#chinese help

[avarice-away]

I'm trying to pick out my Chinese name, I've been learning Mandarin Chinese for just over a year now. I really like the surname 杨 (yang), but I'm not sure about the first name. I'm considering 清照 (qingzhao), after Li Qingzhao. Could a native Chinese speaker tell me if Yang Qingzhao sounds weird, or give any name recommendations?

[amiableamos]

help!! im like, an intermediate level chinese speaker and i went on a chinese server in a game to practice (and i met this super cool person and we chatted idly and they were really awesome and omg i can chinese??? im bilingual???)

and i noticed that they kept adding "()" at the end of some of their messages?

i was googling to no avail. does that mean something? it seemed like it correlated to something but i simply don't know lol plssss lmk what it means if anything

[ruanbaijie]

Would you mind giving some tips to be more fluent in chinese? I personally have studied chinese at school, but I barely understand anything. You can ignore this if you want!

hello! tbh I wouldn't call myself fluent either ▓▒░(°◡°)░▒▓ I can read and understand okay but speaking is much more difficult ＼(º □ º l|l)/ but as with any other language, the way to get yourself more familiar and comfortable with it is to keep using and practising it (*side eyes all the languages I've picked up over the years but slowly ignored due to lack of practice/ use*)

consuming media in your target language is one of the most straightforward and fun (in a way) methods of gaining exposure to the language, be it movies, tv shows, or songs. try to see if you can watch a few minutes of the show without looking at the translation subs or to challenge yourself further and practise listening and reading at the same time, maybe you can watch a show with chinese subs instead!

if you have other friends who know or are learning chinese, another good way would, naturally, be to converse with them in that language now and again.

another way (if you feel up for it of course) that really helps is to read novels in the original chinese instead of the translations! it's a really good way of picking up new phrases and words (and a variety of niche words and phrases depending on what genre you're reading *cough drug names and chemical compounds in poyun/tunhai*) and it may take a while to get used to at first, but if you stick to it, over time you'll be able to process the words faster and read more easily

since you've already studied chinese at school, at least you already have a foundation to start from! these are... pretty generic tips that can be applied for any other language tbh, but these are what really worked for me when I was learning and familiarising myself with other languages (ᵔ◡ᵔ)

[agapaic]

not sure if any chinese speakers can help me out here, but is there an equivalent saying in chinese to the effect of “god knows” (e.g. “god knows he wouldn’t want that”). and is there also an equivalent saying of “jesus christ” as an expletive/statement of dissatisfaction/anger? i know there is a small population of christians in china, but i’m not sure if it’s made its way into general vernacular. 

i’m not looking for anything that’s necessarily christian, but the character i’m writing about isn’t likely to use an expletive like “fucking hell” or “fuck knows”, so i’m trying to think if there are other statements in the chinese language to this effect? thanks so much for any help!

[naye-et-cetera]

Who’s good at reading Chinese cursive? :D

Shen Wei alters the message Zhao Yunlan gets about him in episode 8 - I’ve been assuming it now reads something along the lines of “Lord Guardian - 404 file not found”, but I am curious exactly what this says. (Pretty sure the first four characters are 镇魂今主...)

[travelermarc]

My 3 quick tips for learning any foreign language. I mainly apply these ideas to Japanese and Mandarin- but they can work for any other language too! Let me know your tips in the comments!

[remade-graystudie]

hey quick language learning tip! i watch a lot of asmr videos and if youre into those they can be a great way to practice listening if youre not that great at it bc they usually talk slower! i usually watch "latte asmr" for korean (she also does english and japanese and shes actually my favorite! she puts time stamps in the description of what she does when and most of her stuff is gender neutral once u get past the titles bc she usually says "you" instead of pronouns! i love her videos so much!!!) for spanish i usually watch "murmullo latina asmr"! she does some nice stuff in english as well on the channel "whisper latina asmr" and if youre learning mandarin chinese "tingting asmr" has asmr videos that help you learn chinese while you sleep! she also has a few on chinese culture! i personally prefer korean asmr videos over english ones bc the ppl i watch hit the consonants (especially ㅋ/ㄲ, ㄷ/ㄸ, and ㅌ) a little bit harder (i especially love words like 축축하다 and 딱딱하다 because of the repeated sounds!). some other korean asmr youtubers i watch are "babzi asmr" and "asmr thomwhat"! babzi has subs in lots of languages and thomwhat has eng subs on most vids!

[artlyu]

Chinese studies