Standard Book of Chinese Discussion

edit papertrail: finished with the toolbox section, chose 4 useful websites and wrote descriptions and ways of use for them, slightly coded.

second edit: finished writing the first version of Lesson 1, including homework

third edit: made it clear that exercises marked with * can be sent here to be graded

To me its pretty easy and good because I KNOW Chinese but maybe make it simpler for the people who DONT...

Tina Carille wrote: 28 Feb 2026, 12:26 To me its pretty easy and good because I KNOW Chinese but maybe make it simpler for the people who DONT...

can you give me an example like should I change the syllabus or the words I use to make it simpler for others?

Here is an example when my Chinese teacher explained how to do the accents she described the like symbols above the letter as birds ā is like the birds resting position so it’s kinda flat. The á is it taking off. ǎ is like almost wavy to me it’s like ahhh. And à is like the bird landing or smth I don’t rlly rember but use metafore

Tina Carille wrote: 28 Feb 2026, 13:22 Here is an example when my Chinese teacher explained how to do the accents she described the like symbols above the letter as birds ā is like the birds resting position so it’s kinda flat. The á is it taking off. ǎ is like almost wavy to me it’s like ahhh. And à is like the bird landing or smth I don’t rlly rember but use metafore

ooh similes and metaphors are a great idea! I will add some later! Thanks Tina

edit: added your metaphors to the book, and I used examples in it such as normal, interrogative sentences(you won a competition you didn't expect urself to, you go Ah?) solve math problem after thinking for an hour (ah! I got it)

is it better now?

Cassie Jiang wrote: 27 Feb 2026, 11:44

Nick Jameson wrote: 27 Feb 2026, 10:52 I don’t understand what you mean about the pronunciation of ‘a’

ooh look at the footnotes, 'a' means the a in the pinyin system, in the pinyin system, 'a' is pronounced as 'ahh' which is a bit different from the English pronunciation. does this make it clear for you?

@George Calder can you give me example? like which line is difficult to understand?

Yeah the language systems are hard to understand. The whole thing as I'm getting confused

George Calder wrote: 28 Feb 2026, 13:40

Cassie Jiang wrote: 27 Feb 2026, 11:44

Nick Jameson wrote: 27 Feb 2026, 10:52 I don’t understand what you mean about the pronunciation of ‘a’

ooh look at the footnotes, 'a' means the a in the pinyin system, in the pinyin system, 'a' is pronounced as 'ahh' which is a bit different from the English pronunciation. does this make it clear for you?

@George Calder can you give me example? like which line is difficult to understand?

Yeah the language systems are hard to understand. The whole thing as I'm getting confused

okay! I will try to explain it to you. For the first book, we are introducing the pinyin system, this has nothing to do with the written language, but it is a easy way to explain a character's pronunciation. As a Chinese speaker myself, I no longer use pinyin, but it is useful for beginners. It's sort of like, Chinese (chai-NIIS) some of the books use this way to note the pronunciation of an English word, there is also an Internation Phoenetic Alphabet for English system (IPA), which uses letters and symbols to note the pronunciation of an English word.

Pinyin system is like them, by learning the pinyin pronunciation of some vowels and consonants, you'll be able to read any paragraph of Chinese out loud(not understand it) with the help of pinyin.

Does this make it clear for you?

Yeah a lot more! Your book will be way easier to understand TYSM

George Calder wrote: 28 Feb 2026, 13:58 Yeah a lot more! Your book will be way easier to understand TYSM

you're welcome thanks for letting me know that I did not explain this clearly. I will edit the preface of volume 1 to make the introduction of pinyin more clearly later btw I'm glad you would like to spend time reading it! thanks!