11 for characters with 戈 writes the horizontal first and finishes with the dot and then the left-falling stroke, so the dot comes second to last.

Neither standard is more correct; each is correct where it is taught. Follow one consistently, and use the matching dictionary: 汉典 for mainland forms, 國語小字典 for Taiwan's.

Pictures that became characters

Most of this lesson's characters began as drawings, which is part of why they are good for practising strokes. Wiktionary's entry for 日 describes it as a picture of the sun, with a dot or line added in the centre to tell it apart from 口. The Shuowen Jiezi of about 100 CE describes 木 as a sprout with its roots drawn underneath, 田 as the four sides of a field with the cross of paths between the plots, and 力 as a person's sinews. The characters 月 (moon), 山 (mountain), 水 (water), 火 (fire), 目 (eye), 心 (heart) and 手 (hand) have similar origins. Their Wiktionary entries show their ancient forms, which look far more like pictures than the modern ones.

Two characters show the next step: combining pictures. The character 林 is two trees, which the Shuowen defines as a stand of trees on level ground. The character 男 (nán, man) is 田 above 力, and the Shuowen explains it as a man using his strength in the fields. Be careful not to over-learn this. Pictographs like these are a small minority of characters, and their modern forms are so stylised that you could not guess most of them. Lesson 9 shows how the great majority of characters really work.

Characters to learn

All thirteen are the same in both scripts, and the codes are the mainland ones shown by 汉典. The characters 木 and 目 sound the same, mù, and differ only in writing, which is one reason Chinese needs characters at all. You already know two of them as parts: 日 in 是, and 心 in 您. Several of them also become radicals with new shapes on the left of a character, as Lesson 9 shows: 水 becomes 氵, 手 becomes 扌, 心 becomes 忄, and 火 becomes 灬 at the bottom.

Practice paper: the 田字格

A common kind of practice paper for characters is ruled into squares, each split into four by a dashed cross. Wiktionary defines its name, 田字格 (tiánzìgé), as a grid shaped like the character 田. The cross shows you where the centre of each square is. Use it to balance each character: the two trees of 林 meet at the vertical line, and the horizontal line runs through the middle of 日. Rule your own: draw squares about two centimetres wide, then a light dashed cross in each one.

Listening: thirteen characters, four tones

Play each character's Mandarin recording on Wiktionary and write its tone number before you check: 日, 月, 山, 水, 火, 林, 力, 男, 目, 心 and 手. Answers: 4, 4, 1, 3, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 1, 3. The 林 entry plays volunteer recordings from the Lingua Libre project; listen to both speakers. Then use the table below: which character on it sounds exactly like 目? Answer: 木, which is also mù.

For a writing demonstration, watch episode 2 of TaiwanPlus's Legit Mando on its TaiwanPlus page or YouTube channel. Its chapter list says the hosts show how to write 你, 我 and 他 from 4:45. Watch the end of 我 and compare the order of its last two strokes with the mainland order in this lesson.

Speaking: name the strokes as you write

Alone: write each character slowly while saying the stroke names aloud in Chinese: for 木, héng, shù, piě, nà. Then record yourself reading all thirteen characters with their tones. Finish with three words built from them: 山水 (shānshuǐ, landscape, literally mountains and water), 火山 (huǒshān, volcano, fire mountain) and 手心 (shǒuxīn, palm of the hand).

With a partner: one of you reads a stroke code aloud, such as 2511 or 252, and the other writes the character it describes; then swap. Codes for characters you have not learned yet make a good challenge: 4111251 is 言 (yán, speech), the full form of the speech radical 讠.

Character writing: thirteen characters

Write each character six times on your squared paper, following the code in the table and saying the character aloud. Check each one against the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 木) or on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 男); if the two ever disagree, follow the one for the script you are writing. Then test the rules on characters you have not learned. Work out the order of 回 (huí, to return) and 古 (gǔ, ancient) from the rules alone, write them, and check them on 汉典. Answers: 回 is 252511, the outer frame's first two strokes, the whole inner box, then the outer bottom stroke; 古 is 12251, the cross of 十 first, then 口.

Common misconceptions

• "If the character looks right, the order does not matter." Order affects balance, fast handwriting and dictionary stroke counts, and both the mainland's national standard and Taiwan's curriculum set it out for learners.
• "A box is four strokes, one per side." The top and right side are one turning stroke, so 口 has three strokes and 日 four.
• "Horizontal always comes before vertical." Only when they cross or the horizontal is on top. In 上 and 山 the vertical comes first.
• "Every Chinese-speaking place uses the same stroke order." The mainland and Taiwan standards differ in a few components, such as 艹 and 阝, which changes stroke counts.
• "Characters are drawings of things." A small number began as pictures, like 日 and 山, but even these are now stylised, and most characters are built differently, as Lesson 9 explains.

Recap

Strokes come in a few types, horizontal, rise, vertical, left-falling, dot, right-falling and turning strokes with or without hooks, and the mainland system codes them 1 to 5. A stroke code such as 2511 for 日 is a recipe you can check yourself against. Most order follows a few rules. Write left before right, top before bottom and outside before inside, and close a box last. Write horizontal before vertical when they cross, left-falling before right-falling, and a standalone middle vertical first. The mainland standard of 2021 and Taiwan's Ministry of Education rules agree on most characters but differ on some components, such as 艹 and 阝, and on the dot of 戈. Your thirteen new characters include pictographs such as 日 and 山 and two combinations, 林 and 男. Lesson 9 moves to the parts of characters: radicals that hint at meaning and components that hint at sound.

Sources

1. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 筆順基本法則說明 [Explanation of the basic rules of stroke order]. 國字標準字體筆順學習網. stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw
2. National Academy for Educational Research. (2018). 十二年國民基本教育課程綱要: 語文領域－國語文 [Curriculum guidelines: Mandarin; learning performance 4-I-5, basic strokes and stroke order]. naer.edu.tw
3. Sinoss. (2021, March 2). 《通用规范汉字笔顺规范》等两项国家语委语言文字规范正式实施 [Two national language standards, including the stroke-order standard GF 0023-2020, take effect]. sinoss.net
4. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). Character entries 日, 月, 山, 水, 火, 木, 林, 田, 力, 男, 目, 心, 手, 我, 英, 都 [mainland stroke counts and 笔顺 codes]. zdic.net
5. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 國語小字典 [Mandarin mini dictionary], entries 英, 都, 哪 [Taiwan stroke counts]. dict.mini.moe.edu.tw
6. Xu, S. (c. 100 CE). 說文解字 [Shuowen Jiezi], chapters 6 and 13, entries 木, 林, 田, 力 and 男. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Stroke order [background on national standards and their differences]; Stroke (CJK character) [stroke names and categories]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 日 [Glyph origin]; 田字格; 林 and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
9. TaiwanPlus. (2021). "You, I, He and She": Legit Mando, episode 2 [Video and published chapter list]. youtube.com

Nine thousand characters, six kinds

Around 100 CE a scholar named Xu Shen finished a dictionary that still frames how characters are taught. The Shuowen Jiezi, "explaining simple and analysing compound characters", filed 9,353 characters under 540 headings, and its postface sorted the ways characters are made into six kinds, each with two examples. Two of those examples are characters you have already written: 日 and 月. Two more are in this lesson: 上 and 下. And one pair, 江 and 河, two words for river, is the centre of a disagreement this lesson asks you to judge.

The question is practical. Most characters are built from parts, and one part often hints at the sound. If that hint were reliable, you could read aloud a character you had never seen, the way you sound out an unfamiliar English word. Some teachers stress how much logic the parts contain; others warn that the hints mislead as often as they help. You will see the evidence for each view, then test it on twenty characters you know.

The six kinds, in Xu Shen's words

Here are the six categories from the Shuowen's postface, with his own examples and a short translation of his definitions. The text is nearly two thousand years old and free to quote.

The Chinese of his definitions is compressed and has been argued over for centuries, and Wikipedia's article on character classification notes that his categories are neither rigorously defined nor mutually exclusive. The first four are ways of building a shape; the last two are ways of reusing one. For a learner, the four building methods are what matter.

Your new characters cover three of them. 上 (shàng, up) and 下 (xià, down) are indicatives, a line marked above or below a base. 休 (xiū, to rest) is a meaning compound, and the Shuowen explains it as a person 亻 leaning on a tree 木. The rest of this lesson's characters are sound-meaning compounds.

Radicals: the filing system

Xu Shen's 540 headings were the first radicals, 部首 (bùshǒu, section heads): a shared part used to file characters in a dictionary. Later dictionaries cut the number. Wikipedia's article on radicals notes that the Zihui of 1615 reduced them to 214, which became known as the Kangxi radicals after the famous Kangxi Dictionary of 1716. Unicode encodes all 214 as a block of their own. Mainland China's 2009 standard table uses 201 principal radicals, while Taiwan's dictionaries keep the Kangxi system, so a character can sit under different headings. Taiwan's 國語小字典 files 都 under 邑, the full form of the ear radical, while the mainland dictionary 汉典 files it under 阝.

Usually the radical is the part that hints at meaning. Many radicals change shape depending on where they sit, so learn the position forms alongside the full ones.

Two cautions. A radical points to an area of meaning, not a definition: 情 (feeling) has the heart radical, but so does 忙 (busy). And the dictionary radical is not always the meaning part. Wikipedia notes that some radicals are just a convenient part of the shape, which is why 是 sits under 日.

Worth holding on to: the radical tells you roughly what a character is about and where to find it in a dictionary. It does not tell you what the character means.

The case for the sound component

The richest category is the sound-meaning compound: one part for meaning, one for sound. Xu Shen's example, 江 (jiāng, river), is 氵 for water plus 工 (gōng) for sound. Estimates of how common these compounds are vary with what you count. Wikipedia's article on radicals puts them at over 80 percent of characters, and its article on classification cites a count of 58 percent among frequently used characters. Either way, they are the commonest kind.

Some families work beautifully. Here is the 青 (qīng, blue-green) family, with the meaning part of each.

Each one combines a meaning part with 青, and each is read ing with a q or j sound. You can see the system working: clear water, a sunny day, a feeling in the heart, a request in speech. A 2003 study in Child Development by Shu Hua, Chen Xi, Richard Anderson and colleagues analysed the 2,570 characters taught in Chinese elementary schools and concluded that written Chinese "has a logic that children can understand and use". It also found that the characters met in later grades are more often phonetically regular and semantically transparent.

The case against relying on it

Now look at Xu Shen's own example again. 江 is jiāng, and its sound part 工 is gōng. The two shared a sound when the character was formed, but two thousand years of sound change have pulled them apart. Many families have drifted the same way. The mainland dictionary 汉典 analyses 海 (hǎi, sea) as 氵 plus a sound part 每, which today is měi; 他 (tā) as 亻 plus 也, which is yě; and 都 (dōu) as 阝 plus 者, which is zhě. Wikipedia's article on classification gives a family where the hint has collapsed completely: 逾 yú, 输 shū and 偷 tōu all share the sound part 俞.

The same 2003 study has a sharper finding. Characters taught in grades 1 and 2, and high-frequency characters in general, are less likely to be phonetically regular than the rarer characters taught later. The characters a beginner learns first are exactly the ones whose sound hints are least reliable. Simplification adds another layer: 读 (dú, to read) has 卖 (mài, to sell) as its sound part in 汉典's analysis, because its traditional form 讀 used 賣.

What settles it: test twenty characters you know

By the end of this lesson you will know at least twenty characters that 汉典 classifies as sound-meaning compounds. Here is how well the sound part predicts each one.

The result supports both sides, which is what the evidence predicts. The sound part helped with twelve of the twenty, but it gave the full pronunciation, tone included, only once, and for eight it was no help at all. The study's finding shows up too: the failures include everyday words such as 他, 都, 说 and 听.

Worth holding on to: treat a sound component as a clue to a family of similar syllables, and a reason to remember a character, never as a way to pronounce it. Check every new character's pronunciation in a dictionary or recording.

Characters to learn

These give you useful words straight away: 上海 (Shànghǎi, Shanghai, literally "on the sea"), 晴天 (qíngtiān, a sunny day), 说话 (shuōhuà, to talk), 休息 (xiūxi, to rest), and 说中文, 听中文 and 读中文 (to speak, listen to and read Chinese). The traditional forms here are among the heaviest you will meet: 讀 and 聽 have 22 strokes each, against 10 and 7 in their simplified forms. Lesson 10 shows how simplification produced forms like 听, which replaced the ear radical 耳 of 聽 with 口.

A short text: four skills (written for this course)

A few new words: 在 (zài, in, at), which Lesson 12 teaches as a character; 今天 (jīntiān, today); 休息一下 (xiūxi yíxià, rest a moment), with 一 rising before the fourth tone of 下; and 吧 (ba), a softening word for suggestions. Notice that 是 is fine in 今天是晴天, because 晴天 is a noun, a sunny day. Compare 今天很晴 from Lesson 7's pattern, where 晴 is an adjective.

Listening: one family, many tones

1. The 青 family. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 清, 請, 晴 and 情. Write the tone of each. Answers: qīng 1, qǐng 3, qíng 2, qíng 2. The shared sound part gave you "qing"; only the recording gives you the tone.
2. Rivers and seas. Play 江, 河 and 海. Do any of them sound like their sound parts 工 (gōng), 可 (kě) and 每 (měi)? Answer: only partly; 河 shares its vowel with 可, and the other two do not resemble theirs.
3. Speech words. Play 話, 說 (the first recording, shuō), 讀 and 聽, and say each one after the speaker.
4. Opposites. Play 上 and 下. Both are fourth tones. Say 上下 (shàngxià, up and down) five times quickly, starting each fall high.

Speaking: read a family aloud

Alone: record yourself reading the 青 family table, then the twenty-character test table, saying each character and then its sound part: 妈 mā, 马 mǎ; 们 men, 门 mén; and so on. Hearing the pairs side by side fixes the differences. Then read the four-skills text twice.

With a partner: one of you names a radical in English (water, speech, person, sun, heart); the other says and writes every character from this course that has it. Then swap and use the sound parts instead: 马, 门, 青. Score a point for each correct character with the right tone.

Character writing: twelve characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 上 3, 下 3, 青 8, 清 11, 晴 12, 河 8, 海 10, 休 6, 话 8, 说 9, 读 10, 听 7. Two order points from Lesson 8: 上 starts with its vertical, 211, while 下 starts with its horizontal, 124. The water radical 氵 is written top dot, middle dot, then the rising stroke from the bottom, 441, in 清, 河 and 海.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 读), and look at the traditional forms 話, 說, 讀 and 聽 on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 聽). Write 讀 and 聽 once each, slowly, and count the strokes as you go. Then write the four-skills text from memory.

Common misconceptions

• "Most characters are pictures." Pictographs are a minority. Most characters are compounds, and the commonest kind joins a meaning part with a sound part.
• "The sound component tells you how to pronounce a character." It gives a clue to a family of similar sounds at best, and often nothing at all today; the tone in particular is rarely predictable.
• "The radical is the character's meaning." It points to an area of meaning, and sometimes it is only a filing convenience, as with 是 under 日.
• "Every dictionary uses the same 214 radicals." Taiwan's dictionaries use the Kangxi system, while mainland China's standard has 201 principal radicals, so the same character can be filed differently.
• "Simplified characters keep all the old sound hints." Some simplified forms changed the parts, as 读 and 听 show, sometimes losing the hint the traditional form had.

Pulling it together

Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi of about 100 CE described six ways of forming characters. Four build shapes: indicatives such as 上 and 下, pictographs such as 日 and 山, meaning compounds such as 休 and 林, and sound-meaning compounds such as 江 and 河, which are the most common kind. Radicals, from his 540 headings to the 214 Kangxi radicals and the mainland's 201, file characters by a shared part that usually hints at meaning and changes shape by position: 氵, 亻, 讠, 忄. The sound component divides opinion. The 青 family shows it working, and a 2003 study of school characters finds a learnable logic, but sound change has broken many hints, and the commonest characters are the least regular. In your own twenty-character test, the hint gave the full pronunciation once and was useless eight times. So use it as a memory aid, not a pronunciation guide. Lesson 10 turns to the other way the shapes changed: the simplification of the 1950s and 1960s.

Sources

1. Xu, S. (c. 100 CE). 說文解字 [Shuowen Jiezi], postface (敘) on the six categories, and chapter 6, entry 休. Wikisource transcription. zh.wikisource.org
2. Shu, H., Chen, X., Anderson, R. C., Wu, N., and Xuan, Y. (2003). Properties of school Chinese: Implications for learning to read. Child Development, 74(1), 27-47. doi.org
3. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 字形分析 [structure analyses] for 妈, 吗, 们, 问, 请, 清, 晴, 情, 睛, 姓, 河, 江, 海, 他, 都, 忙, 话, 说, 读, 听, 休 and 上. zdic.net
4. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 國語小字典 [Mandarin mini dictionary], entries 都 and 聽 [radical and stroke data]. dict.mini.moe.edu.tw
5. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Kangxi Radicals: Range 2F00-2FDF [code chart of the 214 radicals]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. unicode.org
6. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Radical (Chinese characters) [background on the 540, 214 and 201 radical systems and position forms]; Chinese character classification [background on the six categories and the 俞 family]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
7. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 清; 請; 晴; 情; 江; 河; 海; 話; 說; 讀; 聽; 上; 下 [Entries with Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Two official lists

On 19 August 2013, China's central government website published a State Council notice dated 5 June: the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters. It contains 8,105 characters in three levels, the first 3,500 of them chosen for basic education, and the notice states that general use should follow it and that the earlier lists stop being used. Its first annex pairs each standard character with its traditional and variant forms. Across the strait in Taipei, schoolbooks follow a different list. Taiwan's Ministry of Education promulgated the Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters on 1 September 1982, with 4,808 characters, and textbooks have used its forms ever since.

Both lists describe the same language. A sentence in one can be converted into the other, and most characters are the same in both. But a reader who knows only one script will stumble on a page in the other, and some conversions are not one-to-one. This lesson compares the two systems method by method, so that you can read traditional characters, which Taiwan and Hong Kong use, while you write simplified ones.

How simplification happened

Mainland China's simplification came in rounds. Wikipedia's account dates the first to 1956, when the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme set out 515 simplified characters and 54 simplified components. A General List followed in 1964. A second round in 1977 was poorly received and quickly fell out of use, and it was formally withdrawn in 1986, when the General List was reissued with six changes. The 2013 table brought these lists together. Many of the new forms were not invented in the 1950s: Wikipedia notes that many were drawn from popular cursive handwriting that people had used for centuries.

Elsewhere, Singapore adopted simplified characters in stages from 1969 and aligned fully with the mainland's forms in 1976, according to Wikipedia's article on Singapore's characters. Today simplified characters are the standard in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia, and traditional characters are official in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Even on the mainland, the language law lists places where traditional characters may still be used, such as historic sites, calligraphy and handwritten shop signs.

Comparing the methods

Wikipedia's article on simplified characters groups the methods roughly as follows. Every row has examples from this course.

The first row is the most useful for a reader. Learn the simplified forms of about a dozen common components, and hundreds of traditional characters become recognisable: 讠 is 言, 门 is 門, 马 is 馬, 车 is 車, 见 is 見, 长 is 長, 贝 is 貝 (shell, money), 钅 is 金 (metal), 饣 is 食 (food), 纟 is 糸 (silk) and 鱼 is 魚 (fish). The third row is the easiest to see: 開 (open) and 關 (close) both lost the door 門 that framed them, and 電 (electricity) lost its rain radical 雨.

So what?: a simplified reader can learn to read traditional characters quickly, because most differences follow a small number of component patterns. Writing them takes longer, because some traditional forms have more than twice as many strokes.

When one simplified character stands for two

The fifth row needs care. When two traditional characters with the same or similar sound were merged, the simplified form does double duty, and converting back to traditional means choosing the right one from context. The Unicode database records these one-to-many pairs.

The pairs also show why conversion software can go wrong. A program that turns every 发 into 發 will write 頭發 for hair, which a Taiwanese reader sees at once as a mistake. Note too that 发 has two pronunciations to match: fā for 發, as in 发音, and fà for 髮, hair. In the word 头发, Wiktionary gives tóufa, with a light second syllable, on the mainland and tóufǎ in Taiwan.

The same sentences in both scripts

Count the characters that change in each pair: all three in the first sentence, two of seven in the second, three of nine in the third, and two of four in the last. That ratio is typical: a page of traditional text is mostly familiar, with a minority of characters to decode.

Characters to learn

These combine into useful words at once. The pair 东西 is famous: said dōngxī it means east and west, but said dōngxi, with a light second syllable, it means thing or stuff, as in 买东西 (mǎi dōngxi, to go shopping, literally "buy things"). The words 开门 and 关门 are to open and close a door, and on a shop sign they mean open and closed. A 电车 (diànchē) is a tram or trolleybus, and a 电话 (diànhuà) is a telephone, "electric speech". And 书 gives 读书 (dúshū), to read or to study.

Look at the radical column. For several of these characters, simplification changed the radical too. Traditional 開 and 關 are filed under 門, and 電 under 雨, but their simplified forms lost those parts and are filed elsewhere, which is one more reason to know both systems if you use dictionaries from both places.

Dialogue: two scripts, one book (written for this course)

Maya is learning simplified characters. Her classmate 王小文 in Taipei reads traditional ones. They are looking at Maya's notebook.

New words here: 简体字 (jiǎntǐzì, simplified characters), 繁体字 (fántǐzì, traditional characters), 写 (xiě, to write, a Lesson 17 character), 看 (kàn, to look, Lesson 18), 很多 (hěn duō, many), 一样 (yíyàng, the same) and 比如 (bǐrú, for example). Xiaowen would write her own lines in traditional characters; the table shows them in simplified so that you can read them now.

Listening: pairs of scripts, one sound

1. Play the Wiktionary recordings of 門, 東, 西, 車, 書, 關, 後, 發 and 電. Each entry is filed under the traditional form, and its page also shows the simplified form. Write the tone of each. Answers: 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1, 4.
2. Two readings of one character: on the 長 page, play both cháng (long) and zhǎng (to grow). Which uses a curled-tongue initial? Answer: both do; ch and zh are both retroflex, and only the puff of air and the tone differ.
3. Thing or directions? Play 東西. Is the recording dōngxī (east and west) or dōngxi (thing)? Answer: dōngxi, with a light second syllable; the file is named zh-dōngxi.

Speaking: read both scripts aloud

Alone: read the four sentence pairs aloud, first the simplified line, then the traditional one, and notice that your mouth does exactly the same thing twice. Record yourself reading 买东西, 开门, 关门, 电话, 电车 and 读书, then make a sentence with each, such as 请关门 (please close the door).

With a partner: one of you writes a character from this course in traditional form; the other reads it aloud and writes its simplified form. Score a point for each, and a bonus point for naming the method of simplification from the comparison table.

Character writing: eleven characters, plus their traditional forms

Write each simplified character five times: 门 3 strokes, 东 5, 西 6, 车 4, 书 4, 开 4, 关 6, 长 4, 后 6, 发 5, 电 5. Then write each traditional form twice: 門 8, 東 8, 車 7, 書 10, 開 12, 關 19, 長 8, 後 9, 發 12, 髮 15, 電 13. Two order points: in 门, the dot comes first, then the vertical on the left, then the turning stroke with its hook; in 书, the dot is the last of its four strokes.

Check simplified forms on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 关) and traditional forms on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 關). Taiwan's Ministry of Education also offers its list of 4,808 common characters as a free PDF; scan its first page and count how many characters you can already read.

Common misconceptions

• "Simplified characters were all invented by a committee in the 1950s." Many came from cursive and popular handwriting that people had used for centuries; the reforms made them standard.
• "Every simplified character matches exactly one traditional character." Some simplified characters stand for two or more traditional ones, such as 发 for 發 and 髮, so converting back needs context.
• "Traditional Chinese is a different language." Both scripts write the same language, and most characters are the same in both.
• "You must master writing both scripts." Writing one well and reading the other is a realistic goal; most differences follow a dozen component patterns.
• "Traditional characters are banned in mainland China." Mainland law sets simplified characters as the standard but allows traditional ones in listed situations, such as historic sites, calligraphy and handwritten signs.

Looking back

Simplified characters became mainland China's standard through the reforms of 1956 and 1964, reissued with six changes in 1986 after a second round from 1977 was abandoned, and gathered into the 8,105-character table of 2013. Singapore aligned with them by 1976, and Malaysia uses them too; Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau use traditional characters, with Taiwan's 4,808 standard forms fixed in 1982. Simplification simplified components across many characters at once, standardised cursive shapes, dropped parts, replaced components and merged some characters, so that 发 now stands for both 發 and 髮. Most characters did not change, and the rest follow patterns you can learn to read. You can now write 门, 东, 西, 车, 书, 开, 关, 长, 后, 发 and 电 and recognise their traditional forms. Module 4 starts counting: numbers from 零 to 万.

Sources

1. State Council of the People's Republic of China. (2013, June 5). 国务院关于公布《通用规范汉字表》的通知 [Notice on publishing the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters] (国发〔2013〕23号). gov.cn
2. China News Service. (2013, August 21). 《通用规范汉字表》出炉 [The Table of General Standard Chinese Characters is published: 8,105 characters in three levels]. chinanews.com
3. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (n.d.). 教育部常用字 [The Ministry's 4,808 common characters, PDF]. 國字標準字體筆順學習網. stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Simplified Chinese characters [background on the 1956, 1964, 1977 and 1986 lists, cursive origins and methods]; Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters [Taiwan, 1982, 4,808 characters]; Singapore Chinese characters. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Wei, C. (2025). Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (revision): Comparison chart [Article 19, situations where traditional characters may be used]. NPC Observer. npcobserver.com
6. Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unihan database: kTraditionalVariant data for 后, 发, 面, 只 and 历. unicode.org
7. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 東西; 頭髮; 長 and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

23,373,283

On 30 June 2023, Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior counted 23,373,283 people in its population registers, the figure behind the surname statistics in Lesson 5. Try to read that number aloud in Mandarin before you go on. An English speaker splits it by thousands: twenty-three million, three hundred seventy-three thousand, two hundred eighty-three. A Mandarin speaker splits it differently, and if you carry the English grouping across, you will get stuck at "thousand thousand", because Mandarin has no word for million.

That is this lesson's problem: Mandarin counts large numbers in groups of four digits, around a unit English lacks, 万 (wàn), ten thousand. The digits themselves are easy, and the system is more regular than English. Once you have the four-digit habit, the population of Taiwan, the price of a car and the number of characters in a dictionary all read the same way. The answer is at the end of the section on 万.

Zero to ten

Two reminders from Lesson 4. When you count, 一 keeps its own first tone, yī. And 七 and 八 stay first tones for most speakers today. Watch 四 sì (four) against 十 shí (ten): the first has a flat-tongue s and a falling tone, the second a curled-tongue sh and a rising tone. Mixing them up is one of the commonest number mistakes, so practise the pair until your tongue knows the difference.

Eleven to ninety-nine: no new words

From 11 to 99 Mandarin simply says the parts, as the AllSet Chinese Grammar Wiki sets out. Eleven is ten-one, 十一 (shíyī). Twenty is two-ten, 二十 (èrshí). Twenty-three is two-ten-three, 二十三 (èrshísān). Ninety-nine is 九十九 (jiǔshíjiǔ). There are no special words like eleven, twelve or the -teens, and no -ty endings to learn.

Hundreds and thousands, and the zero in the middle

Hundreds use 百 (bǎi) and thousands use 千 (qiān). The AllSet wiki adds three rules that trip up beginners.

1. Say zero in the middle, once. A gap inside a number is read 零 (líng), with no unit after it: 101 is 一百零一, and 1,019 is 一千零一十九. However many zeros sit together, you say 零 only once.
2. Say the one in "a hundred and ten". Above 100, a ten is said 一十: 110 is 一百一十 (yìbǎi yīshí), not 一百十.
3. Drop the last unit when it is obvious. 150 can be 一百五十 or, more often, simply 一百五, which always means 150, never 105.

One more detail: 一 before 百 and 千 follows the tone rules of Lesson 4, so 一百 is yìbǎi and 一千 is yìqiān, because bǎi and qiān are not fourth tones.

万 and 亿: thinking in fours

Here is the heart of the lesson. Mandarin has a word for ten thousand, 万 (wàn), and the next big unit is 亿 (yì), a hundred million, which is ten thousand ten-thousands. The AllSet wiki's advice is to move the comma: break a number into groups of four digits from the right, instead of English groups of three. Then read each group as an ordinary number up to 9,999 and add the unit.

A million is "a hundred ten-thousands", 一百万, which the AllSet wiki recommends memorising as a fixed point. Now solve the problem. Taiwan's population, 23,373,283, regroups as 2337,3283. The first group is 两千三百三十七 (2,337), followed by 万; the second group is 三千二百八十三 (3,283). Together: 两千三百三十七万三千二百八十三, liǎngqiān sānbǎi sānshíqī wàn sānqiān èrbǎi bāshísān.

The upshot: for any number above 9,999, count four digits from the right, read the left-hand group, add 万, then read the right-hand group as usual.

二 or 两?

Mandarin has two words for two. A college Mandarin course published on LibreTexts, Carl Polley's Beginning Mandarin, sets out the division, and Wiktionary's usage note agrees.

• 二 (èr) is the number itself: counting, 十二 (12), 二十 (20), ordinals such as 第二 (second), and the month 二月 (February).
• 两 (liǎng) counts things: it comes before a measure word, as in 两个人 (two people), 两点 (two o'clock) and 两块钱 (two yuan). Lesson 15 explains measure words.
• Before 百, 千 and 万 both are heard: 两百 or 二百 for 200, and usually 两千 and 两万.

The commonest mistake is 二个人 for two people. Wiktionary marks it as wrong: before a measure word, use 两.

Phone numbers, room numbers and 幺

Phone numbers are read digit by digit, never as one large number. Wiktionary records one twist used on the mainland: 1 is often said yāo, written 幺, to reduce ambiguity, especially on the phone, when reading an ID card, in aviation and in the military. Said quickly, yī can be confused with qī (seven); yāo cannot. So a made-up mobile number such as 139 1234 5678 might be read aloud as yāo sān jiǔ, yāo èr sān sì, wǔ liù qī bā. Wiktionary labels this use of yāo as mainland usage, so do not be surprised to hear plain yī elsewhere.

To ask for a number, Mandarin uses 多少 (duōshao), how many or how much: 你的电话号码是多少？ (Nǐ de diànhuà hàomǎ shì duōshao?), what is your phone number? Wiktionary notes that this use of 多少 for phone numbers comes from the fact that they are made up of digits.

How old are you? 几岁 and 多大

Age needs no verb. The AllSet wiki's pattern is subject + number + 岁 (suì, years of age), with no 是 and no measure word: 我十六岁 (Wǒ shíliù suì), I'm sixteen. Two questions ask for it.

• 你几岁？ (Nǐ jǐ suì?) uses 几 (jǐ), how many, which expects a small number. It is the question for a child, and Wiktionary's example notes that it may be impolite to an adult.
• 你多大？ (Nǐ duō dà?), literally "you how big?", is the question for teenagers and adults of your own age; Wiktionary gives "how old" as one of its meanings.

Answer with the number and 岁: 我十五岁. Notice that 多 (many) and 少 (few) combine in 多少 for "how many" when the answer may be large: 你们学校有多少学生？ (How many students does your school have?)

Lucky eight, cautious four

The Beijing Olympic Games opened, NPR reported, at 8:08 p.m. on 8 August 2008, a time chosen because "eight is a lucky number in China". Wikipedia's article on numbers in Chinese culture explains the usual reason: 八 (bā) sounds like 发 (fā), to prosper. Four has the opposite reputation in some places, because 四 (sì) is close to 死 (sǐ), death, and some buildings in East Asia leave out floors and room numbers with a 4 in them. The same article notes that the dislike of four is strongest among Cantonese speakers and that Teochew speakers treat four as lucky, so these associations vary. They are worth knowing about, not a rule that everyone follows.

Characters to learn

Two details. The character 零 is heavy, thirteen strokes under the rain radical; learn it anyway, because you will read it in prices, dates and addresses. And 几 is one of the merged characters from Lesson 10: in traditional script, 幾 means "how many", while 几 survives as a separate character for a small table.

Dialogue: numbers at lunch (written for this course)

The phone number is invented, and is read the mainland way, with yāo.

Check the choices: 两千 because it counts students, 十五 and 十六 with no 是 before 岁, and 多少 for a number that could be large. 学校 (xuéxiào, school) and 有 (yǒu, to have) arrive as characters in Lessons 17 and 14.

Listening: numbers by ear

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九 and 零, with 一, 二, 三 and 十 from Lesson 1. Repeat each, then count from 零 to 十 aloud without stopping.
2. Play 百, 千, 萬 and 兩. Write the tones. Answers: bǎi 3, qiān 1, wàn 4, liǎng 3.
3. Play 幺 and compare it with 一. Which vowel sound makes yāo hard to confuse with qī? Answer: the ao, which no other digit has.
4. Play 歲, 幾, 多 and 少, then read the dialogue aloud.
5. Dictation with a partner or a recording of yourself: have someone read these numbers, or record them and play them back a day later, and write the digits: 四十, 十四, 一百零八, 两千零二十六, 三万五千, 一百万. Answers: 40, 14, 108, 2026, 35,000, 1,000,000.

Speaking: count, ask, answer

Alone: count from 1 to 30 aloud, then by tens to 100, then say these years as numbers: 1958, 2008, 2026. Record your phone number twice, once with yāo and once with yī, then say your age and the ages of three people you know. Finally, read Taiwan's population aloud from the four-digit grouping.

With a partner: take turns asking 你多大？ and 你的电话号码是多少？ (invent a number), and write down what you hear. Then play "Higher, lower": one of you thinks of a number below 1,000, the other guesses aloud in Chinese, and the first answers 多 (more) or 少 (less) until the guess is right.

Character writing: fifteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 四 5, 五 4, 六 4, 七 2, 八 2, 九 2, 零 13, 百 6, 千 3, 万 3, 两 7, 岁 6, 几 2, 多 6, 少 4. In 四, the inner strokes come before the closing bottom stroke, as with 日. In 万, the horizontal comes first, then the turning stroke with its hook, then the left-falling stroke; 汉典 gives it as 153.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 零), and see the traditional forms 萬, 兩, 歲 and 幾 on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 萬). Then write these numbers in characters: 17, 45, 99, 105, 2,026, 30,000. Answers: 十七, 四十五, 九十九, 一百零五, 两千零二十六, 三万.

Common misconceptions

• "Mandarin groups big numbers in thousands, like English." It groups them in ten-thousands: a million is 一百万, a hundred ten-thousands.
• "Two people is 二个人." Before a measure word, two is 两: 两个人. 二 is for counting, 二十 and 第二.
• "Every zero in a number is said." Say 零 once for any gap inside a number, and not at all at the end: 1,005 is 一千零五, and 1,500 is 一千五百.
• "Age needs 是: 我是十六岁." Age takes no verb: 我十六岁.
• "You can ask anyone 你几岁." 几 expects a small number, so 你几岁 is for children; Wiktionary notes it may be impolite to an adult. Use 你多大 with people your age.

The takeaway

Mandarin numbers are built from ten digits and four units: 十, 百, 千 and 万, plus 亿 for a hundred million. From 11 to 99 you just say the parts. A gap inside a number is said 零 once, 110 is 一百一十, and 150 can be 一百五. Above 9,999, group the digits in fours from the right and read each group with 万 or 亿 after it, so 23,373,283 becomes 两千三百三十七万三千二百八十三. Use 两 before measure words and 二 for counting, read phone numbers digit by digit, often with yāo for 1 on the mainland, and ask for them with 多少. Age needs no verb: 我十六岁, asked with 几岁 for a child and 多大 for people your age. With numbers in place, Lesson 12 builds dates and clock times, where the order goes from big to small.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Structure of numbers; Big numbers in Chinese; Age with "sui"; Comparing "er" and "liang". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. Polley, C. (n.d.). Comparing "er" and "liang". In CHN 101: Beginning Mandarin. LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan. (2023). 112年全國姓名統計分析 [population of 23,373,283 as of 30 June 2023]. ris.gov.tw
4. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 幺 [definition: one, used on the mainland to reduce ambiguity]; 兩 [usage notes]; 幾歲; 多大; 多少 [usage notes]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. NPR. (2008, August 8). Olympics open with spotlight on Chinese culture. nhpr.org
6. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Numbers in Chinese culture [background on 8 and 4, and regional variation]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
7. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 零; 万 [Character entries: stroke counts and stroke-order animations]. zdic.net

A date on a government notice

The State Council notice that published China's table of standard characters, which you met in Lesson 10, ends with its date: 2013年6月5日. Read left to right, that is 2013 year, 6 month, 5 day. An American writes the same date as June 5, 2013, and a British writer as 5 June 2013; Chinese writing starts with the biggest unit and works down. Add the weekday and it continues in the same direction. The notice was dated a Wednesday, so the full form would be 2013年6月5日星期三.

Big to small is the rule for the clock too, and for where time goes in a sentence. This lesson builds a date and a time step by step, the way you would fill in a form, and then puts them into sentences. Halfway through you will change one input, a time of 2:05 instead of 3:30, and see two small rules switch on.

Step 1: the year

A year is read digit by digit, followed by 年 (nián, year). The AllSet Chinese Grammar Wiki gives 2019 as èr líng yī jiǔ nián, and 1868 as yī bā liù bā nián. So 2013年 is èr líng yī sān nián, and this year, 2026年, is èr líng èr liù nián. Notice that the digits keep their counting forms: 二 for 2, and 一 as yī, because you are reading digits, not counting things.

Year words built on 年 follow the same pattern as days: 今年 (jīnnián, this year), 明年 (míngnián, next year) and 去年 (qùnián, last year), with the 去 of Lesson 3.

Step 2: the month

Months have no names, only numbers. Put the number before 月 (yuè, month, the moon of Lesson 8): 一月 is January, 六月 June, 十二月 December. Ask with 几月 (jǐ yuè, which month?). Be careful with the order: 六月 is June, but 六个月 (liù ge yuè) is six months, a length of time, with the measure word 个 between them.

Step 3: the day

The day of the month is a number followed by 日 (rì) in writing or 号 (hào) in speech; the AllSet wiki notes that 号 is common in spoken Mandarin while 日 is what you usually see written. So 6月5日 on paper is said liù yuè wǔ hào. The question is 几月几号？ (Jǐ yuè jǐ hào?, what is the date?), and the commonest use is a birthday: 你的生日是几月几号？ (Nǐ de shēngri shì jǐ yuè jǐ hào?, when is your birthday?).

Step 4: the day of the week

Weekdays are numbered too, starting from Monday: 星期一 (xīngqī yī) is Monday, 星期二 Tuesday, through 星期六, Saturday. Sunday breaks the pattern: 星期天 (xīngqī tiān), or the more formal 星期日 (xīngqī rì). The AllSet wiki lists two other words for "week" you will hear: 礼拜 (lǐbài), so 礼拜一 is also Monday, and 周 (zhōu), as in 周一. Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary gives 星期 as xīngqí, with a rising second syllable, where mainland recordings say xīngqī.

Ask with 星期几？ (xīngqī jǐ?, which day of the week?): 今天星期几？ 今天星期一。 Notice that no 是 is needed between today and the weekday, just as none is needed for age.

Key idea: a full date runs from biggest to smallest, year, month, day, weekday, and each part is a number plus a unit word: 2026年10月26日星期一.

Step 5: yesterday, today, tomorrow

You know three of the parts already: 天 (day) from Lesson 4, and 后 (after) from Lesson 10. 明 is bright, 日 and 月 together, which the mainland dictionary 汉典 classes as a meaning compound; tomorrow is the bright day that comes next. And 现在 (xiànzài) means now.

Step 6: the clock

Clock times also run big to small: hour, then minutes. The hour is a number plus 点 (diǎn, literally a dot or point), and minutes are a number plus 分 (fēn). The AllSet wiki's rules for times give the rest.

To ask the time, say 现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?, what time is it now?). Add the part of the day in front when you need it: 上午 (shàngwǔ) for morning, 中午 (zhōngwǔ) for midday, 下午 (xiàwǔ) for afternoon and 晚上 (wǎnshang) for evening. So 3:30 p.m. is 下午三点半, big to small again.

The changed input: 2:05 instead of 3:30

Run the clock procedure on 2:05 p.m. and two rules switch on. First, two o'clock is 两点 (liǎng diǎn), not 二点: the AllSet wiki is explicit, and Lesson 11 explained that 两 counts things, here hours. Twelve o'clock stays 十二点, because 十二 is an ordinary number. Second, minutes under ten take 零 (líng) before them: 2:05 is 两点零五分, liǎng diǎn líng wǔ fēn, and in speech the 分 is often dropped. So 2:05 p.m. is 下午两点零五分, where 3:30 p.m. was simply 下午三点半.

Step 7: put time before the verb

Now use the time in a sentence. The AllSet wiki gives two correct positions for a time word: before the subject, or right after it. Either way, it comes before the verb.

• 明天我去。 Míngtiān wǒ qù. Tomorrow I'm going.
• 我明天去。 Wǒ míngtiān qù. I'm going tomorrow.
• 我们星期六下午三点去。 Wǒmen xīngqī liù xiàwǔ sān diǎn qù. We're going at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

What you cannot do is put the time at the end, the English way: 我去明天 sounds wrong to a Mandarin speaker, and the wiki warns that it does not sound at all natural. When several time words stack up, keep them big to small and together: 星期六下午三点, never 三点星期六下午.

Key idea: time is a block that goes before the verb, ordered from biggest to smallest unit; English puts it at the end, Mandarin never does.

Characters to learn

The sun radical 日 runs through this lesson: 星, 明, 昨 and 时 are all about time or light. Two useful words combine the new characters: 时候 (shíhou, time, moment), as in 什么时候 (shénme shíhou, when?), which Wiktionary gives as shíhòu in Taiwan's standard; and 时间 (shíjiān, time as an amount), as in 我没有时间 (I don't have time). And 在 will do much more work in Lesson 19, where it means to be at a place.

Dialogue: making plans for the weekend (written for this course)

Find the time blocks: every one sits before its verb. Note 两点半 with 两, and 三点零五分 with 零. 吃饭 (chī fàn, to eat a meal) and 上课 (shàngkè, to go to class) come as characters in Lessons 18 and 17.

Listening: dates and times

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 今天, 明天, 昨天 and 現在. Which two begin with the same tone? Answer: 明天 and 昨天 both begin with a rising second tone.
2. Play 星期. Is the second syllable qī or qí? Answer: qī, the mainland reading; Taiwan's dictionary gives qí.
3. Play 年, 號, 點, 分 (the first recording, fēn) and 半, and write the tone of each. Answers: 2, 4, 3, 1, 4.
4. Play 時候, 時間 and 生日. Which has a light second syllable in the recording? Answer: 時候, shíhou, and 生日, shēngri; 時間 keeps a full first tone.
5. Self-dictation: record yourself reading these, then play them back the next day and write down the dates and times: 2026年3月15日; 星期四; 下午两点零七分; 差十分八点; 十二点半. Answers: 15 March 2026; Thursday; 2:07 p.m.; 7:50; 12:30.

Speaking: your week aloud

Alone: record today's full date, your birthday as a full date, and the time you get up, go to school and go to bed, each in a sentence with the time before the verb: 我早上七点去学校。 Then say what day of the week it is today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

With a partner: interview each other: 你的生日是几月几号？ 你星期几有中文课？ 你几点去学校？ Write down the answers, then report one back as a sentence: 她的生日是五月三号。 Finally, one of you draws a clock face with a time and the other says it; include at least one :05 and one 2 o'clock time.

Character writing: fourteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 年 6, 号 5, 星 9, 期 12, 今 4, 明 8, 昨 9, 点 9, 分 4, 半 5, 现 8, 在 6, 时 7, 候 10. In 年, the long vertical is written last, after the horizontals it crosses. In 点, the four dots of the fire radical go last, left to right. In 明, write 日 narrow on the left, then 月.

Check animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 期) and traditional forms on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 點). Then write today's date, your birthday and three times of day in characters.

Common misconceptions

• "Dates go month, day, year, as in American English." Chinese runs year, month, day, weekday: 2026年10月26日星期一.
• "Two o'clock is 二点." It is 两点, because 两 counts things. Twelve o'clock is 十二点.
• "Time words can go at the end of the sentence." They go before the verb, either before or just after the subject: 我明天去, never 我去明天.
• "Sunday is 星期七." Sunday is 星期天 or 星期日; only Monday to Saturday are numbered.
• "六月 and 六个月 mean the same." 六月 is June; 六个月 is a length of six months.

What to carry forward

Dates and times in Mandarin run from the biggest unit to the smallest: year, read digit by digit with 年; month, a number with 月; day, a number with 日 in writing or 号 in speech; then the weekday, 星期一 to 星期六 and 星期天. Clock times are a number with 点, then minutes with 分, with 半 for half past, 刻 for quarters and 差 for minutes to the hour; two o'clock is 两点 and single-digit minutes take 零. Time phrases form one block, ordered big to small, and the block always goes before the verb. With 今天, 明天, 昨天 and 现在, you can now plan a week. Lesson 13 looks at the other calendar that shapes Chinese life, the lunar calendar, and the festivals it sets.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Structure of dates; Structure of days of the week; Structure of times (basic); Structure of times (advanced); Time words and word order. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. State Council of the People's Republic of China. (2013, June 5). 国务院关于公布《通用规范汉字表》的通知 [date line of the notice]. gov.cn
3. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 國語辭典簡編本 [Concise Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 星期 (xīng qí) [search the site for 星期]. dict.concised.moe.edu.tw
4. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 今天; 明天; 昨天; 現在; 星期; 時候 [Mainland and Taiwan readings]; 生日 and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 明 [structure: meaning compound]; 期 [stroke order]. zdic.net
6. Hong Kong Observatory. (2025). Gregorian-Lunar calendar conversion table of 2026 [weekdays for 2026 dates]. hko.gov.hk

The night of 16 February 2026

In the Hong Kong Observatory's conversion table for 2026, the line for Monday 16 February reads simply "29". It was the twenty-ninth and last day of the twelfth lunar month, the final night of the Year of the Snake. The next line, Tuesday 17 February, reads "1st Lunar Month": the first day of a new year that the Observatory labels Bing-wu, the year of the Horse. That night, in the words of UNESCO's description of the Spring Festival, "families dine together and stay up late to welcome the new year."

This lesson follows that one lunar year from its first night to its autumn festivals, using the real dates of 2026. Along the way you will see how the calendar works, why its New Year moves around between late January and February, and how the same festivals are kept in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York.

A calendar that follows the moon and the sun

The traditional calendar is called 农历 (nónglì), literally "the farming calendar"; Wiktionary defines it as the traditional lunisolar calendar of East Asia. Lunisolar means it tracks both the moon and the sun. Each month begins at a new moon and lasts 29 or 30 days: in 2026 the first month ran from 17 February to 18 March, thirty days, and the second from 19 March to 16 April, twenty-nine. Twelve such months add up to about 354 days, some eleven days short of the solar year, so the lunar dates slide earlier against the seasons each year until the calendar corrects them.

The correction comes from the sun. The year is divided into the twenty-four solar terms (二十四节气, èrshísì jiéqì), which the Observatory explains as twenty-four equal steps of 15 degrees in the sun's yearly path. Twelve of them are major terms. The Observatory's rule is that a lunar month containing no major term becomes a leap month, taking the number of the month before it. It also gives the arithmetic: in 19 solar years there are 228 major terms but 235 lunar months, so seven months in every nineteen years are leap months.

You can see one in the Observatory's 2025 table, where "6th Lunar Month" appears twice: once on 25 June and again on 25 July. The year of the Horse has none. Its twelve months run in order from 17 February 2026 to the twelfth month, which begins on 8 January 2027.

UNESCO added the twenty-four solar terms to its Representative List of intangible cultural heritage in 2016. Its description calls them a traditional timeframe for production and daily routines, still of particular importance to farmers.

Remember: lunar months follow the moon, solar terms follow the sun, and leap months keep the two in step. That is why the lunar New Year falls on a different Western date every year.

Spring Festival: 17 February 2026

The New Year is called 春节 (Chūnjié, the Spring Festival). It always falls close to the solar term 立春, "spring commences", which in 2026 came on 4 February. Wikipedia's article on the festival gives the rule in Western terms: the New Year falls on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.

In December 2024 UNESCO inscribed the Spring Festival on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Its description covers the run-up and the days themselves. Beforehand, people clean their homes, stock provisions and prepare food. On New Year's Eve, 除夕 (chúxī), families eat together. At the New Year people wear new clothes, make offerings to heaven, earth and ancestors, and greet elders, relatives, friends and neighbours.

Three greetings carry most of the season.

• 新年快乐！ (Xīnnián kuàilè!), Happy New Year! 快乐 means happy, and the same pattern gives 生日快乐 (happy birthday).
• 春节快乐！ (Chūnjié kuàilè!), Happy Spring Festival!
• 恭喜发财！ (Gōngxǐ fācái!), which Wiktionary glosses as Happy New Year, with congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous year. Its Cantonese pronunciation, gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4, is the source of the English phrase Kung Hei Fat Choi, which Wiktionary records in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

Money is given in 红包 (hóngbāo), red envelopes. Wiktionary describes a 红包 as a monetary gift given during holidays or special occasions such as the Chinese New Year. Wikipedia's article adds that at the New Year they typically go to children, older people and lion dance performers, with the words 恭喜发财. Red, 红, is the colour of the season.

The year's animal, its 生肖 (shēngxiào), comes from a cycle of twelve: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. The Observatory's tables name 2025 the year of the Snake, 2026 the Horse, and 2027 the Goat, which begins on Saturday 6 February 2027. Your own animal follows the lunar year you were born in, not the Western one. Most people count from the New Year itself, though Wikipedia notes that some astrologers start the animal's year at 立春 instead. For someone born in January 2026, both give the same answer: the Snake, not the Horse.

The same New Year in five places

The table shows the festival crossing borders and languages. In mainland China, swapping weekend days for a longer break has its own word, 调休 (tiáoxiū), and the notice uses it. In Singapore the New Year shares the official calendar with Hari Raya Puasa, Vesak Day, Deepavali and Christmas, a mix that Lesson 25 explains. In New York, NBC News reported, elected officials and community groups had campaigned for nearly a decade; before 2016, families who kept children home for the New Year saw it on their attendance record.

The Lantern Festival: 3 March 2026

Wikipedia's article on the New Year counts the festival season from New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month, the first full moon of the year. Wiktionary defines 元宵 (yuánxiāo) as the night of that day, the Lantern Festival, and also as the sticky rice dumplings traditionally eaten then, which are also called 汤圆 (tāngyuán). In 2026 it fell on Tuesday 3 March. The festival's name in Chinese is 元宵节 (Yuánxiāojié).

Qingming: 5 April 2026

One festival is set by the sun, not the moon. The festival 清明 (Qīngmíng), "clear and bright", is a solar term, so its Western date barely moves: the Observatory's tables put it on 4 April in 2025 and on Sunday 5 April in 2026. Taiwan's official name for the holiday, 民族掃墓節, means National Tomb Sweeping Day, and it is the day families visit and tidy their ancestors' graves. Each government fitted it into the week its own way. Mainland China took 4 to 6 April off, Hong Kong gave the following Monday because the festival fell on a Sunday, and Taiwan joined it to Children's Day for a four-day break from 3 to 6 April. You know both characters: 清 from Lesson 9 and 明 from Lesson 12.

The Dragon Boat Festival: 19 June 2026

The fifth day of the fifth month, 端午节 (Duānwǔjié), was Friday 19 June in 2026: a holiday in Hong Kong and the first day of a three-day weekend in mainland China and in Taiwan. UNESCO inscribed the Dragon Boat Festival in 2009. Its description lists dragon boat races; feasts of rice dumplings, eggs and wine; and customs to ward off evil, such as hanging plants like moxa and calamus over doors. The dumplings are 粽子 (zòngzi), which Wiktionary describes as glutinous rice with different fillings, wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. UNESCO also records that the hero honoured varies by region: the poet Qu Yuan in Hubei and Hunan, for example, and other local figures elsewhere.

The Mid-Autumn Festival: 25 September 2026

The fifteenth day of the eighth month, a full moon, is 中秋节 (Zhōngqiūjié), the Mid-Autumn Festival, literally "middle of autumn". In 2026 it fell on Friday 25 September. Wikipedia describes it as a harvest festival, also called the Moon Festival, kept with family gatherings, lanterns and 月饼 (yuèbǐng), mooncakes, which Wiktionary defines as a pastry traditionally eaten at this festival. Mainland China took 25 to 27 September off, and Hong Kong made the day after the festival a general holiday. In Taiwan the festival joined the Confucius Birthday holiday on Monday 28 September in a four-day break.

The calendar keeps going after the autumn moon. Hong Kong's 2026 list includes the Chung Yeung Festival, the ninth day of the ninth month, which fell on Sunday 18 October, so the holiday moved to Monday the 19th.

Characters to learn

The four seasons, 春夏秋冬, are often said together in that order. One new character is a merger of the kind you met in Lesson 10: 历 stands for 曆 in 农历 (農曆, the calendar) and for 歷 in 历史 (歷史, history), which you will meet in Lesson 17. And 节 has the bamboo radical in its traditional form 節. Wiktionary explains the character as bamboo plus a sound component, 即, standing for the node of a bamboo stem and by extension a segment or boundary. A festival, if it helps you remember, is a joint in the year.

Dialogue: a New Year video call (written for this course)

On the evening of 17 February, Maya calls her grandmother in Vancouver from Taipei.

Three words arrive early: 奶奶 (nǎinai, grandmother on the father's side) and 有 (yǒu, to have), both from Lesson 14, and 回家 (huí jiā, to go home) from Lesson 18. Maya answers the 吗 question by repeating the verb, 有, the usual way to say yes that you met in Lesson 6. And 两个 uses 两, not 二, before a measure word, as in Lesson 11. Notice the tone change in 不太冷: 不 becomes bú before the fourth tone of 太.

Listening: words of the season

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 春, 夏, 秋 and 冬, then say 春夏秋冬 in one breath. Which season has a falling tone? Answer: 夏, xià.
2. Play 新年 and 快樂, then say 新年快乐 slowly and at speed. Pitch Perfect Pinyin's Unit 11 also plays xīnnián in its 1+2 row.
3. Play 節, 紅 and 包, then build the words aloud: 春节, 中秋节, 红包. Answers to check yourself: Chūnjié, Zhōngqiūjié, hóngbāo.
4. Look at the pronunciation table on the 恭喜發財 entry and compare the Mandarin and Cantonese lines. Which English spelling, often seen on New Year banners, comes from the Cantonese? Answer: Kung Hei Fat Choi.

Speaking: greetings for the year

Alone: record the three New Year greetings, then 生日快乐 and 中秋节快乐 (Happy Mid-Autumn Festival). Then record four sentences about the festival dates, with the time first: 今年的春节是二月十七号。 今年的中秋节是九月二十五号。

With a partner: one of you names a festival in English and the other gives its Chinese name, its lunar date and one custom in Chinese or English: 端午节，五月初五，粽子. Then act out the video call, changing the year and the place: next year is the Year of the Goat, 羊年 (yáng nián).

Character writing: twelve characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 春 9, 夏 10, 秋 9, 冬 5, 节 5, 新 13, 快 7, 乐 5, 红 6, 包 5, 农 6, 历 4. In 冬, the two dots at the bottom come last. In 快, the heart radical 忄 comes first; in mainland China's standard order, which 汉典 codes as 442, that means the left dot, the right dot, then the vertical. Taiwan's standard, as Wikipedia's article on stroke order notes, writes the vertical second. In 包, the outer hook 勹 comes before 巳 inside.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 节), and write the traditional forms 節, 樂, 紅, 農 and 曆 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 節). Then write a New Year card: 新年快乐 at the top, a sentence about the year's animal, and your name.

Common misconceptions

• "Chinese New Year is always on the same date." It follows the moon: 17 February in 2026 and 6 February in 2027, always on a new moon between 21 January and 20 February.
• "The lunar calendar ignores the sun." It is lunisolar: the twenty-four solar terms follow the sun, and leap months keep the months in step with the seasons.
• "Every festival is on a lunar date." Qingming is a solar term, so its Western date hardly moves: 4 April in 2025, 5 April in 2026.
• "Your zodiac animal is set by the Western year you were born." It is set by the lunar year, which begins in late January or February.
• "Kung Hei Fat Choi is Mandarin." It comes from the Cantonese reading of 恭喜发财; in Mandarin the greeting is gōngxǐ fācái.
• "A festival holiday is the same everywhere." In 2026 the New Year gave nine days off in mainland China and Taiwan, three general holidays in Hong Kong and two public holidays in Singapore.

Summing up

The 农历 is a lunisolar calendar: months of 29 or 30 days begin at the new moon, twenty-four solar terms divide the sun's year, and a month without a major solar term becomes a leap month, seven times in nineteen years. Its year of 2026, the year of the Horse, began on 17 February, after the reunion dinner of 除夕 on the 16th, with greetings of 新年快乐 and 恭喜发财 and gifts of 红包. The Lantern Festival followed on 3 March, Qingming on 5 April, the Dragon Boat Festival on 19 June and the Mid-Autumn Festival on 25 September. Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York's schools all mark the New Year, each with its own number of days off. Module 5 moves from the calendar to the people you celebrate with: your family, and the verb 有.

Sources

1. Hong Kong Observatory. (n.d.). Gregorian-Lunar calendar conversion table of 2026 (Bing-wu, year of the Horse). hko.gov.hk
2. Hong Kong Observatory. (n.d.). Gregorian-Lunar calendar conversion table of 2025 (Yi-si, year of the Snake) [the 6th lunar month appears twice]. hko.gov.hk
3. Hong Kong Observatory. (n.d.). Gregorian-Lunar calendar conversion table of 2027 (Ding-wei, year of the Goat). hko.gov.hk
4. Hong Kong Observatory. (n.d.). The 24 solar terms [leap months: 228 major terms and 235 lunar months in 19 years]. hko.gov.hk
5. General Office of the State Council. (2025, November 4). 国务院办公厅关于2026年部分节假日安排的通知 [Notice on the arrangement of some holidays in 2026]. gov.cn
6. UNESCO. (2024). Spring festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of traditional new year [Representative List, 19.COM]. ich.unesco.org
7. UNESCO. (2016). The Twenty-Four Solar Terms, knowledge in China of time and practices developed through observation of the sun's annual motion. ich.unesco.org
8. UNESCO. (2009). Dragon Boat festival. ich.unesco.org
9. GovHK. (2025). General holidays for 2026. gov.hk
10. Ministry of Manpower, Singapore. (n.d.). Public holidays [2026 list]. mom.gov.sg
11. Kaohsiung City Government. (2025). 115年休假日一覽表 [Holiday table for 2026, based on the Executive Yuan's office calendar]. kcg.gov.tw
12. NBC News. (2016, February 1). New York City schools to celebrate Lunar New Year with day off for first time. nbcnews.com
13. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 農曆; 除夕; 紅包; 恭喜發財; 元宵; 粽子; 月餅; 節 [Definitions and glyph origin]; 新年 and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
14. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). Kung Hei Fat Choi [English phrase from Cantonese]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
15. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese New Year [dates between 21 January and 20 February; red envelopes]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
16. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese zodiac [the twelve-animal cycle and its two starting points]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
17. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Mid-Autumn Festival. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
18. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Stroke order [Taiwan's standard: the vertical of 忄 second]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Three sentences that need fixing

A student writing about her family in Mandarin for the first time handed in these three sentences. Each has a different problem, and fixing them covers most of this lesson.

1. 我不有姐姐。 She meant: I don't have an older sister.
2. 我有一个哥哥和我有一个妹妹。 She meant: I have an older brother and I have a younger sister.
3. 我妈妈的姐姐的女儿十七岁。 She meant: my mom's older sister's daughter is seventeen.

The first two are wrong. The third is grammatical but clumsy, the way "my mother's sister's daughter" is clumsy in English when the word "cousin" exists. This lesson takes them one at a time, and on the way you will learn to name everyone in your family, count them and say what they do.

Bug 1: 有 takes 没, never 不

The verb 有 (yǒu) means "to have": 我有一个哥哥 (Wǒ yǒu yí ge gēge), I have an older brother. Almost every Mandarin verb is made negative with 不, as in 不是 from Lesson 6. The verb 有 is the exception. The Chinese Grammar Wiki puts it plainly: unlike most verbs, 有 is negated with 没 (méi), so "don't have" is 没有 (méiyǒu).

To ask, add 吗: 你有哥哥吗？ (Nǐ yǒu gēge ma?) Do you have an older brother? As Lesson 6 showed, Mandarin has no all-purpose yes or no, so you answer with the verb itself: 有 for yes, 没有 for no. The same 有 also means "there is" or "there are", which is how 我家有五口人 works, and which Lesson 19 develops.

The point: 不 makes almost any verb negative, but never 有. For "don't have" and "there isn't", always reach for 没有.

Counting the family: 几口人

The usual question about family size is 你家有几口人？ (Nǐ jiā yǒu jǐ kǒu rén?), "How many people are there in your family?" Here 口 (kǒu), "mouth", is a measure word, one of the counting words that Lesson 15 explains. Wiktionary lists it as the measure word for family members and populations, with the example 三口之家, "a family of three". That is also why 人口, "person mouths", means population, as you saw in Lesson 1. The answer counts everyone, including you:

我家有五口人：爸爸、妈妈、哥哥、妹妹和我。 (Wǒ jiā yǒu wǔ kǒu rén: bàba, māma, gēge, mèimei hé wǒ.) There are five people in my family: Dad, Mom, my older brother, my younger sister and me.

The general measure word 个 (ge) works too. TaiwanPlus's Legit Mando teaches the question as 你家有幾個人？ (Nǐ jiā yǒu jǐ ge rén?), written in traditional characters. In the answer above, the small mark 、 between the names is the enumeration comma, which Chinese uses between the items of a list, with 和 before the last one. Wikipedia's example is 苹果、香蕉、西瓜和橙子, "apples, bananas, watermelons and oranges".

Families in mainland China have been getting smaller. The 2020 census counted an average of 2.62 people in each family household, down from 3.10 in 2010. The National Bureau of Statistics linked the change to people moving more often and to young couples setting up their own homes as housing improved. Taiwan's household register averaged 2.41 people per household at the end of March 2025. The two systems count households differently, so compare the figures loosely.

Family words: older or younger, father's side or mother's side

English has one word for brother and one for sister. Mandarin's everyday words also say who is older, and the words for grandparents say which side of the family they are on.

To ask whether someone has brothers or sisters at all, use 兄弟姐妹 (xiōngdì jiěmèi), which Wiktionary glosses as brothers and sisters, siblings: 你有兄弟姐妹吗？ When you talk about one of them, you choose the word by age: 哥哥 or 弟弟, 姐姐 or 妹妹. And 我没有兄弟姐妹 means "I have no brothers or sisters".

Listen to the doubled words and you will hear the second syllable go light, in the neutral tone: bàba, gēge, mèimei. Wiktionary's pronunciation tables also record a variant in Taiwan in which the second syllable rises instead, as in bǎbá, gěgé and měiméi. The neutral-tone reading is standard on both sides, and it is the one to learn.

外婆 or 姥姥? A textbook argument from 2018

Your mother's parents have two pairs of names, and in June 2018 the choice between them made news. BBC News Chinese reported that the Shanghai Education Publishing House had changed every 外婆 to 姥姥 in a story in its second-grade Chinese reader. The change set off what the BBC called a north-south argument on social media. Many people in Shanghai, where 外婆 is the more common word, objected. One comment quoted by the BBC asked why, if "the north says 姥姥 and the south says 外婆", the southern word should count as dialect. The publisher replied that the change was for reading lessons: 外, 婆 and 姥 were all on the second-grade character list, and 外 and 婆 had already appeared earlier in the book.

The BBC also asked Xiang Mengbing, a professor of Chinese at Peking University. He said 姥姥 is used mainly in Beijing, Hebei and the areas around them, and 外婆 mainly in many southern areas, but that both entered the standard language long ago. In his words, both are standard Mandarin and differ only in flavour, one southern and one from Beijing. So use whichever your family uses. The same article mentions other north-south arguments about food, including whether to eat 元宵 or 汤圆 at the Lantern Festival of Lesson 13.

Bug 2: 和 joins nouns, not sentences

The second sentence, 我有一个哥哥和我有一个妹妹, uses 和 (hé), "and", to join two whole sentences. The Chinese Grammar Wiki warns against exactly this: 和 is mainly used to link nouns, and learners should not use it to link verbs or whole sentences. The fix is to say 有 once and join the two nouns:

我有一个哥哥和一个妹妹。 (Wǒ yǒu yí ge gēge hé yí ge mèimei.) I have an older brother and a younger sister.

When you need to join two separate statements, Mandarin simply puts them side by side, often with 也 (yě, also) from Lesson 4: 我有一个哥哥，也有一个妹妹. An English "and" between two verbs, as in "I went home and ate", takes no 和 in Mandarin. One regional note: Wiktionary records that when 和 means "and", its standard reading in Taiwan is hàn, while hé is standard on the mainland and a variant in Taiwan. You will hear both, and both are written 和.

Bug 3: the 的 chain

The particle 的 (de) marks possession, like 's in English: 老师的名字 (lǎoshī de míngzi), the teacher's name. The third sentence, 我妈妈的姐姐的女儿十七岁, uses 的 correctly. Its problem is that Mandarin has a single word for that person. She is your 表姐 (biǎojiě), which Wiktionary defines as a female cousin older than you, the daughter of your mother's sibling or of your father's sister. If she is younger than you, she is your 表妹 (biǎomèi). The fixed sentence is 我表姐十七岁 (Wǒ biǎojiě shíqī suì).

Cousins show how exact Mandarin kin words are, and Wiktionary's definitions split them into two kinds. Children of your father's brothers are 堂 cousins, so 堂哥 (tánggē) is an older male cousin through your father's brother. All your other cousins are 表 cousins. The words carry information that the English word "cousin" leaves out.

Look again at 我表姐: the 的 has gone. The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that Mandarin usually drops 的 between a pronoun and a close relationship, such as family, close friends or a boyfriend or girlfriend, and before an institution you belong to, such as your school or workplace. Its examples include 我家 (my home), 你哥哥 (your older brother), 她妈妈 (her mom) and 我们学校 (our school), and it notes that keeping 的 in these sounds less natural. With things, and with people who are not close to you, 的 stays: 我的名字, 老师的书 (lǎoshī de shū, the teacher's book).

Family words for people outside the family

Some kin words also work as polite forms of address. Wiktionary gives 叔叔 (shūshu) as your father's younger brother and also as a way to address a man around your father's age. It gives 阿姨 (āyí) as your mother's sister and also as "auntie" for any woman around your mother's age. A child can greet a parent's friend with 叔叔好 or 阿姨好, the same pattern as 老师好 in Lesson 5. Wiktionary also records 爷爷 as a term of address for an elderly man.

Jobs: 工作

The word 工作 (gōngzuò) is both a verb, to work, and a noun, a job. To ask about someone's job, say 你爸爸做什么工作？ (Nǐ bàba zuò shénme gōngzuò?), "What work does your dad do?", with 做 (zuò, to do) from Lesson 18. Answer with 是 and a job word.

Then add a description with 很 from Lesson 7: 我妈妈是医生，她工作很忙。 (Wǒ māma shì yīshēng, tā gōngzuò hěn máng.) My mom is a doctor, and she is very busy at work. To say someone has no job, use the fix from Bug 1: 他没有工作.

Characters to learn

Several of these are built the way Lesson 9 described, with one part for meaning and one for sound, and Wiktionary's notes on their origins show how far the clues go. The character 爸 is 父 (father) over 巴 (bā), and 奶 is 女 (woman) with 乃 (nǎi), an exact sound match. In 姐 (女 with 且) and 妹 (女 with 未, wèi), the sound clue only rhymes with today's reading. The character 哥 is 可 stacked on 可, and Wiktionary notes that its original meaning was "to sing", long before it meant older brother.

Two more carry old stories. The character 家 looks like a roof, 宀, over a pig, 豕; Wiktionary's note on its oldest forms says the lower part began as a sound component, a word for a boar, which was later written as 豕. And the 月 at the bottom of 有 is not the moon: Wiktionary explains it as a squeezed form of 肉, meat, under a hand.

Dialogue: a family photo (written for this course)

Find the three fixes from the start of the lesson: 没有 as the answer "no", 和 only before the last noun of each list, and 表姐 in place of the 的 chain. Two words arrive early: 做 (zuò, to do) from Lesson 18 and 谁 (shéi, who) from Lesson 20. Notice also 我爸爸 and 我妈妈 with no 的, and 一个 read yí ge, with the tone change of 一 from Lesson 4.

Listening: family words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 爸爸, 哥哥, 姐姐, 弟弟 and 妹妹. Write the tone of each first syllable and check that the second is light. Answers: bà 4, gē 1, jiě 3, dì 4, mèi 4.
2. Play 爺爺, 奶奶 and 姥姥. Which begins with a rising tone? Answer: 爺爺, yéye. Then find the Taiwan variant yěyé in the pronunciation table on the 爺爺 page.
3. Play 有 (the first recording, yǒu), 沒有 and 工作, then say aloud: 我有工作。 我没有工作。 他没有哥哥。
4. Play 叔叔 and 阿姨, then greet two family friends: 叔叔好！ 阿姨好！ Which word has no neutral tone? Answer: 阿姨, āyí.
5. Watch Legit Mando, episode 9 on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account. The phrase lesson starts at 0:11 and the writing segment at 5:55. Repeat the question 你家有幾個人？ after the host each time you hear it, and in the writing segment compare 幾個 with the simplified 几个.

Speaking: describe a family photo

Alone: find a family photo, or sketch a family tree on paper, and record a description of at least six sentences: how many people there are (我家有四口人), who they are, one sentence with 没有, one list joined with 和, and two jobs with 是. If you prefer not to describe your own family, invent one; the grammar is the same.

With a partner: interview each other with 你家有几口人？ 你有兄弟姐妹吗？ and 你爸爸妈妈做什么工作？ Then describe your partner's family back to them in three sentences, starting 你家有, and let them correct anything you got wrong.

Character writing: fourteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 家 10, 有 6, 没 7, 爸 8, 哥 10, 姐 8, 弟 7, 妹 8, 的 8, 和 8, 爷 6, 奶 5, 工 3, 作 7. In 有, 汉典's order begins with the horizontal and then the long slanting stroke, coded 132511. In 的, write 白 first; the dot inside 勺 is the very last stroke. In 和, write 禾 before 口. In 奶, the right side 乃 takes only two strokes. In 哥, write the upper 可 first.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 爷), and write the traditional forms 沒 and 爺 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 爺). Then write the three fixed sentences from the start of the lesson in characters.

Common misconceptions

• "有 is made negative with 不, like other verbs." It takes 没: 没有. 不有 is always wrong.
• "和 works wherever English uses and." It joins nouns. Between verbs or whole sentences, Mandarin uses no 和.
• "我的妈妈 is wrong." It is not wrong, but with family and other close relationships Mandarin usually drops 的: 我妈妈, 我家.
• "哥哥 means brother." It means older brother. A younger brother is 弟弟, and brothers and sisters in general are 兄弟姐妹.
• "外婆 is dialect and 姥姥 is the standard word, or the other way round." Both are standard Mandarin, with a southern and a Beijing flavour.
• "Family words are only for relatives." 叔叔, 阿姨 and 爷爷 are also polite ways to address adults who are not related to you.

The short version

The verb 有 means to have and there is, and its negative is 没有, never 不有. Families are counted with 口: 你家有几口人？ 我家有五口人. Everyday kin words say who is older, 哥哥 and 弟弟, 姐姐 and 妹妹, and which side of the family: 爷爷 and 奶奶 on your father's side, 外公 and 外婆 or 姥爷 and 姥姥 on your mother's. Cousins split into 堂 cousins, through your father's brothers, and 表 cousins, everyone else. The particle 的 marks possession but usually drops with family and institutions: 我妈妈, 我们学校. The word 和 joins nouns only. And 工作 means work, as a verb and as a noun, with job words after 是. Lesson 15 turns to the measure words that 口 and 个 belong to.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing possession with "you" [including negating 有 with 没]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing close possession without "de". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "and" with "he". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. BBC News 中文. (2018, June 22). 出版社改教材引發「外婆」與「姥姥」的南北之爭 [A publisher's textbook change sets off a north-south argument over 外婆 and 姥姥]. bbc.com
5. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2021, May 11). 第七次全国人口普查公报（第二号）[Communiqué of the seventh national population census, no. 2]. stats.gov.cn
6. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2021, May 11). 第七次全国人口普查主要数据情况 [Main data of the seventh national population census]. stats.gov.cn
7. Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior. (2025). 人口統計季刊 [Demographic quarterly], spring 2025. ris.gov.tw
8. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 口 [as a measure word]; 兄弟姐妹; 表姐; 表妹; 堂哥; 叔叔; 阿姨; 爺爺; 外婆; 姥姥; 工作; 和 [readings]; glyph origins of 爸, 奶, 姐, 妹, 哥, 家 and 有; entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
9. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese punctuation [the enumeration comma]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
10. TaiwanPlus. (n.d.). Legit Mando, episode 9: How many people do you have in your family? Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com
11. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 有 [stroke order 132511]; 爷. zdic.net

A sheet of paper, a glass of water

English already has measure words, but only for some nouns. You cannot say "a furniture" or "three waters". You say a piece of furniture, two sheets of paper, three glasses of water. The Chinese Grammar Wiki uses exactly these English examples to explain Mandarin, where the same thing happens with nearly every noun. To count books you cannot say 三书. You need a measure word between the number and the noun: 三本书 (sān běn shū), three books.

This lesson compares the measure words you will need most, from 个, which goes with almost anything, to specific ones such as 本 for books, 张 for flat things and 条 for long, thin ones. It also covers the other words that call for a measure word: 这 (this), 那 (that), 哪 (which) and 几 (how many).

The pattern: number, measure word, noun

Linguists call these words classifiers, and the Chinese name is 量词 (liàngcí). Wikipedia's article on Chinese classifiers sums up the rule: when a noun comes after a number, or after a word such as this or that, a classifier normally has to go in front of it. When a noun stands alone, with no number or demonstrative, it needs none, so 我有书 (I have books) is fine.

Two rules from earlier lessons apply. Before a measure word, two is 两, not 二, as Lesson 11 showed: 两个人, never 二个人. And 一 changes its tone before the measure word, as in Lesson 4: it becomes yí before a fourth tone (一个 yí ge, 一件 yí jiàn) and yì before the other tones (一本 yì běn, 一张 yì zhāng). A few nouns are measure words themselves. Wiktionary lists 年 as the classifier for years, so two years is simply 两年. Months are different: six months is 六个月, as Lesson 12 showed.

What matters here: in Mandarin a number almost never sits directly in front of a noun. Something stands between them, and if you cannot remember the right measure word, 个 will usually get your meaning across.

Eleven measure words compared

Wikipedia reports that ordinary dictionaries list 120 to 150 classifiers, but that the linguist Mary Erbaugh has argued that about two dozen core classifiers account for most of the classifiers people actually use. The table below covers eleven of the most useful. The nouns in it come with pinyin; many of their characters appear later in the course.

Read down the second column and you can see the logic: shape for 张 and 条, number for 只 and 双, a container for 杯. The logic has limits, though. Trousers take 条 in Mandarin but are a "pair" in English, and Wiktionary lists two Mandarin measure words for dogs, 只 and 条. Wikipedia notes that for cars some people say 部, others 台 and others 辆, while Cantonese uses 架. Choice can also change the meaning: a person is 一个人 normally, 口 when you count a household and 位 when you are being polite.

Why 只 holds one bird

The traditional form of the measure word 只 is 隻, and Wiktionary's note on its origin is easy to remember. The character is a short-tailed bird, 隹, above a hand, 又: to hold one bird is 隻, and to hold two birds is 雙, a pair. So 隻 counts animals and one of a pair, such as one shoe or one hand, and 雙 counts the pair.

Simplification merged this character with another. Simplified 只 stands for 隻 (zhī), the measure word, and also for 只 (zhǐ), which Wiktionary defines as only, just or merely. Taiwan and Hong Kong write the two differently: 兩隻狗 is two dogs, but 我只有一本書 is "I only have one book". Notice the tones, too: the measure word is zhī, first tone, and "only" is zhǐ, third tone.

个: the safe default

The Chinese Grammar Wiki calls 个 the most commonly used measure word and says it can be used "in a pinch" for any noun when you cannot think of a more precise one; you may not sound as polished, but you will be understood. For many nouns, it adds, 个 is the only correct measure word: 一个人, 一个朋友 (a friend), 一个星期 (a week).

Native speakers lean on it too. Wikipedia's article describes research showing that adults and children use 个 when they do not know the right classifier, and even when they do but are speaking quickly or informally. Most speakers, asked directly, can name the correct classifier and say it is required, yet still use 个 in conversation without noticing. Linguists call this classifier neutralization, 量词个化 in Chinese. In everyday speech 个 ends up far more frequent than any specialized measure word.

The tone of 个 deserves a note. Dictionaries give it as gè, fourth tone, which is why 一个 is yí ge. As a measure word, though, it is usually light, ge, and Wiktionary records that light reading as a very common variant for classifiers. The Chinese Grammar Wiki writes it as a neutral tone after 这 and 那 for the same reason.

这, 那 and 哪 need measure words too

A number is not the only word that calls for a measure word. The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that 这 (zhè, this) and 那 (nà, that) also need one before a noun, and that the same holds for 哪 (nǎ, which): 这本书 (this book), 那个人 (that person), 哪只猫? (which cat?). When this or that and a number come together, Wikipedia gives the order as demonstrative, number, measure word, noun, the same as English "these three cats": 这三只猫 (zhè sān zhī māo).

In speech you will also hear zhèi, nèi and něi before measure words. Wiktionary lists zhèige and nèige as readings of 这个 and 那个 alongside zhège and nàge, and něige alongside nǎge for 哪个. Both pronunciations are correct; learn to recognize the ei versions, and use whichever your teacher or recording uses.

For more than one, 些 (xiē) replaces the number and the measure word. These are 这些 (zhèxiē), those are 那些 (nàxiē), and some is 一些, written yīxiē but, as the Chinese Grammar Wiki notes, pronounced yìxiē because of the tone change of 一: 这些书 (these books), 那些人 (those people), 一些水 (some water). To ask how many, put 几 where the number goes and keep the measure word: 你有几只猫？ (Nǐ yǒu jǐ zhī māo?) How many cats do you have? The Chinese Grammar Wiki uses 几 for numbers expected to be small and 多少 for larger ones, which Lesson 16 uses for prices.

Characters to learn

Wiktionary's notes on origins give some useful clues. The character 本 is a tree, 木, with an extra stroke marking its roots, which is why it also means root or origin. In 狗, the dog radical 犭 gives the meaning and 句 gives the sound, and in 猫 the sound comes from 苗 (miáo), close to māo. The traditional 貓 uses a different animal radical, 豸, from the simplified 猫. The character 位 is a person, 亻, with 立 (to stand), and 杯 is wood, 木, with the sound component 不.

Dialogue: at Maya's house (written for this course)

Count the measure words: 只 for the animals, 本 for books, 张 for the table, 杯 for the water. Notice 这三本书, with the order this, three, measure word, book; and 我的 and 我哥哥的 used on their own to mean "mine" and "my brother's". Two words arrive early: 要 (yào, to want) from Lesson 16 and 桌子 (zhuōzi, table) from Lesson 19.

Listening: measure words aloud

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 個, 這個 and 那個. Is 個 a full fourth tone in 這個, or light? Answer: light, zhège and nàge. Then read the pronunciation tables on those pages and find the alternative readings zhèige and nèige.
2. Play 本, 張, 隻, 條, 杯, 件 and 位, and write each tone. Answers: běn 3, zhāng 1, zhī 1, tiáo 2, bēi 1, jiàn 4, wèi 4. Then say each with 一 in front, changing its tone: yì běn, yì zhāng, yì zhī, yì tiáo, yì bēi, yí jiàn, yí wèi.
3. Play 狗 and 貓 (the first Mandarin recording on each page), then say 两只狗 and 三只猫. Which animal has a third tone? Answer: the dog, gǒu.
4. Play 一些 and 這些. What tone does 一 have in the recording of 一些? Answer: fourth, yìxiē, because 些 is a first tone.
5. Self-dictation: record yourself reading 一张票, 两本书, 三杯茶, 四只鸟, 五条路 and 六件衣服, then play the recording back the next day and write the phrases in characters and pinyin.

Speaking: what is on your desk

Alone: look at your desk, bag or room and record at least eight phrases with a number, a measure word and a noun, using 个 whenever you do not know the specific word: 三本书, 两张纸, 一杯水, 一个手机 (yí ge shǒujī, a phone). Then record three sentences with 这 or 那: 这本书是我的。

With a partner: play a guessing game. One of you hides some objects and the other asks questions with 几 and a measure word: 你有几本书？ 你有几支笔？ (zhī bǐ, pens). Answer with full phrases: 我有两本书. Swap roles, and score a point for every correct measure word other than 个.

Character writing: thirteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 个 3, 本 5, 张 7, 只 5, 条 7, 杯 8, 件 6, 位 7, 这 7, 那 6, 些 8, 狗 8, 猫 11. In 本, the short horizontal across the foot of the tree is the last stroke. In 这, write 文 first and the walking radical 辶 last; Wikipedia's summary of stroke-order rules gives this as "bottom enclosures last", as in 道 and 建. In 狗 and 猫, the three strokes of 犭 come first. In 那, the right-hand 阝 is two strokes in the mainland count and three in Taiwan's, as Lesson 8 explained.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 这), and write the traditional forms 個, 張, 隻, 條, 這 and 貓 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 隻). Then write five phrases about your own room with five different measure words.

Common misconceptions

• "A number can go straight in front of a noun." Almost never: 三本书, not 三书. A few nouns, such as 年, are measure words themselves: 两年.
• "这 and 那 work like English this and that." They also need a measure word: 这本书, 那个人.
• "个 is only for people." It is the general measure word, the only correct one for many nouns and a workable fallback for most others.
• "Each noun has exactly one measure word." Many have more than one: dogs take 只 or 条, cars 辆, 部 or 台, and people 个, 口 or 位, depending on what you mean.
• "只 always means only." In simplified Chinese it is also the measure word for animals, which traditional writing spells 隻.
• "Two of something is 二个." Before a measure word, two is 两: 两个, 两本, 两只.

Where this leaves us

Mandarin counts nouns with a measure word between the number and the noun: 三本书, 两张票, 一杯水, with 两 for two and the tone change of 一. Each measure word fits a kind of thing: 本 for books, 张 for flat things, 条 for long, thin things, 只 for animals and one of a pair, 双 for pairs, 件 for clothes and matters, 杯 for cups, 位 for people politely, 口 for a household and 辆 for vehicles. When unsure, use 个, which native speakers also use far more than any other. The words 这, 那, 哪 and 几 take measure words too, and 些 makes 这些, 那些 and 一些. Lesson 16 puts numbers and measure words to work with money.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Measure words for counting; Measure word "ge"; Measure words in quantity questions. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Measure words with "this" and "that". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "some" with "yixie". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese classifier [usage; neutralization; variation in usage; number of classifiers]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 個; 隻 [glyph origin]; 只; 條; 張; 本; 件; 位; 年; 狗; 貓; 書; 車; 鞋; 路; 河; 魚; 這個; 那個; 哪個; 一些 [classifiers, readings and Mandarin audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
6. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Stroke order [basic rules: bottom enclosures last]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
7. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 这; 本 [stroke order]. zdic.net

One price tag, three readings

A price tag at a market stall in Beijing says ¥35.50. Here are three ways to read it aloud, and all of them are correct.

The problem for a learner is that the tag shows none of these words. Mandarin has two sets of names for the same units of money, one mainly for writing and one for speech, and speakers often drop the last unit. This lesson works out how to read any price, then uses the answer to ask, bargain, pay and understand a sale sign.

Two sets of names for the same money

Mainland China's currency is the 人民币 (rénmínbì), "the people's currency". Its main unit is the 元 (yuán), and Wikipedia's article on the renminbi lists 块 (kuài) as its everyday name. One yuan is 10 角 (jiǎo), called 毛 (máo) in speech, and 100 分 (fēn), although fen coins are now rarely used. The banknotes in common use run from ¥1 to ¥100.

The Chinese Grammar Wiki's page on counting money gives the spoken pattern as number, 块, number, 毛: 两块五毛 (liǎng kuài wǔ máo) is ¥2.50, and 三块八毛六 (sān kuài bā máo liù) is ¥3.86, with the 分 left unsaid. Three details follow from its examples.

• Two kuai is 两块. 块 is counted like any measure word, so ¥2.50 is 两块五, not 二块五.
• The last unit can drop. When the smaller amount is a number of tenths, you can just say the number: ¥3.80 is 三块八.
• A final 2 is 二. When the last digit is a two, it is said 二, so ¥2.20 is 两块二.

The wiki compares 块 and 元 to "bucks" and "dollars" in American English, or "quid" and "pounds" in British English, while noting that 块 fits more situations than "bucks" does. You will hear 块 almost everywhere people talk, and see 元 on receipts, notices and price lists.

Bottom line: write 元 and 角, say 块 and 毛, and drop the last unit whenever the amount is still clear.

Five places, five currencies

The pattern of Mandarin money talk is the same in every one of these places: a number, a unit word, and 多少钱 to ask. What changes is the currency and some local words. Wikipedia gives the Taiwanese Hokkien nickname for the New Taiwan dollar as 箍 (kho͘), and Hong Kong's ten-cent unit is 毫, so expect local words when you listen.

Asking and bargaining

To ask a price, name the thing and add 多少钱 (duōshao qián), "how much money?". The Chinese Grammar Wiki's examples include 这杯咖啡多少钱？ (Zhè bēi kāfēi duōshao qián?), "How much is this cup of coffee?", and 这件衣服多少钱？ (Zhè jiàn yīfu duōshao qián?), "How much is this item of clothing?". Notice the measure words from Lesson 15. Wiktionary records 多少 as duōshao on the mainland and duōshǎo, with a full third tone, in Taiwan.

Then react. The wiki gives 太 + adjective + 了 for "too", noting that it often sounds like a complaint: 太贵了！ (Tài guì le!), "That's too expensive!". To ask for a lower price, put 一点, often shortened to 点, after the adjective. The wiki's own example is 老板，便宜点吧 (Lǎobǎn, piányi diǎn ba), "Boss, a little cheaper, please". Wiktionary defines 老板 (lǎobǎn) as a shop owner or boss and also as a polite way to address an adult, which is why it is the word for calling a stallholder. The same pattern gives a phrase worth knowing in any shop: 请说慢一点 (Qǐng shuō màn yìdiǎn), "Please speak a little more slowly".

One trap: 一点 goes after the adjective, never before it. 便宜一点 is "a bit cheaper"; 一点便宜 is wrong. And 太便宜了 means "it's so cheap!", which is a strange thing to tell a seller you are bargaining with.

Buying and selling: 要, 买, 卖 and 给

Four verbs do most of the work in a shop.

• 要 (yào), to want. Wiktionary's examples include 你要番茄酱吗？ (Nǐ yào fānqiéjiàng ma?), "Do you want ketchup?". With a verb after it, the Chinese Grammar Wiki notes, 要 means "want to": 我要买衣服, I want to buy clothes. 我要这个 is "I'll take this one".
• 买 (mǎi), to buy, third tone.
• 卖 (mài), to sell, fourth tone. The two words differ only in tone, so say them carefully: 我买 is "I buy", 我卖 is "I sell".
• 给 (gěi), to give. The person comes first, then the thing: 给你两百块 (gěi nǐ liǎng bǎi kuài), "here's two hundred for you"; 请给我一杯水 (qǐng gěi wǒ yì bēi shuǐ), "please give me a glass of water".

The traditional characters tell a story about the first pair. Wiktionary explains that 買 is a net, 网, over a cowrie shell, 貝, and that 賣 was originally 出, "to go out", over 買. A handy way to remember it: selling sends a purchase out. The simplified 买 and 卖 keep the shape of that relationship, 卖 being 买 with 十 on top.

Discounts: why 八折 is twenty percent off

A sale sign says 打折 (dǎzhé), which Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary defines as lowering the selling price of goods. The number of the discount works the opposite way from English. A teacher's lesson plan published by Asia Society makes the point directly: "20% off" in English is 八折 in Chinese, because the number counts the tenths of the price that you still pay. So 打八折 means you pay 80 percent, 打九折 means you pay 90 percent, and 打八五折 means 85 percent. Half price is 对折 (duìzhé), which Wiktionary glosses as half-price, a 50 percent discount.

A 200-yuan jacket at 八折 costs 160 yuan. Students who read 八折 as 80 percent off expect to pay 40 yuan, and the shop will disappoint them.

Paying with a phone

In mainland China most people can pay without cash. The China Internet Network Information Center reported that by June 2025 the country had 1.022 billion online payment users, 91.0 percent of everyone online. The phone is 手机 (shǒujī), literally "hand machine", which takes the measure word 部 in one of Wiktionary's examples, 一部新手机, though 个 is common too. The verb 打 (dǎ), to hit, turns up in money talk in 打折 and in everyday life in 打电话 (dǎ diànhuà), to make a phone call.

Characters to learn

The cowrie shell links several of these. Wikipedia's article on shell money explains that cowrie shells, or copies of them, were used as money in China starting over three thousand years ago, and that so many characters about money and trade contain 貝 that it is known as the radical for money. You can see it in 贵 (expensive) and in traditional 買 and 賣; the simplified 买 and 卖 lost it. Other money characters use metal instead: Wiktionary analyses 錢 as 金, metal or gold, with the sound component 戔.

Two more notes. The word 衣服 is yīfu on the mainland, with a light second syllable, and yīfú in Taiwan, according to Wiktionary, which gives the same kind of split for 便宜: piányi on the mainland and piányí in Taiwan. And 便 has a second reading, biàn, meaning convenient, which you will meet in other words; in 便宜 it is always pián.

Dialogue: at a market stall (written for this course)

Check the arithmetic and the grammar together: 件 counts the tops, 两件 uses 两, and every price uses 块 because this is speech. The 一 of 一百 is yì before the third tone of 百, and 不客气 starts with bú before the fourth tone of 客, both from Lesson 4.

Listening: prices and shopping words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 買 and 賣 several times, then have someone play one at random while you say whether it is buy or sell. Answer key: mǎi, third tone, is buy; mài, falling, is sell.
2. Play 錢, 塊, 毛 and 元, and write each tone. Answers: qián 2, kuài 4, máo 2, yuán 2.
3. Play 多少錢, 貴 and 便宜, then say 多少钱？ 太贵了！ 便宜点吧！ as one exchange. The 多少錢 entry gives the reading duōshǎo qián; listen for the full third tone on 少, then compare the mainland reading duōshao on the 多少 page.
4. Play 老闆, 衣服 and 手機. Is the second syllable of 衣服 light or full in the recording? Answer: light, yīfu, the mainland standard.
5. Watch Legit Mando, season 2, episode 3: How much does it cost? on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account, about six and a half minutes long. In the skit a shopper bargains with a shopkeeper. Write down every price you hear as a number, and listen for whether 多少 sounds like duōshao or duōshǎo.

Speaking: a market role-play

Alone: collect five prices from a receipt, a menu or an online shop, convert them to yuan if you like, and record each one twice: the written reading with 元 and 角, then the spoken one with 块 and the short form where it applies. Then record yourself asking 这个多少钱？ and reacting with 太贵了！ and 便宜点吧.

With a partner: one of you is the 老板 with five items and price tags; the other has 200 kuai to spend. Bargain for at least two items, agree a price, pay with 给你, and give change. Then swap roles and add a sale sign: 打八折 or 打九折, worked out correctly.

Character writing: fifteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 钱 10, 块 7, 毛 4, 元 4, 买 6, 卖 8, 贵 9, 便 9, 宜 8, 要 9, 衣 6, 服 8, 机 6, 给 9, 打 5. In 钱, the metal radical 钅 takes five strokes before the right side. In 毛, the short slanting stroke on top comes first and the long final stroke bends and hooks up to the right. In 卖, write 十 first, then everything of 买 below it. In 要, the top part takes six strokes before 女.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 卖), and write the traditional forms 錢, 塊, 買, 賣, 貴, 機 and 給 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 賣). Then write three price tags in characters, the written way: 二十五元, 八元五角, 一百元.

Common misconceptions

• "块 is slang you should avoid." It is the normal spoken word for the main unit; 元 is the written and formal one.
• "¥2.50 is 二块五." It is 两块五: 块 counts like a measure word, so two is 两.
• "八折 means 80 percent off." It means you pay 80 percent, which is 20 percent off.
• "买 and 卖 are the same word." They differ in tone, mǎi and mài, and mean the opposite: buy and sell.
• "Every Chinese-speaking place uses the yuan." Mainland China uses the renminbi, Taiwan the New Taiwan dollar, Hong Kong the Hong Kong dollar, Singapore the Singapore dollar and Malaysia the ringgit, called 令吉 in Chinese.
• "一点 goes before the adjective, like English 'a bit'." It goes after: 便宜一点, 慢一点.

What you now know

Mainland prices are written with 元, 角 and 分 and spoken with 块 and 毛: ¥35.50 is 三十五元五角 on paper and 三十五块五 in speech, ¥2.50 is 两块五, and a final two is 二, as in 两块二. You ask 这个多少钱？, complain with 太贵了, bargain with 便宜点吧, and pay with 给你. You know that 买 and 卖 differ only in tone, that 打八折 means paying 80 percent, and that Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia each have their own currency and money words. Most people in mainland China can pay by phone, and the cowrie shell inside 贵 and traditional 買 and 賣 is a reminder of the oldest Chinese money. Module 6 takes Mandarin to school.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Counting money [多少钱; number + 块 + number + 毛; 两块五; 两块二]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "too" with "tai"; Comparing "youdian" and "yidian" [便宜点吧]; Wanting to do something with "yao". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Renminbi; New Taiwan dollar; Hong Kong dollar; Singapore dollar; Malaysian ringgit [units, nicknames and denominations]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Shell money [cowries and the radical 貝 in ancient China]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Theodorou, S. (2013). Making advertisements for Walmart in China [Lesson plan; discounts with 折]. Asia Society. asiasociety.org
6. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 重編國語辭典修訂本 [Revised Mandarin Chinese dictionary], entry 打折 [search the site for 打折]. dict.revised.moe.edu.tw
7. China Internet Network Information Center. (2025). 第56次中国互联网络发展状况统计报告 [The 56th statistical report on China's internet development] [online payment users, June 2025]. cnnic.net.cn
8. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 買; 賣 [glyph origins]; 錢; 塊; 多少; 便宜; 衣服 [mainland and Taiwan readings]; 老闆; 要; 給; 對折; 令吉; 打電話; and entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
9. TaiwanPlus. (n.d.). Legit Mando, season 2, episode 3: How much does it cost? Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com

Thirteen million test takers

In late May 2025, China's Ministry of Education announced that 13.35 million people had registered for that year's 高考 (gāokǎo), the national college entrance examination, which began on 7 June. Wiktionary defines 高考 as a higher education entrance examination, especially China's national one. For many students in mainland China, the last year of high school, 高三 (gāosān), is organized around it.

The gaokao is the most famous feature of school in a Chinese-speaking place, but it is only one. This lesson compares school life in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore: how the years are organized, which exams matter, what the school day looks like and how Chinese is taught. On the way you will learn to name your subjects, read a timetable, say what you like and say what you know how to do.

School words

The 上 and 下 of 上课 and 下课 are the "up" and "down" of Lesson 9, used here for the start and the end of a class. Wiktionary equates 高一 with tenth grade in North America and 高三 with twelfth grade, so an American junior is in 高二. To count classes, use the measure words Wiktionary gives for 课: 节 for a class period, as in 两节数学课 (two periods of math), and 门 (mén) for a course or subject, as in 六门课 (six subjects).

Subjects

The Chinese subject itself has three names. Wiktionary defines 语文 as Chinese language and literature as a school subject; Taiwan's curriculum calls it 國語文 (guóyǔwén), as Lesson 1 noted; and Wiktionary's table of regional words lists 华文 (huáwén) alongside 华语 in Singapore and Malaysia. Notice two old friends in the list: the 历 of 历史 is the merged character from Lesson 13, and 乐 in 音乐 is the 乐 of 快乐, read yuè here.

Three school systems compared

The Singapore column needs a word of explanation. Wikipedia's article on language education in Singapore describes an English-based bilingual system. Subjects are taught in English, while each student's official Mother Tongue is taught as a second language: Mandarin for Chinese students, Malay for Malay students and Tamil for many Indian students. Mother Tongue is a compulsory subject at the PSLE, O Level and A Level. In 2010 a minister's remarks raised fears that its weight in the PSLE would be cut. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong then held a press conference, speaking in English, Malay and Mandarin, and said directly: "we are not reducing the weight of Mother Tongue languages at PSLE."

So what? A student in Singapore studies Chinese as one subject among many, with its own lessons and exams, while a student in Beijing or Taipei studies every subject in Mandarin. The same words, 上课 and 考试, describe very different school days.

The school day

Official rules and students' own accounts give a picture of the day in each place.

• Mainland China. A 2021 notice from the Ministry of Education asked for 10 hours of sleep for primary pupils, 9 for junior middle school students and 8 for senior high students. It said secondary schools should generally not start morning classes before 8:00, that schools must not require students to arrive early for organized activities, and that schools should give students a midday rest where conditions allow. One routine is long-standing. Wikipedia reports that in 1963 the government began requiring schoolchildren aged 6 to 17 to do eye exercises at school, a self-massage of points around the eyes, though it adds that their effectiveness is in question because nearsightedness among Chinese children has risen over the same period.
• Taiwan. Wikipedia notes that students through high school clean their own classrooms and school grounds. In a submission on children's rights published on a Taiwan government website, students wrote that they have seven to nine class periods a day plus early "morning self-study", and objected that some schools make them stay in their seats, heads down, during the noon rest. In 2022 the Ministry of Education responded to a proposal made on the government's online policy platform: from August that year, senior high students could arrive at about 8 a.m. on four days a week, and school assemblies were cut from two a week to one, Taiwan News reported.
• Singapore. The day runs in English, with Mother Tongue lessons in the timetable like any other subject.

喜欢 and 会

Two verbs let you talk about school. The first is 喜欢 (xǐhuan), which Wiktionary defines as to like or be fond of. It takes a noun or a verb phrase: 我喜欢数学 (I like math), 我喜欢写汉字 (I like writing characters). Negate it with 不: 我不喜欢考试. To ask about someone's favourite, put 什么 where the answer goes, a pattern Lesson 20 explains fully: 你喜欢什么课？ (Nǐ xǐhuan shénme kè?), "Which classes do you like?" Wiktionary records xǐhuan with a light second syllable on the mainland and xǐhuān in Taiwan.

The second is 会 (huì). The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that 会 expresses an ability that has been learned, a skill, in the pattern subject + 会 + verb + object: 我会写汉字 (I can write Chinese characters), 他会说中文 (he can speak Chinese). The negative is 不会, which the wiki suggests translating as "don't know how to": 我不会写这个字, I don't know how to write this character. Use 会 for languages, sports and skills such as cooking and driving; Lesson 20 compares it with 能 and 可以.

Characters to learn

Look at the left side of 课, 试 and 语: the speech radical 讠, two strokes, simplified from 言, seven strokes. It marks words to do with speaking and language, and the traditional counts in the table show how many strokes the simplified form saves. The character 体 is a person, 亻, with 本 from Lesson 15; its traditional form 體, with the bone radical 骨, has 23 strokes, more than any other form taught in this course. You already know 汉 from 汉语 and 汉字, and 语 from 汉语 in Lesson 1.

Dialogue: comparing timetables (written for this course)

Maya answers 会 with the verb alone, the yes of Lesson 6. Two words arrive early: 上午 (shàngwǔ, morning) and 下午 (xiàwǔ, afternoon), from Lesson 18; 可是 (kěshì) means but. The phrase 不太会 means "can't do very well", with 太 from Lesson 7 and the tone change of 不 before the fourth tone of 太.

Listening: school words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 學校, 上課, 下課 and 考試. Which two words share their second syllable? Answer: 上課 and 下課, both ending in kè.
2. Play 數學, 歷史, 體育, 英語, 地理 and 物理, and write the tones of each pair of syllables. Answers: 4 2; 4 3; 3 4; 1 3; 4 3; 4 3.
3. Play 喜歡, 會 (the first recording, huì) and 寫, then say 我喜欢写汉字 and 我会写汉字 and explain the difference in English. Answer: I like writing characters; I know how to write characters.
4. Play 高考 and 漢語. In 高考, does the third tone of 考 come at the end of a phrase, where it is pronounced in full? Answer: yes, gāokǎo ends on a full third tone.
5. Watch Legit Mando, episode 3: I like, love on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account. The phrase lesson starts at 0:11 and the writing segment at 5:06. Repeat each sentence with 喜歡 after the host, and listen for whether its second syllable is light or full.

Speaking: your timetable

Alone: write your own weekly timetable in Chinese, with the days from Lesson 12 across the top and your subjects in the boxes, then record a description of two days: 星期一上午有数学和历史，下午有体育。 Add which subjects you like and one skill you have: 我会说一点中文。

With a partner: interview each other: 你今天有什么课？ 你喜欢什么课？ 你会写多少汉字？ Then compare your partner's school day with one of the three systems in this lesson, in English or in Chinese.

Character writing: fourteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 校 10, 课 10, 考 6, 试 8, 数 13, 汉 5, 语 9, 史 5, 体 7, 育 8, 喜 12, 欢 6, 会 6, 写 5. The speech radical 讠 is two strokes: a dot, then a horizontal that turns down and flicks up. In 史, write 口 first, then the long slanting stroke and the final sweep to the right. In 喜, work strictly from top to bottom: 士, 口, the short strokes in the middle, then the lower 口. In 写, the top is 冖, two strokes, not 宀.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 语), and write the traditional forms 課, 語, 漢, 會 and 寫 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 語). Then write the names of your three favourite subjects in characters.

Common misconceptions

• "上课 means 'up class'." It means to go to class or that class starts; 下课 means class is over.
• "Every Chinese-speaking student studies in Chinese." In Singapore, subjects are taught in English and Chinese is studied as a Mother Tongue subject.
• "会 and 喜欢 can swap." 我会写汉字 says you know how to write characters; 我喜欢写汉字 says you enjoy it.
• "The Chinese subject has one name everywhere." It is 语文 on the mainland, 國語文 in Taiwan and 华文 in Singapore and Malaysia.
• "高一 is first grade." It is the first year of senior high school, tenth grade in North American terms.
• "School eye exercises have been shown to prevent nearsightedness." Wikipedia notes that their effectiveness is in question, since nearsightedness among Chinese children has risen while the exercises continued.

Recap

School vocabulary is shared across the Chinese-speaking world: 学校, 上课 and 下课, 考试, subjects such as 数学, 历史 and 体育, and the senior high years 高一 to 高三. The systems differ. Mainland China has nine compulsory years and two big exams, 中考 and the 高考, for which 13.35 million people registered in 2025; official rules set eight hours of sleep for senior high students and no morning classes before about 8:00 in secondary schools. Taiwan extended basic education to twelve years in 2014, and its students clean their classrooms and in 2022 won a later start on most days. Singapore teaches in English and requires a Mother Tongue, so Chinese there is 华文, one subject among many. To talk about it all, use 喜欢 for what you like and 会 for what you know how to do. Lesson 18 follows a whole day, from getting up to going to bed.

Sources

1. Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. (2025, May 29). 2025年全国高考报名人数1335万人 [13.35 million registered for the 2025 national college entrance exam] [reprinted from 人民日报]. moe.gov.cn
2. General Office of the Ministry of Education. (2021). 教育部办公厅关于进一步加强中小学生睡眠管理工作的通知 [Notice on further strengthening sleep management for primary and secondary students] (教基厅函〔2021〕11号). moe.gov.cn
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Education in China; Education in Taiwan; Language education in Singapore. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Eye exercises [China, since 1963]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Taiwan News. (2022, March 8). MOE announces school hour change for Taiwan senior high school students. taiwannews.com.tw
6. Opinions from the Children: How we've been encroached on our rights at school [Submission on children's rights in education]. (n.d.). Social and Family Affairs Administration, Taiwan. crc.sfaa.gov.tw
7. Prime Minister's Office, Singapore. (2010, May 11). Remarks by PM Lee Hsien Loong at the press conference on Mother Tongue language. pmo.gov.sg
8. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing a learned skill with "hui". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
9. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 高考; 中考; 高一; 高三; 語文; 華文 [regional synonyms]; 課 [measure words]; 喜歡; 會; and school-subject entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
10. TaiwanPlus. (2021). Legit Mando, episode 3: I like, love. Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com

One sentence, built slot by slot

Here is the sentence this lesson builds: 我每天早上七点在家吃早饭。 (Wǒ měitiān zǎoshang qī diǎn zài jiā chī zǎofàn.) "I eat breakfast at home at seven every morning." Compare the order of the two languages.

English says it in another order: I / eat / breakfast / at home / at seven every morning. It puts the place and the time at the end, smallest unit first. Mandarin puts them before the verb, time before place, and the time runs from big to small, as Lesson 12 showed. Once you know the slots, you can describe a whole day by filling them in again and again. This lesson does exactly that, one step at a time.

Step 1: who, and Step 2: when

The subject comes first, and the time comes right after it, or sometimes before it: the Chinese Grammar Wiki gives both 我明天有空 and 明天我有空 for "I'm free tomorrow". What the time cannot do is follow the verb. For times of day, use these words.

The 午 in three of these is noon: 上午 is above, or before, noon and 下午 below, or after, it, the same 上 and 下 as in 上课 and 下课. Put the time of day before the clock time, big to small: 早上七点 (7 a.m.), 下午三点半 (3:30 p.m.), 晚上十点 (10 p.m.).

For things you do every day, add 每天 (měitiān). The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that 每 normally takes a measure word, as in 每个星期 (every week), but that 天 and 年 are measure words already, so every day is just 每天 and every year 每年. It also notes that sentences with 每 usually add 都 (dōu, all) before the verb: 我每天都六点起床, "I get up at six every day."

Step 3: where

To say where an action happens, put 在 (zài) and the place before the verb. The Chinese Grammar Wiki gives the pattern as subject + 在 + place + verb + object and points out that this is one of the places where Chinese word order differs most from English. Its examples include 我周末想在家睡觉 (Wǒ zhōumò xiǎng zài jiā shuìjiào), "On the weekend I want to sleep at home", and a piece of advice, 不要在床上吃东西, "Don't eat in bed."

Notice the order in the first one: time 周末 (the weekend), then place 在家, then the verb. That is the full pattern. Lesson 19 looks at 在 on its own as a verb and at words such as 上 (on) and 里 (in).

Step 4: does what, and Step 5: to what

Two of these come in two parts that belong together. 吃饭 (chīfàn) is "eat a meal": 饭 is cooked rice and, by extension, a meal, so breakfast, lunch and dinner are 早饭, 午饭 and 晚饭. And 睡觉 is "sleep", with 觉 read jiào; the same character is read jué in other words, so it is worth learning as a pair.

The upshot: every sentence about your day fills the same slots in the same order. Who, when, where, does what, to what: 我 / 晚上十点 / 在家 / 看 / 书.

Linking the steps: 先, 然后, 以前 and 以后

A day is a sequence, and Mandarin has compact ways to show it.

• Actions in a row. Two verb phrases can simply follow each other, the first often saying where you go and the second what you do there. The Chinese Grammar Wiki's example is 我们去咖啡店喝咖啡吧, "Let's go to a café for coffee." In the same way, 我去学校上课 is "I go to school for class".
• 先 and 然后. The wiki describes 先 (xiān), first, followed by 再 (zài) or 然后 (ránhòu), then, as the way to say "first ..., then ...": 我先做作业，然后吃晚饭, "I do my homework first and then have dinner". Its own example is 先洗手再吃, "wash your hands first, then eat".
• 以前 and 以后. These mean before and after, and they come after the time or the event, not before it as in English. The wiki's examples are 十点以前 (before ten) and 10点以后 (after ten). With a verb or event it is the same: 吃饭以后 (after eating), 睡觉以前 (before going to bed), 晚饭以后 (after dinner).

来 and 去

Two more verbs complete the routine. 去 (qù), from Lesson 3, is to go, away from where you are; 来 (lái) is to come, toward where the speaker is. So a friend phoning from home asks 你来我家吗？, "Are you coming to my place?", and you answer 我去你家, "I'll go to your place", each verb pointing from the speaker's position. Both take the place directly after them, with no word for "to": 来学校, 去中国.

A day in numbers

China's National Bureau of Statistics measures how people spend their day by asking them to keep a diary in 15-minute steps, for one weekday and one weekend day. Its third national time-use survey, carried out from 11 to 31 May 2024, published results by age group. For young people aged 6 to 17 who studied on the diary days, which was almost all of them, study and training took an average of 8 hours 12 minutes a day, counting weekends. Free-time activities took 2 hours 19 minutes, and those who used the internet spent 2 hours 15 minutes on it. Across all ages, sleep and rest averaged 9 hours 46 minutes a day. A survey diary is a description of a day in time-place-verb order, kept in 15-minute slots, which is the skill this lesson teaches.

Characters to learn

Wiktionary's notes on origins make several of these easy to remember. The character 看 is a hand, 手, over an eye, 目: shading your eyes to look into the distance. The character 來 began as a picture of wheat, with an ear, leaves and roots, and was borrowed for its sound to write "come". The character 睡 has the eye radical 目 with 垂 as its sound component, and 晚 has the sun radical 日 with 免 for its sound. In 饭 and the traditional 飯, the food radical 饣 (食) tells you it is something to eat.

Dialogue: a school project on daily life (written for this course)

Check every statement against the five slots: 我 / 每天早上六点半 / 起床 has no place, and 我 / 在家 / 吃 / 早饭 has no time, but nothing is ever out of order. The question 你在哪儿吃早饭？ puts 哪儿 (nǎr, where) in the place slot, exactly where the answer 在家 goes; Lesson 20 explains why. Maya's last line uses 太...了 from Lesson 16.

Listening: a day in words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 上午, 中午, 下午 and 晚上. Which one ends with a light syllable? Answer: 晚上, wǎnshang.
2. Play 起床, 吃飯 and 睡覺, then put them in the order of a day and say each with a time: 早上七点起床, 中午十二点吃饭, 晚上十点睡觉.
3. Play 早飯, 午飯 and 晚飯. All three begin with a third tone; in which does the third tone change because another third tone follows? Answer: none, because 飯 is fourth tone; the first syllables are half third tones.
4. Play 然後, 以前 and 以後, then say: 我先吃早饭，然后去学校。 吃饭以后，我做作业。
5. Play 看, 做, 來, 電視 and 作業, and write the tones. Answers: kàn 4; zuò 4; lái 2; diànshì 4 4; zuòyè 4 4.

Speaking: your day aloud

Alone: keep a diary of one school day the way the statistics bureau does, noting what you are doing every hour. Then record your day in at least eight sentences, each with a time and as many with a place as possible: 我早上七点起床。 我七点半在家吃早饭。 Use 先 and 然后 once, and 以后 once.

With a partner: interview each other with 你每天几点起床？ 你在哪儿吃午饭？ 你晚饭以后做什么？ Write your partner's answers as a timeline, then read it back to them in Chinese, changing 我 to 你.

Character writing: fifteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 早 6, 午 4, 晚 11, 床 7, 吃 6, 饭 7, 回 6, 睡 13, 觉 9, 每 7, 来 7, 看 9, 做 11, 以 4, 视 8. In 回, as Lesson 8 showed, write the outer frame without its bottom, then the whole inner box, then close the outer frame. In 看, the flattened hand comes first, with its slanting stroke, then the eye. In 来, the long horizontal comes first, then the two short strokes, then the cross of 木. Taiwan's dictionary counts 以 as five strokes and 睡 as fourteen, so its stroke-order animations differ from the mainland's for those two.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 看), and write the traditional forms 飯, 覺, 來 and 視 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 以). Then write five sentences about your day in characters, one for each time of day.

Common misconceptions

• "The place goes at the end, as in English." It goes before the verb with 在: 我在家吃饭, never 我吃饭在家.
• "Time words can come after the verb." They come before it, after or before the subject: 我七点起床 or 七点我起床.
• "Every day is 每个天." 天 is already a measure word, so it is 每天; the same goes for 每年.
• "After dinner is 以后晚饭." 以后 follows the event: 晚饭以后, 吃饭以后.
• "觉 is always jiào." It is jiào in 睡觉 and jué in other words.
• "来 and 去 are interchangeable." 来 points toward the speaker and 去 away: 你来我家, 我去你家.

Putting it together

A Mandarin sentence about your day fills five slots in a fixed order: who, when, where, does what, to what, as in 我每天早上七点在家吃早饭. Times of day, 早上, 上午, 中午, 下午 and 晚上, come before clock times, and 每天 needs no measure word because 天 is one; 都 often follows. The place goes before the verb with 在. The verbs of a routine are 起床, 吃饭, 去学校, 回家, 做作业, 看书 and 睡觉, and 先 ... 然后, 以前 and 以后 put them in sequence, with 以前 and 以后 after the event. China's 2024 time-use diaries, kept in 15-minute slots, found that young people who studied spent about eight hours a day at it. Lesson 19 turns from when things happen to where things are.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Indicating location with "zai" before verbs. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Sequencing events in time [actions in a row; 以前 and 以后; time words and word order]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Sequencing with "xian" and "zai" [with 然后]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "every" with "mei". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
5. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2024, October 31). 第三次全国时间利用调查公报（第一号）[Third national time-use survey, communiqué no. 1: method]. stats.gov.cn
6. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2024, October 31). 第三次全国时间利用调查公报（第二号）[Communiqué no. 2: time use of all residents]. stats.gov.cn
7. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2024, October 31). 第三次全国时间利用调查公报（第三号）[Communiqué no. 3: time use by sex, urban and rural, and age group]. stats.gov.cn
8. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 看; 來; 睡; 晚 [glyph origins]; 睡覺; 上午; 晚上; 然後; 以前; 以後; and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
9. 汉典 [Zdic]. (n.d.). 看; 回 [stroke order]. zdic.net

Four sentences about a desk

A student was asked to describe a photo of a desk with a book on it. She wrote these four sentences.

1. 书是在桌子上。 She meant: The book is on the desk.
2. 书在桌子。 She meant the same.
3. 有一本书在桌子上。 She meant: There is a book on the desk.
4. 桌子上是一本书。 She meant the same as the third.

The first three are wrong, and the fourth is correct Chinese but says something slightly different from what she meant. English uses one verb, "to be", for all of these ideas. Mandarin splits the work among three verbs, 在, 有 and 是, and adds small location words that English does not need. This lesson fixes the four sentences one at a time.

Bug 1: 在 needs no 是

The verb 在 (zài) means to be at or to be in a place. The Chinese Grammar Wiki gives the pattern as subject + 在 + place and warns that, although English uses "to be", it is tempting but wrong to add 是: 在 is the only verb needed. Its examples include 我在上海 (I'm in Shanghai), 老板在外面 (the boss is outside) and 他不在学校 (he's not at school). So the first sentence becomes 书在桌子上.

Why this matters: English "is" does three jobs that Mandarin gives to three different verbs. 是 says what something is, 在 says where it is, and 有 says what there is somewhere. Most errors in this lesson come from reaching for 是 when one of the others is needed.

Bug 2: the location word

The second sentence, 书在桌子, is missing a word. The Chinese Grammar Wiki describes a "sandwich": 在, then the place, then a location word such as 上 (on), 下 (under), 里 (in) or 旁边 (beside), as in 在桌子上, on the desk. Big places such as countries and cities need no location word: 在中国, 在上海. The same pattern works for occasions: 在课上 is in class.

The wiki calls these words "nouns of locality", 方位词 (fāngwèicí), and gives their one- and two-character forms.

The short forms attach directly to a noun: 桌子上, 书包里 (in the schoolbag). The longer forms can also stand alone: 他在外面, he is outside; 洗手间在左边, the restroom is on the left. In the forms with 边, the 边 is often light, as the wiki's pinyin shows.

Bug 3: with 有, the place comes first

The third sentence copies English word order. To say what there is somewhere, the Chinese Grammar Wiki gives the pattern place + 有 + object: literally, the place "has" the thing. Its examples include 我家有很多小狗 (there are a lot of puppies in my home) and 你家有牛奶吗？ (is there milk at your place?). So "There is a book on the desk" is 桌子上有一本书. The negative is 没有, as in Lesson 14: 桌子上没有书.

Compare the two patterns. With 在, the sentence is about the thing and tells you where it is: 书在桌子上. With 有, the sentence is about the place and tells you what is there: 桌子上有一本书.

Bug 4: 是 says what fills the place

The fourth sentence, 桌子上是一本书, is good Chinese. The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that in the pattern place + 是 + noun, the thing after 是 is the only thing worth mentioning in that place. Its example is 袋子里是我的午饭, translated as "the only thing in the bag is my lunch". So 桌子上是一本书 answers the question "What's that on the desk?": it is a book. If the student simply wanted to say that a book is there, among whatever else, the right verb is 有.

Here, there and where: 儿 or 里?

Mandarin has two sets of words for here, there and where.

The 儿 forms add an r sound to the end of the syllable, a feature called erhua. Wikipedia's article explains that standard Mandarin uses some erhua, as in 哪儿, and that colloquial speech in northern China uses much more. Many speakers from southern China avoid it and say 哪里 instead, and erhua is extremely rare among Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and Singapore. Both sets are correct everywhere; choose the 儿 forms if you are learning with a northern teacher and the 里 forms for Taiwan or Singapore, and understand both. When 哪里 is read with two full third tones, nǎlǐ, the third-tone change of Lesson 4 makes the first syllable rise; Wiktionary also records a reading with a light 里, nǎli.

Living somewhere: 住在

Most verbs put 在 + place before the verb, as Lesson 18 showed. The Chinese Grammar Wiki notes a few exceptions, verbs of location such as 住 (zhù, to live), 放 (to put), 坐 (to sit) and 站 (to stand), which take 在 + place after them: 你住在上海吗？ (Do you live in Shanghai?). So "I live in Beijing" is 我住在北京, and "Where do you live?" is 你住在哪儿？ TaiwanPlus's Legit Mando teaches the question as 你住哪裡？, without 在.

Addresses follow the big-to-small rule you already know from dates. Wikipedia's article on addresses notes that Chinese and Taiwanese addresses written in characters run from the largest area to the smallest, followed by the name of the person; written in the Latin alphabet, they follow the Western order. The address at the foot of Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary website, 臺北市大安區和平東路一段179號, runs city (市), district (區), road (路) and section (段), then the number (號).

Where is the restroom?

The question every traveller needs is 请问，洗手间在哪儿？ or, in Taiwan, 請問，洗手間在哪裡？ Wiktionary defines 洗手间 (xǐshǒujiān), literally "wash-hands room", as a bathroom, restroom or toilet; 厕所 (cèsuǒ) is a plainer word for a toilet. The answer uses everything in this lesson: 在那儿 (over there), 在左边 (on the left), 在教室旁边 (next to the classroom).

Characters to learn

Two of these are mergers of the kind Lesson 10 described. Simplified 里 stands for 裡 or 裏, inside, and for 里, a village or a traditional unit of distance; Wiktionary explains 裡 as the clothes radical 衤 with 里 for the sound, the lining of a garment. And Wiktionary's notes on origins explain two pairs you have now met: 左 began as a picture of a left hand, and the 又 at the top of 右 was originally a right hand, with 口 added later to tell the characters apart. The traditional 兒 is a picture of an infant, with the soft spot on top of the head drawn open.

Dialogue: at 王小文's home (written for this course)

Sort the sentences by verb. 在 tells where the bathroom and the cat are; 有 lists what is in the room; 是 identifies the thing on the desk. The measure word 把 (bǎ) for chairs comes from Wiktionary's entry for 椅子, which lists 把 and 张; 房间 (fángjiān) is a room.

Listening: where words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 這兒, 那兒 and 哪兒, then 這裡, 那裡 and 哪裡. Can you hear the r in the first three? Which recording in the second set begins with a rising tone? Answer: 哪裡, read nǎlǐ with the third-tone change.
2. Play 旁邊 and 上面, then say 在桌子旁边 and 在桌子上面.
3. Play 桌子, 椅子, 房間 and 廁所, and write the tones of the first syllables. Answers: zhuō 1, yǐ 3, fáng 2, cè 4.
4. Watch Legit Mando, episode 8: Where do you live? on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account. The phrase lesson starts at 0:11, a short story at 2:30 and the writing segment, 住哪裡, at 4:54. Repeat 你住哪裡？ after the host, and note that it uses 哪裡, not 哪兒.
5. Watch Legit Mando, season 2, episode 6: Where is the bathroom?, about five minutes long, and write down the question in characters as the hosts teach it.

Speaking: describe your room

Alone: stand in your room, or look at a photo of one, and record at least eight sentences: three with 有 (我的房间里有一张床), three with 在 and a location word (书在桌子上), and two with 是 answering "what's that?" (椅子上是我的书包). Then say where you live with 住在.

With a partner: one of you describes a room using only Chinese while the other draws it on paper, then compare the drawing with the real room or photo. Swap roles, and use 左边, 右边, 前面 and 后面 at least once each.

Character writing: thirteen characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 里 7, 外 5, 前 9, 边 5, 左 5, 右 5, 桌 10, 椅 12, 旁 10, 儿 2, 住 7, 洗 9, 间 7. In 左 and 右, 汉典's order begins with the horizontal and then the long slanting stroke, and Wikipedia's article on stroke order notes that Taiwan's standard also writes the horizontal first in both. In 边, write 力 first and the walking radical 辶 last, the "bottom enclosures last" rule from Lesson 15. In 间, write the door 门 first, then 日 inside it. In 里, the bottom horizontal is the last stroke.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 边), and write the traditional forms 裡, 邊, 兒 and 間 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 邊). Then draw a plan of your room on paper and label six things and their positions in characters.

Common misconceptions

• "'The book is on the desk' needs 是." 在 is the verb: 书在桌子上, never 书是在桌子上.
• "在桌子 means on the desk." Objects need a location word: 在桌子上. Only big places such as countries and cities go without: 在北京.
• "'There is a book on the desk' is 有一本书在桌子上." The place comes first: 桌子上有一本书.
• "桌子上是一本书 and 桌子上有一本书 mean the same." 是 names what is there, as the only thing worth mentioning; 有 simply says that a book is there.
• "哪儿 is the only correct word for where." 哪里 is standard too, and it is the usual form in Taiwan and Singapore.
• "住 works like other verbs: 我在北京住." With 住 the usual order is 我住在北京.

Pulling it together

Mandarin gives "to be" three jobs and three verbs. The verb 在 says where something is, with no 是: 书在桌子上. The verb 有 says what there is in a place, with the place first: 桌子上有一本书, negated as 没有. And 是 names what fills a place: 桌子上是一本书, the book and nothing else worth mentioning. Objects need a location word after them, 上, 下, 里, 外, 前, 后 or the forms with 面 and 边 such as 旁边, 左边 and 右边, while countries and cities do not. Here, there and where are 这儿, 那儿, 哪儿 in the north and 这里, 那里, 哪里 everywhere, especially in Taiwan and Singapore. The verb 住 takes 在 after it, 我住在北京, and addresses run from the biggest area to the smallest. Module 7 turns to questions: how to ask where, who, what and why without changing the word order.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing existence in a place with "zai"; Expressing location with "zai... shang / xia / li". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing existence with "you". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Alternative existential sentences [place + 是 + noun]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Special cases of "zai" following verbs [住在]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Erhua [regional use]; Address [East Asian address order]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
6. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 洗手間; 廁所; 椅子 [measure words]; 裡; 左; 右; 兒 [glyph origins]; 這兒; 哪裡; and other entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Stroke order [Taiwan's standard: 左 and 右 with the horizontal first]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. TaiwanPlus. (n.d.). Legit Mando, episode 8: Where do you live?; season 2, episode 6: Where is the bathroom? Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com
9. Ministry of Education, Taiwan. (2021). 國語辭典簡編本 [Concise Mandarin Chinese dictionary] [site footer: Taipei campus address]. dict.concised.moe.edu.tw

One question, one word too many

A student who had learned 吗 in Lesson 6 wanted to ask a friend where she was going, and said 你去哪儿吗？ The friend understood, but the sentence is wrong, and the reason is the most useful rule in this lesson. The Chinese Grammar Wiki puts it plainly: you do not normally add 吗 to a sentence that is already a question. 哪儿 (nǎr, where) already makes 你去哪儿 a question, so 吗 has nothing to do. The correct question is simply 你去哪儿？

English questions move their question word to the front: "Where are you going?" Mandarin questions do not move anything. This lesson shows how that works for every question word, then adds the other ways Mandarin asks questions: the A-not-A form, 还是 for choices and 吧 for suggestions.

The rule: put the question word where the answer goes

The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that word order is the same in Chinese for questions and statements: you simply put the question word in the place of the thing you want to ask about. Its example is 我是小李 (I am Xiao Li), which becomes 你是谁？ (Nǐ shì shéi?), "Who are you?", literally "you are who?". Read each question below with its answer and you will see that only one slot changes.

Notice where 什么时候 sits: in the time slot, before the verb, exactly where the answer 五点 goes, as Lesson 18 taught. 哪儿 sits in the place slot of 你在哪儿吃饭？ for the same reason. The Chinese Grammar Wiki adds that in speech people normally say shéi, not shuí, for 谁; Wiktionary marks shuí as literary but notes that it is colloquial in Singapore. The answer to 为什么 usually begins with 因为 (yīnwèi), because, and 坐车 (zuò chē) means to go by car or bus, which Lesson 24 explains.

Worth holding on to: a Mandarin question is its answer with a hole in it. Say the answer you expect, replace the unknown part with a question word, and stop. Do not move anything, and do not add 吗.

Three more question words in use

• 怎么 + verb asks how to do something. The Chinese Grammar Wiki gives the pattern subject + 怎么 + verb + object: 你们怎么学中文？, "How do you study Chinese?". The same pattern gives the classroom question 这个字怎么写？, "How do you write this character?".
• 怎么样 asks how something is or what someone thinks: 你最近怎么样？ (How have you been recently?), one of the wiki's examples. At the end of a suggestion it means "how about it?": 我们星期六去，怎么样？
• 几 and 多少 both ask how many. As Lesson 15 explained, 几 is for numbers you expect to be small and takes a measure word; 多少 is for larger numbers and prices, as in 多少钱 from Lesson 16.

Yes-no questions without 吗: A-not-A

Mandarin can also ask a yes-no question by saying the verb twice, positive then negative. The Chinese Grammar Wiki calls this the affirmative-negative question and notes that it feels much more natural in Chinese than its English equivalent, "Are you going or not?". Its examples include 是不是？ (Is it or not?) and 他们来不来？ (Are they coming?). The 不 in the middle is usually light.

• 你去不去？ (Nǐ qù bu qù?) Are you going?
• 你喜不喜欢中文？ Do you like Chinese? With a two-character verb, the wiki notes, it is more common to repeat only the first character, though 你喜欢不喜欢中文？ is also correct.
• 你有没有弟弟？ (Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu dìdi?) Do you have a younger brother? With 有 the negative is 没有, as in Lesson 14.

An A-not-A question is already a question, so it takes no 吗: the wiki's own warning example is 这是不是书吗？, "Is this is a book?". Answer it the way you answer a 吗 question, by repeating the verb: 去 or 不去, 有 or 没有.

Or: 还是 in questions, 或者 in statements

English "or" has two Mandarin equivalents. The Chinese Grammar Wiki explains that 还是 (háishi) is normally used when asking a question and 或者 (huòzhě) mostly in statements. So "Do you drink tea or coffee?" is 你喝茶还是喝咖啡？, one of the wiki's examples, and the question needs no 吗 because 还是 already asks. "We'll go on Saturday or Sunday" is a statement: 我们星期六或者星期天去.

吧: suggestions and softer sentences

The particle 吧 (ba) at the end of a sentence turns a command into a suggestion. The Chinese Grammar Wiki notes that with 我们 it means "let's": 我们走吧, let's go. It also softens other statements, making them gentler and more polite, as in its example 再等一等吧, "wait a little longer". Unlike 吗, 吧 does not turn a statement into a yes-no question; it invites agreement.

Can: 会, 能 and 可以

English "can" has three Mandarin partners. The Chinese Grammar Wiki gives a useful first guide, while warning that real usage overlaps: 会 means "know how to", for learned skills, as in Lesson 17; 能 (néng) means "to be able to"; and 可以 (kěyǐ) means "to have permission to".

• 我会说中文。 I can speak Chinese: I have learned how.
• 我今天不能去。 I can't go today: something prevents me.
• 我可以坐这儿吗？ May I sit here? Asking permission.

Knowing and meaning: 知道, 认识 and 意思

English "know" also splits. Wiktionary defines 知道 (zhīdào) as to know something or be aware of it, and 认识 (rènshi), from Lesson 6, as to know a person or recognize something. So 我知道他的名字 is "I know his name", and 我认识他 is "I know him". The classroom answer you will need most is 我不知道, "I don't know".

Wiktionary defines 意思 (yìsi) as meaning. Together with 怎么 it gives the questions every learner needs:

• 这是什么意思？ What does this mean?
• 这个字怎么写？ How do you write this character?
• 这个字怎么念？ (zěnme niàn) How do you read this character?
• 请再说一遍。 (Qǐng zài shuō yí biàn.) Please say that again.

Characters to learn

Wiktionary's notes on origins hold some surprises. The character 能 began as a picture of a bear: the two 匕 on the right are its paws, and 月 is its face with an open mouth. The oldest form of 知 combined an adult, a mouth and a child, knowledge passed down by speaking, before one part changed into 矢. And 谁 is the speech radical with 隹 for its sound. Three characters share the heart radical 心, the old seat of thinking: 怎, 意 and 思.

Dialogue: making weekend plans (written for this course)

Count the question types: 什么, 什么时候, 哪儿 and 谁 sit in their answer slots; 还是 offers a choice; 怎么样 asks for agreement; 认识他吗 uses 吗; and 对不对 is an A-not-A tag, like "right?". New words: 周末 (zhōumò, weekend), 电影 (diànyǐng, movie) and 门口 (ménkǒu, entrance), built from 门 and 口. Notice 还 twice, once as "still" in 还不知道 and once as "also" in 还有谁.

Listening: question words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 為什麼, 怎麼 and 怎麼樣, and write the tone of each full syllable. Answers: wèi 4, shén 2; zěn 3; zěn 3, yàng 4, with 麼 light in all three.
2. Play 還是 and 或者, then make one question with 还是 and one statement with 或者 about drinks.
3. Play 知道, 意思, 能 and 可以. In 可以, two third tones meet: which syllable changes? Answer: the first, so kěyǐ is said with a rising 可.
4. Watch Legit Mando, episode 7: What's fun in ...? on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account. The phrase lesson starts at 0:11 and the writing segment at 5:28. The question it teaches, 哪裡好玩？, puts 哪裡 in the subject slot: "where is fun?". Repeat it, then ask the same about your own town with 哪儿.

Speaking: twenty questions

Alone: write ten questions you could ask a new classmate, using at least eight different question words and one A-not-A question, then record yourself asking them and answering them about yourself. Check each for an unwanted 吗.

With a partner: play twenty questions. One of you thinks of a famous person, place or thing; the other may ask up to twenty yes-no questions in Chinese, with 吗 or A-not-A, before guessing with 是不是: 他是不是美国人？ 他会不会唱歌？ (chànggē, sing). Then swap.

Character writing: eleven characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 谁 10, 为 4, 怎 9, 样 10, 还 7, 吧 7, 知 8, 道 12, 意 13, 思 9, 能 10. In 为, the first stroke is a dot at the top left and the last is a dot inside. In 还 and 道, the walking radical 辶 goes last, the bottom-enclosure rule from Lesson 15. In 意, write 音 (立 over 日) and then 心. In 能, write the left side, 厶 over 月, before the two 匕 on the right.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 能), and write the traditional forms 誰, 為, 樣 and 還 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 還). Then write five questions in characters, each with a different question word.

Common misconceptions

• "Every question ends in 吗." Only yes-no questions take 吗. Questions with a question word, an A-not-A pair or 还是 do not.
• "Question words go first, as in English." They stay where the answer goes: 你去哪儿？, not 哪儿你去？
• "或者 and 还是 are interchangeable." 还是 is normally for questions and 或者 for statements.
• "知道 and 认识 both mean know, so either will do." 知道 is knowing a fact; 认识 is knowing a person.
• "会, 能 and 可以 all mean can, so pick any." Start with know how, be able, and be allowed, and expect some overlap.
• "吧 makes a question." It makes a suggestion or softens a statement: 我们走吧, let's go.

Looking back

Mandarin questions keep statement word order. Put the question word where the answer will go, 谁, 什么, 哪 with a measure word, 哪儿, 什么时候, 几 or 多少, 怎么, 怎么样 or 为什么, and add no 吗. Yes-no questions use 吗 or the A-not-A form, 去不去 and 有没有, with answers that repeat the verb. In questions "or" is 还是, and in statements it is 或者. The particle 吧 turns a command into a suggestion. For "can", start from 会 (know how), 能 (be able) and 可以 (be allowed); for "know", use 知道 for facts and 认识 for people. And when you are stuck, ask 这是什么意思？ or 这个字怎么写？ Lesson 21 takes on the particle that worries learners most: 了.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Placement of question words. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Yes-no questions with "ma" [no 吗 on sentences that are already questions]; Affirmative-negative question. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Comparing "haishi" and "huozhe". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Suggestions with "ba"; Softening speech with "ba". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
5. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). How to do something with "zenme"; Asking how something is with "zenmeyang". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
6. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Comparing "hui," "neng," "keyi". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
7. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 誰 [readings]; 知道; 認識; 意思 [definitions]; 能; 知 [glyph origins]; and entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
8. TaiwanPlus. (n.d.). Legit Mando, episode 7: What's fun in ...? Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com

The claim: 了 is the past tense

Many learners first meet 了 (le) as "the Mandarin past tense", the equivalent of English -ed. Wikipedia's article on Chinese grammar notes that the particle "is sometimes considered to be a past tense marker". The idea is attractive, because so many sentences about the past contain it. The Chinese Grammar Wiki's examples include 我买了三本书, "I bought three books", and 她上个月去了北京, "she went to Beijing last month".

This lesson puts the claim on trial. Four kinds of sentences are the evidence: if 了 were a past tense, each would behave differently. After the evidence comes a verdict that fits all of it, and then the patterns you can use today.

Evidence 1: the past without 了

Wikipedia states that Chinese does not have grammatical markers of tense: the time of an action is shown by time words such as yesterday and now, or left to the context. Plenty of sentences about the past contain no 了. The Chinese Grammar Wiki's example 以前，我不会说中文, "Before, I couldn't speak Chinese", describes a past situation with no 了 in it. The wiki also explains that 了 is not used with habitual or continuous actions, so a sentence such as 我以前每天走路去学校, "I used to walk to school every day", needs none either. Here 走路 (zǒulù) means to walk.

Evidence 2: the future with 了

The same wiki notes that 了 can appear in sentences about the future as well as the past, because what matters is whether the action has been completed, whatever the time frame. Wikipedia agrees that 了 can be used with future events in the right context. So 明天我下了课就去找你 means "Tomorrow, once I've finished class, I'll come and find you": the class will be over before the finding begins. The 就 (jiù) in that sentence means "then". The Chinese Grammar Wiki describes this as the first use of 就 to learn: one part of the sentence sets up a situation, and the part with 就 says what follows from it.

Evidence 3: no 了 after 没

To say something did not happen, Mandarin puts 没 or 没有 before the verb, as Lesson 14 showed for 有. The Chinese Grammar Wiki warns that 了 is not normally used with 没有, because 了 marks completed actions and 没有 marks actions that did not happen. It calls 我没有做了 "a very common mistake for beginner learners" and corrects it to 我没有做, "I didn't do it". A real past tense would show up in negative sentences too.

Evidence 4: 了 for something true right now

The Chinese Grammar Wiki gives examples of 了 at the end of a sentence where nothing is in the past at all. For example, 下雨了 (xià yǔ le) means "It's raining": it wasn't raining before, and now it is. Similarly, 我饿了 (wǒ è le) means "I'm hungry" right now, and 宝宝会说话了 means "The baby can talk now". In each, 了 marks a change, a new situation that was not true before. Wikipedia calls this sentence-final 了 a marker of change of state. With an age, 我十六岁了 means "I'm sixteen now", a new fact since your birthday.

The verdict: completion and change, not tense

The evidence settles the dispute. The Chinese Grammar Wiki calls 了 a marker of aspect, which is not the same as tense: tense is about when an action happens, while this aspect is about whether the action is complete within a time frame. Textbooks usually separate two main uses.

The core of it: do not ask "is this in the past?". Ask "is this action complete?" or "is this a new situation?". If the answer to either is yes, 了 is likely to belong; if the sentence describes a habit or a past state, or is negated with 没, it is likely not to.

Honesty requires one more piece of evidence. The Chinese Grammar Wiki calls the use of 了 "the million-dollar question that confounds all learners of Chinese", and says it is learned through many individual patterns, not a few simple rules. The patterns below are the most useful first ones.

Verb 了 with an object: say when or how many

When the verb has an object, the Chinese Grammar Wiki notes that 了 sits comfortably right after the verb if the time is specified or the object has a number and measure word.

• With a time: 我今天吃了早饭。 I ate breakfast today.
• With a number and measure word: 我喝了两杯咖啡。 I drank two cups of coffee. 老师问了五个问题。 The teacher asked five questions.
• Otherwise 了 can follow the object: 上个月我去台湾了。 I went to Taiwan last month.
• A string of completed actions needs only one 了: 我们上周去北京开会了。 We went to Beijing for a meeting last week.

Four more patterns with 了 and 过

• 已经 ... 了, already. The Chinese Grammar Wiki calls 已经 (yǐjīng) ... 了 the basic pattern for "already" and notes that the 了 is easy to forget but makes the sentence more natural: 他们已经走了, "they've already left".
• 不 ... 了, not any more. 不 before the verb and 了 at the end mark a change of plan or a stop: 我不想吃了, "I don't want to eat any more"; 我不去看电影了, "I've decided not to go to the movie", both from the wiki.
• Verb + 完, finished. 完 (wán) after a verb says the action is finished, and the wiki's page on result complements notes that 了 nearly always appears with them: 我做完作业了, "I've finished my homework"; 你看完了吗？, "Have you finished reading it?".
• 过, have ever. 过 (guo) after a verb says that something has been done at least once, without saying when; it is about experience. The wiki's answer to the question "do I use 过 to make past tense?" is that it is especially for past experiences. 我去过中国 is "I've been to China". The negative uses 没, with 过 kept: 我没学过这个词, "I've never studied this word".

Everyday questions sometimes use both: 你吃过了吗？ (Nǐ chī guo le ma?), "Have you eaten?". The Chinese Grammar Wiki notes that verb + 过 + 了 is common with daily routines such as eating, brushing teeth and showering: 她吃过了, "she has eaten already".

Characters to learn

Wiktionary explains 雨 as a picture of a cloud with drops of rain falling from it, the top horizontal added later, and you can still see the four drops. It also warns not to confuse 已 with two look-alikes: 己 (jǐ, self), which stays open at the top left, and 巳 (sì), which closes completely. The 完 of "finished" contains 元 from Lesson 16 under a roof.

Dialogue: after the weekend (written for this course)

Label every 了 in the dialogue as completion or change, and notice the negatives without it: 没看, 没去, 没吃过. The phrase 看了三本书 has its number and measure word; 下雨了 is a new situation; 不想看书了 is "not any more"; and 下了课就 is a completion in the future. New words: 包子 (bāozi, steamed bun), 饺子 (jiǎozi, dumpling, from Lesson 22) and 带 (dài, to take someone along).

Listening: completion and change

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 了: the page has a recording of le and others of liǎo. Which one is the particle? Answer: le, short and light.
2. Play 已經, 完 and 過, then say: 我已经吃完了。 我去过北京。
3. Play 下雨 and 就, then say 下雨了！ as if looking out of a window, and 下了课就回家 as a plan.
4. Watch Legit Mando, episode 5: Have you eaten? on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account, about six minutes long. The phrase lesson starts at 0:11 and the writing segment at 4:41. Listen for 吃過了嗎？ and identify the 過 and the 了.
5. Self-dictation: record these, then write them down the next day and label each 了 as completion or change: 我买了一本书。 天冷了。 我不去了。 他已经回家了。

Speaking: what changed this year

Alone: record six sentences about how things have changed since last year, using sentence 了: 我十六岁了。 我会写一百个汉字了。 我不喜欢那个电视节目了。 Then record three things you did last weekend with verb 了 and a number: 我看了两个电影。

With a partner: ask each other five "have you ever" questions with 过, such as 你去过中国吗？ and 你吃过饺子吗？, and answer with 去过 or 没去过. Then report to a third person: 她去过台北，没去过北京。

Character writing: seven characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 了 2, 已 3, 经 8, 完 7, 过 6, 雨 8, 就 12. In 了, the first stroke turns at the top and the second is the long vertical hook. In 已, leave a gap at the top left; compare 己 and 巳 as you write. In 过, write 寸 first and the walking radical 辶 last. In 雨, the four dots inside come last. In 就, write 京 on the left before 尤 on the right.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 已), and write the traditional forms 經 and 過 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 過). Then write three sentences about today in characters, each with a different 了.

Common misconceptions

• "了 is the past tense." It marks completion or a change of situation. Sentences about the past can lack it, and sentences about the future can have it.
• "The negative of 我去了 is 我没去了." 了 is not normally used with 没: 我没去.
• "Every verb about the past needs 了." Habits and past states take none, and a string of actions usually needs only one.
• "下雨了 means it rained." It usually means it is raining now, when it was not before.
• "过 is another past tense." It marks experience, having done something at least once: 我去过中国.
• "已经 is enough by itself." The natural pattern is 已经 ... 了: 他们已经走了.

The takeaway

The claim that 了 is a past tense fails four tests: the past often goes without 了, the future can have it, negatives with 没 drop it, and sentence-final 了 often describes something true right now. Mandarin has no tense; 了 marks aspect. Verb 了 says an action is complete, most naturally with a time or a number and measure word: 我喝了两杯咖啡. Sentence 了 says a situation has changed: 下雨了, 我十六岁了, and with 不, 我不去了. Add 已经 ... 了 for already, verb + 完 for finished, and 过 for experience, negated as 没 ... 过. Module 8 puts the grammar of the last twenty lessons to work in restaurants and on public transport.

Sources

1. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese grammar [aspects: no grammatical tense; perfective 了; change-of-state 了; 过]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
2. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing completion with "le" [aspect not tense; time or quantity; completion in the future]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
3. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing a change with "le"; Expressing "not anymore" with "le". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
4. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Negation of past actions with "meiyou" [go easy on the 了]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
5. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing experiences with "guo"; Using "guo" with "le". Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
6. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "already" with "yijing"; Expressing "then" with "jiu"; Result complement. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
7. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Learner FAQ [how do I use 了; is 过 the past tense]; Sequencing events in time [以前]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
8. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 了; 已 [usage note on look-alikes]; 雨 [glyph origin]; 已經; 過; 下雨; and entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
9. TaiwanPlus. (2021). Legit Mando, episode 5: Have you eaten? Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com

Three meals in three cities

On a winter trip, Maya eats lunch in a noodle shop in Beijing, breakfast the next week in a breakfast shop in Taipei, and dinner at a hawker centre in Singapore. The food is different each time, and so are some of the words: the menu, the way you say "for here" or "to go", even the script on the wall. The core of ordering, though, is the same in all three, and it uses the grammar you already have. This lesson follows her through the three meals.

Lunch in Beijing: a bowl of noodles

Maya and 王小文 go into a small noodle shop near the school. On the wall is the 菜单 (càidān), the menu. Wiktionary defines 菜 as a vegetable and also as a dish or course, so 菜单 is the list of dishes, and 点菜 (diǎncài), to choose dishes, is to order.

They choose 炸酱面 (zhájiàngmiàn). Wiktionary describes it as thick wheat noodles topped with ground pork stir-fried with salty fermented soybean paste, and Wikipedia's article cites a dictionary of Chinese culture that lists it, with dumplings, among the dishes identified with Beijing. To order, they could say any of these:

• 我要两碗炸酱面。 I want two bowls of zhajiang noodles. 要 is direct and clear.
• 我想吃炸酱面。 I'd like zhajiang noodles. The Chinese Grammar Wiki describes 想 (xiǎng) as "would like to", a more tactful way to say what you want, and notes that 要 can sound a bit more demanding.
• 来两碗炸酱面。 Two bowls of zhajiang noodles, please. Wiktionary notes that 来 can stand for many verbs, its meaning depending on the context; in a restaurant it means "bring us" or "we'll have".

Notice the measure word 碗 (wǎn), bowl, between the number and the food, as Lesson 15 taught. To drink, 喝 (hē): 你喝什么？ 我喝茶. If you do not want chilli, add 不要辣 (bú yào là), "no chilli". When you have finished, call 服务员 (fúwùyuán), which Wiktionary glosses as a server or waiter, and ask to pay: 买单 (mǎidān), which Wiktionary defines as to pay the restaurant bill. If you want leftovers to take home, ask for 打包 (dǎbāo), which Wiktionary explains as putting food in a takeaway box, a word that began in Mandarin. To eat in is 堂食 (tángshí), a word you will see on signs.

Breakfast in Taipei: 蛋饼 and 豆浆

A week later Maya is in Taipei, where the signs are in traditional characters. She goes into a 早餐店 (zǎocāndiàn), a breakfast shop, and orders a Taiwanese favourite: 蛋餅 (dànbǐng), which Wikipedia describes as a Taiwanese breakfast dish, an egg pancake or rolled egg crepe, sold mainly at breakfast shops, restaurants and night market stalls. With it she drinks 豆漿 (dòujiāng), soy milk.

Her order uses another measure word, 份 (fèn), which Wiktionary lists as the measure word for servings: 老闆，一份蛋餅，一杯豆漿。 The owner answers with a question: 內用還是外帶？ (Nèiyòng háishi wàidài?) Wiktionary labels 內用 as chiefly Taiwanese for "to eat in, for here", and defines 外帶 as to take away. Maya answers 內用, and sits down to eat.

Dinner in Singapore: chicken rice at a hawker centre

In Singapore the Chinese signs are in simplified characters again. Maya goes to a hawker centre, 小贩中心 (xiǎofàn zhōngxīn) in Chinese, which Wikipedia describes as an often open-air food court with many stalls selling affordable meals. She lines up for 海南鸡饭 (Hǎinán jīfàn), Hainanese chicken rice. Wikipedia describes it as poached or roasted chicken with seasoned rice and chilli sauce, created by immigrants from Hainan in southern China and now commonly associated with Singaporean cuisine, available in most food courts and hawker centres.

She orders 一份鸡饭, then decides to take it back to her hotel: 打包. The word has travelled. Wiktionary records that Malay borrowed it from Cantonese 打包 (daa3 baau1) as tapau, a colloquial word for taking food away, so you may hear "tapau" at the same stall.

The language of ordering

Key idea: ordering food is a number, a measure word and a dish, with 要, 想 or 来 in front. The words around it, for here or to go, waiter or boss, change from city to city, but that core works everywhere Mandarin is spoken.

Foods and meats

Some basic distinctions help you read a menu.

• 米 and 饭. Wiktionary defines 米 (mǐ) as hulled, uncooked rice and 饭 (fàn) as cooked grain, particularly cooked rice, and also a meal: you buy 米 and eat 饭. 米饭 (mǐfàn) is plain cooked rice.
• 面. Noodles, often in a bowl: 牛肉面 (niúròumiàn), beef noodles.
• 饺子. Dumplings (jiǎozi), from Lesson 21.
• The meats. Animal plus 肉 (ròu, meat): 牛肉 (niúròu) is beef and 鸡肉 (jīròu) chicken; fish is simply 鱼 (yú). Wiktionary notes that 肉 on its own can specifically mean pork.
• Drinks. 茶 (chá), tea; 水 (shuǐ), water; 豆浆, soy milk.

Characters to learn

Several of these began as pictures, according to Wiktionary's notes on their origins: 米 is hulled grains of rice, 魚 a fish, 牛 a bull's head with two horns and two ears, and 肉 the ribs or a slice of meat. That last one explains a puzzle from Lesson 14: 肉 is squeezed into the shape 月 when it sits beside another part, which is why so many body words have 月 in them. Others combine meaning and sound: 想 is 心, heart or mind, with 相 for the sound, and 碗 is 石, stone, with 宛 for the sound. And 面 is a merger of the kind you met in Lesson 10: simplified 面 stands for both 面 (face) and 麵 (noodles), which is why noodle shops in Taipei write 麵.

Dialogue: at the noodle shop (written for this course)

Find the polite measure word 位 for people from Lesson 15, the A-not-A question 有没有, 还是 for a choice, and 不要 for "no". New words: 猪肉 (zhūròu, pork), 辣 (là, spicy, Lesson 23) and 一共 (yígòng, altogether).

Listening: food words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 菜, 麵, 米 and 茶 (the Mandarin recording on each page). Write the tones. Answers: cài 4, miàn 4, mǐ 3, chá 2.
2. Play 牛, 肉, 雞 and 魚, then say 牛肉, 鸡肉 and 鱼, and order each with a measure word: 一份牛肉, 一份鸡肉, 一条鱼.
3. Play 喝, 想 and 碗, then say: 我想喝茶。 来一碗面。
4. Play 餃子, 服務員 and 菜單. How many syllables does 服務員 have, and which is the falling tone? Answer: three, fú wù yuán, with wù falling.
5. Watch Legit Mando, episode 4: I like to eat on TaiwanPlus, free and without an account. The phrase lesson starts at 0:10 and the writing segment at 4:35. Repeat 喜歡吃 and 最愛吃 after the hosts (最愛, zuì ài, love most), then say what you like to eat most.

Speaking: order a meal

Alone: choose one of the three meals in this lesson and record yourself ordering it from start to finish: greeting, the order with numbers and measure words, a drink, eating in or taking away in the local words, and paying. Then record the same order for the other two cities, changing only the words that change.

With a partner: one of you is the server with a menu of six dishes and two drinks, written on paper in characters with prices; the other orders for two people, asks one question with 有没有, refuses one ingredient with 不要, and pays. Swap roles and change cities.

Character writing: twelve characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 菜 11, 面 9, 米 6, 茶 9, 喝 12, 想 13, 碗 13, 饺 9, 肉 6, 鸡 7, 鱼 8, 牛 4. In 米, write the two short strokes at the top, left then right, then the horizontal, the vertical and the two sweeping strokes. In 肉, the outer frame comes first, then the two 人-like pairs inside. In 牛, the short slanting stroke at the top comes first. Taiwan's dictionary counts 菜 and 茶 one stroke higher because its grass radical 艸 has four strokes.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 鸡), and write the traditional forms 麵, 餃, 雞 and 魚 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 麵). Then write a short menu of five dishes in characters, with a measure word and price for each.

Common misconceptions

• "我要 is rude." It is normal and clear. 我想 is more tactful, and 来 is casual.
• "米 and 饭 both mean rice, so they are interchangeable." 米 is uncooked rice; 饭 is cooked rice and also a meal.
• "面 only means face." In simplified characters it also stands for noodles, written 麵 in traditional.
• "Takeaway is called the same everywhere." Mainland signs say 打包, Taiwan says 外帶, and in Malaysia and Singapore you may hear tapau.
• "Beef is 牛 on a menu." The meat is 牛肉; 牛 alone is the animal.
• "You can order without a measure word: 一面." A bowl of noodles is 一碗面; a cup of tea is 一杯茶.

What to remember

Ordering in Mandarin is a number, a measure word and a dish after 要, 想 or 来: 来一碗炸酱面, 我想吃饺子, 两杯茶, 一份鸡饭. Say 不要 for what you do not want, 有没有 to ask what there is, and 买单 to pay. Some words are local: in Taiwan you eat 內用 or take 外帶, on the mainland you see 堂食 and 打包, and in Singapore and Malaysia 打包 may be tapau. The food tells its own story: 炸酱面 identified with Beijing, 蛋饼 and 豆浆 in Taipei's breakfast shops, and Hainanese chicken rice, brought by immigrants from Hainan and now associated with Singapore. Lesson 23 compares the cuisines and the customs around the table.

Sources

1. AllSet Learning. (n.d.). Expressing "would like to" with "xiang"; Wanting to do something with "yao" [要 and 想 compared]. Chinese Grammar Wiki. resources.allsetlearning.com
2. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 菜; 菜單; 點菜; 服務員; 買單; 打包; 堂食; 內用 [chiefly Taiwan]; 外帶; 份; 米; 飯; 肉; 來; 炸醬麵; 豆漿 [definitions]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
3. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). tapau [Malay, borrowed from Cantonese 打包]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 米; 魚; 牛; 肉; 想; 碗 [glyph origins]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Zhajiangmian [dishes identified with Beijing]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
6. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Danbing [Taiwanese breakfast dish]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Hainanese chicken rice; Hawker centre. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. TaiwanPlus. (2021). Legit Mando, episode 4: I like to eat. Public Television Service. taiwanplus.com

Sweet or salty?

The BBC News Chinese article from Lesson 14, about 外婆 and 姥姥, listed other north-south arguments that run online in China. One is whether 豆腐脑 (dòufunǎo), a soft tofu pudding, should be eaten 甜 (tián, sweet) or 咸 (xián, salty). Another is whether the Lantern Festival dumplings of Lesson 13 are 元宵 or 汤圆. People across the Chinese-speaking world love to compare food, and this lesson compares it too. It covers tastes, the north and the south, the great regional cuisines, the customs at the table and Chinese food far from China.

Taste words

They work like any adjective: 这个菜很辣 (this dish is very spicy), 太甜了 (too sweet), 不太酸 (not very sour). Four of them make a common idiom, 酸甜苦辣 (suān tián kǔ là), which Wiktionary glosses both as all kinds of flavours and as the joys and sorrows of life.

North and south: wheat and rice

The words 北 (běi, north) and 南 (nán, south) give 北方 (běifāng) and 南方 (nánfāng), the north and the south of China, and their people, 北方人 and 南方人. Farming has long divided them. In a study published in Science in 2014, the psychologist Thomas Talhelm and colleagues compared people from the wheat-growing north and the rice-growing south. They tested 1,162 Han Chinese participants at six sites and reported that people from rice-growing areas thought in more interdependent and holistic ways, even when they compared neighbouring counties on either side of the rice-wheat border. Their explanation is that rice farming required more cooperation over labour and irrigation than wheat farming did.

A follow-up in 2018 went into coffee shops. The team counted 8,964 people in cafés in six cities and found people in the north more likely to be sitting alone. Then they pushed two chairs together in Starbucks branches so that the chairs partly blocked the aisle. People in the north were more likely to move a chair out of the way, while people in the south more often squeezed through. These are averages from one research team's studies, not rules about any individual, but they show how a farming history can still be traced in daily life.

Four great traditions

Wikipedia's article on Chinese cuisine lists four great traditions, extended to eight with the cuisines of Anhui, Fujian, Hunan and Zhejiang.

In short: there is no single Chinese food. Wikipedia's descriptions alone set fiery, bold Sichuan cooking against Cantonese cooking that uses spices modestly, and the BBC's sweet-or-salty arguments show how strongly people feel about their own region's version.

At the table

Wikipedia's article on chopsticks, 筷子 (kuàizi), describes Chinese table customs, and the verb you need is 用 (yòng), to use: 用筷子吃饭, to eat with chopsticks.

• It is normal to lift your rice bowl to your mouth and push the rice in with chopsticks.
• Family members may put a good piece of food into an elder's bowl as a sign of respect, and serving chopsticks are increasingly used for this, for hygiene.
• Do not leave chopsticks standing upright in a bowl of rice: it resembles the incense burned for the dead. Do not tap them on your bowl, the noise beggars make to attract attention, and do not dig through a shared dish looking for the best piece.

Two more words complete the table. 汤 (tāng) is soup, and you drink it: 喝汤. And to toast, raise your glass and say 干杯 (gānbēi), which Wiktionary defines as "cheers" or "bottoms up"; literally it is "dry cup".

Then there is tea. In 2022 UNESCO inscribed China's traditional tea processing techniques and associated social practices on its Representative List. Its description counts six categories of tea, green, yellow, dark, white, oolong and black, and over 2,000 tea products. It notes that tea is served in homes, workplaces, tea houses, restaurants and temples, and is part of ceremonies such as weddings.

Eating out across the Chinese-speaking world

• Taiwan's night markets. Wikipedia's article says they are known for 小吃 (xiǎochī), "small eats", served in small portions at low prices and eaten at folding tables or while walking. Oyster omelets and stinky tofu, 臭豆腐 (chòudòufu), are staples; Raohe Street and Shilin in Taipei are among the best known.
• Hong Kong's dim sum. 点心 (diǎnxīn), dim sum in Cantonese, is a large range of small dishes traditionally eaten in restaurants for brunch, mostly associated with Cantonese cuisine. Wikipedia traces it to teahouses in Guangzhou, where travellers stopped for small meals with tea, yum cha, 饮茶.
• Singapore's hawker centres. In 2020 UNESCO inscribed hawker culture in Singapore, describing hawker centres as "community dining rooms" where people from diverse backgrounds eat together, markers of a multicultural city of Chinese, Malay, Indian and other cultures.
• Peru's chifa. Wikipedia describes chifa as a Chinese Peruvian tradition fusing Cantonese elements with Peruvian ingredients. A Peruvian dictionary commission traced the word to Cantonese 食飯, "to eat a meal", heard in Lima's Chinese restaurants in the 1930s; chaufa, fried rice, comes from Cantonese 炒飯. Both contain the 饭 of Lesson 18.
• The United States. General Tso's chicken has two claimed inventors, Wikipedia reports, both chefs in New York City: T. T. Wang, and Peng Chang-kuei, a Hunan chef who had worked in Chongqing and Taipei and who opened a restaurant on East 44th Street around 1973.

Characters to learn

Wiktionary's notes give each of these a story. The character 甜 is a tongue, 舌, beside 甘, sweet. The character 北 is two people standing back to back, and its first meaning was "back". The character 筷 is bamboo over 快 (fast) from Lesson 13: Wiktionary explains that the word began as a euphemism replacing the older 箸 (zhù), which sounded like 住 (zhù), to stop. And 咸 is another simplified merger: it stands for 鹹, salty, and for 咸, all.

Dialogue: at a Taipei night market (written for this course)

The dialogue reuses old patterns: 过 for experience, 太 ... 了 for "too", 吧 for suggestions and 来一份 for ordering. New words: 好吃 (hǎochī, delicious), 有点儿 (yǒudiǎnr, a bit), 怕 (pà, to fear) and 一般 (yìbān, generally). 王小文's answer shows the right attitude to the wheat-rice findings: true on average, not for every person.

Listening: tastes and table words

1. Play Wiktionary's recordings of 辣, 甜, 酸 and 鹹, and write each tone. Answers: là 4, tián 2, suān 1, xián 2.
2. Play 南 and 北, then say 南方, 北方, 南方人 and 北方人.
3. Play 湯, 筷子 and 用, then say: 我用筷子吃饭。 我喝汤。
4. Play 乾杯 and 點心, and practise a toast: raise a cup of tea and say 干杯！
5. Self-dictation: record a description of a meal you love in four sentences, using two taste words, then play it back the next day and write it in characters.

Speaking: describe a dish

Alone: choose a dish you know well, Chinese or not, and record a description: what it is, where it comes from, what is in it, and how it tastes, with at least two taste words: 这个菜有点儿辣，也有点儿甜。 Then compare it with a dish from this lesson.

With a partner: take sides in the sweet-or-salty argument about 豆腐脑, or about any food your families disagree on, and argue for two minutes in simple Chinese: 我喜欢甜的。 咸的太咸了！ Then plan a meal for a visitor using one dish from each of two regional traditions.

Character writing: nine characters

Write each character five times, saying it aloud. Stroke counts: 辣 14, 甜 11, 酸 14, 咸 9, 南 9, 北 5, 汤 6, 筷 13, 用 5. In 北, write the left half first, a vertical, a short horizontal and a rising stroke, then the right half, a slanting stroke and a hooked one. In 南, write 十 at the top first, then the frame and the inside. In 筷, the bamboo radical on top comes first, then 快. In 用, the frame's left stroke comes first and the long vertical last.

Check the animations on 汉典 (zdic.net) (shown for 筷), and write the traditional forms 鹹 and 湯 once each, checking them on Taiwan's 國語小字典 (shown for 鹹). Then write the four tastes in characters and a dish you think fits each.

Common misconceptions

• "Chinese food is one cuisine." Wikipedia lists four great traditions, extended to eight, and Sichuan and Cantonese cooking differ sharply.
• "Chillies are ancient in Sichuan cooking." Wikipedia dates their arrival in Sichuan cuisine to the Kangxi emperor's reign, long after Sichuan cooking itself began.
• "The rice-wheat studies describe every northerner and southerner." They report average differences between groups, not rules for individuals.
• "Lifting the rice bowl is bad manners." At a Chinese table it is normal to hold the bowl up and push rice into your mouth.
• "Chifa and General Tso's chicken are dishes from China." Chifa grew up in Peru, and General Tso's chicken was introduced in New York.
• "咸 only means salty." In simplified writing it also stands for 咸, all; the salty one is 鹹 in traditional characters.

The short version

Tastes are 辣, 甜, 酸, 咸 and 苦, and 酸甜苦辣 can mean the whole of life. China's north grew wheat and its south rice, and a research team has argued that the difference still shows in how people think and even in how they deal with a chair in a café, on average. Wikipedia counts four great culinary traditions, Shandong, Sichuan, Cantonese and Huaiyang, and eight with Anhui, Fujian, Hunan and Zhejiang. At the table, 用筷子, lift your bowl, never stand chopsticks in rice, drink your 汤, toast with 干杯 and share tea, a practice UNESCO recognized in 2022. Beyond China, Taiwan's night markets serve 小吃, Hong Kong's restaurants serve dim sum, Singapore's hawker culture is on UNESCO's list, Peru has chifa and New York gave the world General Tso's chicken. Lesson 24 leaves the table and gets on the metro.

Sources

1. Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344(6184), 603-608. doi.org
2. Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., & Oishi, S. (2018). Moving chairs in Starbucks: Observational studies find rice-wheat cultural differences in daily life in China. Science Advances, 4(4), eaap8469. doi.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chinese cuisine; Sichuan cuisine; Cantonese cuisine; Shandong cuisine; Huaiyang cuisine. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Chopsticks [etiquette in China]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. UNESCO. (2022). Traditional tea processing techniques and associated social practices in China. ich.unesco.org
6. UNESCO. (2020). Hawker culture in Singapore, community dining and culinary practices in a multicultural urban context. ich.unesco.org
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Night markets in Taiwan; Dim sum; Chifa; General Tso's chicken. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
8. BBC News 中文. (2018, June 22). 出版社改教材引發「外婆」與「姥姥」的南北之爭 [north-south food arguments]. bbc.com
9. Wiktionary contributors. (2026). 酸甜苦辣; 乾杯; 筷 [etymology]; 甜; 北 [glyph origins]; and entries with Mandarin audio. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org