I’m back with another speaking challenge!

Same idea as last time: read the sentence, try saying it naturally in Chinese, and then write down what you came up with. You don't have to translate it word for word, and there's no single correct answer.

Try saying it out loud before looking at the comments. Chinese characters or pinyin are both fine.

Here's today's sentence:

“I was going to cook at home, but I realized I was missing a few ingredients, so I ordered takeout instead.”

Try your own version before reading the other answers. I'm curious to see how people express this one!

Anyone has experience learning Chinese with a tutor on preply? I am looking for my kiddo’s supplementary tutor.

Can I do a running thread here? I often have mini-questions about specific words occurring in certain contexts, or about grammatical details, and I don't want to start a new thread for each and every little thing I want to ask. I hope this is okay? I'll be posting each question as a top-level comment in this thread.

Anyone interested in offering answers, please subscribe to the thread by using the "Follow post" option.

Hi guys,

I'm searching actually a good tutor for mandarin to practice my conversation and get feed back. I don't have much budget but 10 dollars per seance is the most I can afford. If anyone know a good tutor on preply or italki or any other plateform thanks.

I have a service dog and I was hoping someone could tell me how to write “service dog, ignore me” for a vest. Thank you in advance 😁

Hi everyone! I learned English from zero just by watching anime with subtitles for about 4 years, and I always wondered if the same trick could work for Mandarin. It turns out Chinese needs more than "just add subtitles" (tones, characters...), so over the last few months I built an Android app for it: LanLan (懒懒, a very lazy panda).

You scroll real videos from everyday life in China (vlogs, street food, comedy, gaming) with hanzi, pinyin and English under every line, and you can tap any word to see what it means and save it as a flashcard. There's a 0.5x speed now too, for when a video is way too fast. Honestly half the fun is just seeing what normal life there looks like.

Android -> LanLan: Learn Chinese Lazily

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the link here, so if you want to try it just DM me! I'd love feedback, there's still a lot to fix and adjust, but most importantly have fun doomscrolling!

Work the work, don’t let the work work you. This is a scene from the movie “Chinatown Detective.” Directly from YouTube with dub sub. I went in settings and jacked that font up to 300%. The only reason I can not read the Hanzi is I can’t YET. First scene, I get to learn a simple thing. 下车。 It was used as a command. Movie is hilarious. I will do my magic trick and watch it nightly until I puke.

Hi folks, I'm happy to announce a new version of Mandarin Assistant!

In v5, we enter the multi-lingual space, starting with French. But that's not only for French speakers, but any Chinese learners with the introduction of the full HSK-lvl3 language.

What's Mandarin Assistant?

Mandarin Assistant is a side project of mine for the last 3 years, to help me (and quite a few people now) learn Mandarin while in class, or on the street. In a nutshell, it let's you:

• Look up words and annotate them
• Expand your dictionary with custom entries (grammar notes, trendy words, or example sentences)
• Create custom word lists
• Add a widget to your home screen to reinforce learning every time you unlock your phone
• Sync your word lists with Anki for spaced repetition learning
• Use OCR to recognize and learn words from images or text

What's the HSK level 3 language?

Simply put, many of us plateau at the intermediate level, and HSK3 is a solid space to plateau. Which means it *should* be an opportunity to also use your acquired level to actually learn more from it.

As a result, Mandarin Assistant uses this HSK level 3 dictionaries in 2 places:

1. As a dedicated language in the UI - so you can learn Mandarin FROM Mandarin HSK3.
2. To contextualize any word. Expanding the word card gives you access to Synonyms, Antonyms, examples and collocations, in HSK3 level whenever possible.

What else is new in v5?

• You can now adjust the size of the word definitions in the dictionary screen
• On android, widgets can be made a lot smaller and respect the day/night settings
• Performance was drastically improved for: search, database updates and backups
• Backups are now less than 2mb, compared to full 50mb earlier on

Ask me anything, and as usual enjoy Mandarin Assistant on both Android & iOS!

Hey everyone, I'm a complete beginner to Mandarin. Most flashcard apps I've tried only teach characters without showing stroke order. Are there good resources or apps specifically for learning correct stroke sequences?

Also, what learning medium works best for beginners. Structuree online courses (like Coursera), gamified apps like Duolingo, or something else? Would love to hear what worked for you!

I want to try a little speaking challenge for intermediate Chinese learners.

Read the English sentence and try to say it naturally in Chinese. Don’t worry about translating it word for word. You can change the structure, make it shorter, or say it in a different way.

Try saying it out loud before you write it down. Chinese characters or pinyin are both fine.

Try your own version before looking at the comments. After you’ve written yours, read a few other answers out loud too. It’s interesting to see how differently people can express the same idea.

Here’s the first one:

“I was going to go out this weekend, but I was too tired after work, so I just stayed home.”

Write whatever you actually came up with. There’s no single correct translation.