Today's All About Chinese lesson focuses on the origins of written Chinese--the only writing system that has been in use continuously for over 3,000 years. All characters are made up of smaller 'picture' elements within the character. Some of these smaller pictures within the character give a hint as to meaning and pronunciation (though not always). The first Chinese characters were simple objects like "human", "hand", "foot", "mountain", "sun", "moon" and "tree". Then logical combinations of the simple characters followed. These simple characters also sometimes serve as the root of a more complex character, and are called "radicals". Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd... Show more

Chinese Verbs Chinese verbs are not inflected... meaning that they don't change form. Only one form of each verb exists; there is no conjugation.  It doesn't matter who is talking, when they are talking about, or who they are talking to, the verb is the same. Word Order Since there is no conjugation of verbs in Chinese, Word order is often your only clue to figuring out who is doing what. The good news is, in normal Chinese declarative sentences, word order is the same as that we use in normal English declarative sentences, being:subject - verb - object Negation of Verbs Negation occurs before the verb and any prepositional phrase, just add a negation word, 不 'bu4', in front of the verb. Expressing Tense Chinese... Show more

In today's All About Chinese we take years of Chinese learning experience and China life experience and boil it down to bring you the top 5 reasons to learn Chinese. There are numerous different reasons to learn Chinese, below some of the more important reasons are listed. Chinese is the language of nearly one-quarter of the world's population. Speakers of Chinese are spread throughout the globe. Unlike most languages, Chinese has a unique writing system, which provides visual comprehensibility and is considered by some to be an art form. Chinese grammar is easy! When you learn Chinese you also learn how the Chinese think. The structure of Chinese is not only logical, but also pragmatic, and very related to the... Show more

How to Really Learn Chinese in Just Minutes a Day and Stick with it Get an Instant 10% OFF with coupon code FF2009 for a limited time. The Myth What if I told you mastering Italian wasn't that hard. That actually learning the language itself is not nearly as difficult as you may have heard. And that the problem to progressing is an age old one...failure to execute. The Real Issue Said another way, "People don't progress 'cause they don't do! If you don't do the work, you won't reach your goals." It's a bold statement, but think about it. How many things have you tried, only to give up at some later point in time. Exercising daily, diets, hobbies, etc. Language learning is no exception. We tend to start out... Show more

Dear Chinese Students, Today we're pleased to announce the launch of ChineseClass101.com. This is a joint project between Popup Chinese and the folks at Innovative Language Learning. If you're familiar with the Innovative Language approach to teaching, you'll know the strength of their materials has always been tight, step-by-step progressive lessons for beginners. At Popup Chinese, we've historically geared our materials towards more advanced students, so when we had the chance to cooperate with the Innovative team and work together to build something that could take advantage of the powerful system they've already built we leapt at the chance, and began work designing a focused and stepwise program for Mandarin instruction. ... Show more