In Standard Mandarin, a mid vowel agrees in [back] and [round] features with adjacent glides. A mid vowel preceded by a front rounded glide [ɥ], however, is only partially assimilated, resulting in a ...

Thousands of years of Chinese linguistic heritage have come down to this: a squabble over Tom and Jerry. Dubbed into regional Chinese dialects, the warring cat and mouse have been huge TV hits _ and a ...

What does it mean to learn the Chinese language? Schools across the globe have generally presumed a consistent, straightforward answer to this question: it would mean learning standard Mandarin, ...

We've had lots of fun sharing photos of Chengdu with you through this blog, but today, something for the ears. As any student of Mandarin Chinese will know, China can be a maddening place. You can ...

THERE ARE several reasons why “Aiqing Shenhua”, a new film released on Christmas Eve in Chinese cinemas, has surprised movie buffs. One is that the movie, whose English title is “B for Busy”, is a ...

Update: The Liu Yong poem Zhou quotes is in Middle Chinese, not Mandarin. However, the pinyin transcription is in Modern Standard Mandarin. As all cities are building their own Tian’anmen, and ...

YESTERDAY'S post on Cantonese touched a few nerves. A blog post is a very compressed medium, and I said some things briefly that I still stand by but which deserve a bit of elaboration. My calling ...

The language spoken by more people on the planet than any other will become the latest classroom offering for Napa County’s teenagers. An elective course in the Mandarin dialect of Chinese will open ...