This Chinese proverb serves as a warning to us. It talks about how some people are never satisfied with what they have. It is also important to realise that happiness is found in moments not things.

This proverb is used to describe how someone might follow a fad, and as soon as it falls out of fashion change to something new.

This Chinese proverb describes the feeling of a paradox. Where something seems correct but leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.

似是而非
sì shì ér fēi
Apparently right, Actually wrong

This Chinese proverb describes perfectly what I hope the Heisig method of learning Mandarin will do to my learning process. Intensify it.

This proverb is actually more often used in a negative way though. How one may aggravate or cause a situation to intensify through their actions.

I ordered Heisig's the 'Remembering the Simplified Hanzi' last week as you may know if you read my post about my excitement. Whilst learning with this method I am still going to be carrying on learning sentences from books and carrying on with Rosetta Stone (although I have been finding my progress in it rather slow recently.)

I won't be doing much preparation before I start this method of learning the Hanzi. Though, I did hunt out the list of all of the 1500 Hanzi characters published in his first book to see what I would be trying to overcome. (Thanks to John @ Chinese Quest for helping me find them. Also check out his great post about the Heisig method and its criticisms)

If you want to download the excel file with all the hanzi, hanyu pinyin, stroke numbers and lesson numbers for the first Heisig book (this is the ANKI file for simplified hanzi in excel essentially) I include the link here for you.

Heisig & Richardon say that these characters (shown below) are the most frequently used 1000 hanzi plus some additional Chinese characters that make sense to learn with the primitives learnt along the way.

(If you would like to download the sample chapter from their book Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: and give this method a go yourself you can do so here. I have breifly looked over it, but havent commited to learning them yet. I will start when the book gets here.)

Below, I list the hanzi in order they are taught in Heisig & Richardson's 'Remembering Simplified Hanzi'. It really serves its purpose for me because I wanted to print them out and stick them up in my room. But also illustrates quite how many characters I aim to learn and how dizzy 1500 hanzi can make the uninitiated.

This Chinese proverb has come to mean all good things must first go through many trials and tribulations. It means that things that are good* are worth a struggle, and working towards. It is used especially in regards to love, and serves a reminder that perseverance through problems is a requirement of true love.

*(whilst good is only a comparative statement contrasted by something being made bad, it serves its purpose here.)

This is the next edition of what I now hope to become a regular part of my blog. Guest posts from Mandarin learning friends, explaining why they decided to learn Mandarin. How they have gone about the learning process and where they are now in their journey, learning Mandarin. Today's guest post is from Bill Glover founder of #MandarinMonday who has been a great help and inspiration to me in keeping Discovering Mandarin moving forwards.

In Chinese we call it… 猫头鹰 [māo tóu yīng] literally, cat headed eagle

In Chinese we call it… 电脑 [diàn nǎo] literally, electronic brain

In Chinese we call it… 手机 [shǒu jī] literally, hand device

In Chinese we call it… 黄油 [huáng yóu] literally, yellow oil

This Chinese proverb is about standing out, being so different from everything around you. This proverb is used to describe prominent people with good looks and impressive abilities among a crowd of people with lesser abilities.

This Chinese proverb relates to how one can be narrow sighted and even complacent. Nowadays it is used more widely to describe someone who is ignorant of the things around them.

This Chinese proverb comes from the Chinese creation myth about Pan Gu creating the world. It is used to describe something advancing with giant strides.

This Chinese proverb refers to how you might miscommunicate with people by aiming the communication level too high. It can mean that the method of communication you are using to talk to someone is too sophisticated and therefore will not work. This proverb implies that someone speaks or writes without considering his audience. Generally speaking, it means the speaker or writer has over-estimated his listeners or readers. In these cases, the proverb mocks the audience rather than the speaker.

This proverb can also be taken to mean 'to talk philosophy to a fool.'

As I talked about in my blog post 'My First Three Months Of Learning Mandarin' I am going to start learning with the help of Heisig method so I can recognise characters more easily.

Today I bought Heisig's book, after reading though the first section that you can download the Simplified version's First Chapter for free and if it inspires you I recommend you buy the entire book.

Greg at Mandarin Segments has now learnt over 1000 characters in a month and a half using this method as described in his blog.

I recommend this book to you all, and hope to document some of my progress with this method soon. Below are the links for this book in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.



Also on a side note: before I started learning Mandarin I bought this book: Reading and Writing Chinese: Guide to the Chinese Writing System But sadly it is traditional characters and not the simplified, so if someone can find a good home for it and cover postage, I would be willing to send it on. Please get in touch!!

This Chinese proverb is about letting your mind run away with itself. Even becoming preoccupied or obsessed with an idea. The proverb could also be used to describe someone who often daydreams.

胡思乱想
hú ​sī ​luàn ​xiǎng
to let one's imagination run wild
​

Another couple of English Proverbs with similiar meaning are

A bee in your bonnet; and

Flights of fancy

Both those proverbs have the meaning to let thoughts preoccupy yourself and to maybe even become obsessed with those ideas.

Photo Source:
Flickr

This Chinese proverb speaks of something I am certainly cursed with sometimes, and something we all might get affected by from time to time. Overconfidence is usually shortly followed by the feeling of stupidity when you realise you were not as good as you thought you were. Sometimes this is a good dose of humility, other times it can be disastrous...

This Chinese proverb is used to describe something is continuous or that doesnt stop. I get the feeling it can describe a large flock of birds, and possibly the way I see it, this proverb could be used to talk about time...

络绎不绝
luò ​yì ​bù ​jué​
an endless stream

Photo Source:
Flickr

Three Months of Learning Mandarin

I started writing this blog just after I decided to commit and start learning Mandarin. In the three months since, I feel like I have made good if a little slow progress. Before people jump up and tell me off for thinking that I have made slow progress. It is not that it is slow, so much as, I haven’t spent and dedicated enough time (that I told myself I would) revising the things I have learnt.

I have certainly thrown myself in at the deep end by starting this blog and forcing myself to keep up with the goals I set myself. Yet, I still find myself wanting to know more, a real craving and frustration that I can’t say anything I want to.

So What I Can Say After Three Months Learning Mandarin:

Basic Greetings,
Basic Colours,
Basic Numbers,
Days of the week,
Months,
Basic Foods,
Basic Drinks,
and some basic actions (eating / running / cooking etc)
Most recently some basic items of clothing, and basic household items.

I can say : thank you, I want, I like, I love etc.

And about 70 Daily Proverbs... Although I would certainly not claim that I remember them off the top of my head.

And this is my current problem, I am learning a lot, but the memory recall of it isn’t strong currently. Hopefully it will get better with time.

Discovering Mandarin:

I intended this blog to be a collection of the things I had learnt as a reference point for myself, and for other people who are learning too. It has turned out that through the daily updates and being busy that I haven’t had time to update with things I have learnt quite as often as I had hoped.

I started out writing this blog because I did not have anyone to practise my Mandarin with, and my housemates were both learning Japanese. Truth be told, they haven’t stuck at Japanese at all and my motivation has sunk a little. The people I have met through this blog are very inspiring and have made me continue with my dream and I want to thank you all for the little bits of help you give me daily.

Learning Mandarin - What Now?

The three months I have been learning Mandarin I have learnt more than I have ever learnt in French that I learnt for four years at school. This is largely due to the fact I wanted to learn Mandarin and never wanted to learn French.

I want to carry on learning and actually stick to my commitment of daily learning. I think I am also going to try out the much talked about Heisig method of learning characters. Although, many of the drawbacks are outlined well in Chris' Mandarin Student blog post. I think I would like the ability to know that I can understand a large amount of characters much like Greg’s experience of the theory in Mandarin Segments blog.

I intend to carry on using Rosetta stone for my basic vocabulary and helping to build it up bit by bit, alongside my other research. Also using Heisig as mentioned to increase my knowledge and recollection of Chinese characters I hope that my writing and reading ability will increase with my spoken Mandarin.

So here is to another three months of Mandarin learning, and to hopefully many years of learning Mandarin happily and as excitedly as these first three months.