My first contact with China was acupuncture and Traditional Chinese medicine which have a strong philosophical basis and huge clinical tradition. Studying Traditional Chinese medicine has improved not only my spoken Mandarin but my understanding of Chinese culture – an essential part to mastering any language!

The Pulse把脉（BǎMài）

If you see a Chinese doctor they will take your pulse. Taking the pulse and understanding how it displays the disharmonies of the body is an art in itself and many books have been written on the subject. However, the idea of 把脉 does not stop with Traditional Chinese medicine. The ‘taking of a pulse’ forms such a central part in Chinese culture that it has become a common expression. If you get a new job then you may have to 把脉 your new boss. Obviously this expression should not be taken literally, taking their pulse will tell you what kind of person you’re working for, and if you understand this you can act accordingly.

Oddly enough, I have never found a satisfactory translation for 把脉 in English, ‘test the water’ comes close but this typically refers to a situation rather than a person. If you can think of a better translation please post it below in the comments, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

Smooth Benefit 顺利（ShùnLì）

There are far too many theories and ideas within Traditional Chinese medicine to explain in a single article so I’ll focus on two principles. Firstly – 顺 (Shùn) to smooth, to make smooth, to follow. Chinese medicinal theory tell us that 气（Qì）and blood should flow smoothly in the body. If the smooth movement of these vital elements becomes blocked then a doctor may be employed to help clear the blockage and ensure things return to their natural state. The second principle is 利 (Lì), benefit. Typically this character means sharp, but not in this in this instance! The definition for this character seems to have come under intense scrutiny during the Spring Autumn 春秋 (ChūnQiū) / Warring States 战国 (ZhànGuó) periods when a philosopher called 墨子(MòZǐ) used the character 利 to mean bringing benefit to the State or country. 墨子(MòZǐ)`s argument was countered by a philosopher from the Confucian school called Mencius 孟子(MèngZǐ), he rendered the character 利 as profit. Even though this debate occurred over 2000 years ago both definitions are still used today! However, in medicinal circles we use MòZǐ’s definition because we bring benefit to the system, rather than profit from the system.

We find these two characters combined in modern expression 一切顺利 (YīQièShùnLì) everything smooth.

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Ways To Increase Chinese Vocabulary

There are typically two approaches, firstly to memorize lots of characters. Text books provide long lists which your language teacher may ask you to remember. Mine did. I noticed, whilst in China that many Chinese students studied English in this way. I’d walk past students repeating lists of English words. One guy even pulled out a tape recorder and asked me to translate a number of sentences which he found difficult. This method can be rather dull and boring, and often not very practical.

I remember one of my first text books taught me how to say ‘sandwich’ and ‘hamburger’. Two foods that I never ate in China. I wanted my books to tell me what those noodles were that they cut with a knife, like in the KungFu film Iron Monkey, they’re called 刀削面 (dāoxiāomiàn) by the way. The first time I ordered those noodles I had to mime the action to get what I wanted – hysterical for the Chinese people in the restaurant and embarrassing for me!

The second way to increase Chinese vocabulary tends to be much more exciting. It involves going out and getting in to conversations with Chinese speakers; very easy when you’re in China, harder when you’re not! These conversations will reveal, very quickly, the holes in your vocabulary. The pain of not being able to express your opinion, or answer a question, will make it easier to look in the dictionary, find the expression you want, and retain that information for next time.

So, the problem looks like this: How to increase our vocabulary without memorizing long lists of characters? And might there be a more efficient way than getting into random conversations? Anki answered this question for me. Anki (logo below) is a free to download flashcard program that uses an algorithm to space the flashcards intelligently so you don’t continually study cards you know. This great little program can be used on almost any platform. I have a copy on my computer and on Android. It also has a version for Apple products, so there’s no excuse not to try it.

First, download the program to your device, and then download a ‘Deck’ of flashcards to study. In particular, I’d suggest using the decks called ‘Mastering Chinese Characters’. There are 10 decks, each with about 1500 flashcards. This should keep even the most committed learner busy for the best part of 6 months. The first deck is the easiest and the 10th the hardest – as you would probably expect. There are of course many other decks, some exploring the stroke order of characters, the components of characters, as well as others which test pronunciation and character definition. Take your pick. Look around and choose the deck that’s most suitable for your level and aspirations.

The cards, in the deck I’ve recommended, introduce a character and use that character in a sentence. The cards test your knowledge of the pronunciation of the character, recognition of the written character, definition of the character, and translation of the sentence the character appears in – English to Chinese and Chinese to English. Anki flashcards can be a very thorough way of studying characters and you retain the knowledge of characters much more efficiently than mere rote memorization. And the best bit about all of this? It’s free, 100% free! Free to download and more decks are being created all the time by community members.

In the beginning I’d suggest picking either a number of new cards to study each day, say 50, or set a specific time for studying, say 30-60 minutes. At 50 cards a day each deck should take about a month, by which time you will really know the characters in that deck, and your Chinese vocabulary will have improved greatly. 50 cards may sound like a lot, but if you have Anki on your mobile device, there are numerous moments throughout the day when you can take a few minutes to study 10 cards and then 10 some time later. Before you know it, you’ve done 50.

(Anki screenshot – images may vary with different devices / platforms.)

There are, of course, a few drawbacks to this system. The third deck of the Mastering Chinese Characters has six different flashcards with characters that have the pronunciation ‘Jì’! So, when you’re being tested on the pronunciation of a single character, without being able to see the character; you have a problem. Which of the six is it? Well, you can either ignore the question, or if you’re really committed recall all six when you attempt to answer that particular question – the latter, in the end, improves your vocabulary.

A final word of warning, if you’re studying 50 new cards a day, after week 2, you could have a maximum of 700 cards to review, plus the 50 new cards. So control the maximum number of reviews per day in the deck options tab, otherwise you can easily get bogged down with reviews and become disheartened.

Pros

• Available on numerous platforms and for mobile devices.
• You decide how much to study and for how long.
• Increases your vocabulary rapidly.
• Intelligently spaced repetition – you don’t study what you already know, and you decide what you know.
• It’s free! Did I say this already?
• There’s an on-line community of Anki users who create new decks all the time – for free.

Cons

• Studying a single character from pronunciation alone is confusing due to the large number of homonyms in the Chinese language.
• Sentences are not ‘diagrammed’ so grammatical constructions are not explicitly understood. (BTW – this was how you learnt your mother tongue.)
• It doesn’t test your writing skills.
• It doesn’t test your pronunciation.
• Flashcard study, like all things that do not vary; can become monotonous after a while.

(Please note that many of the cons on this list are related to using the Mastering Chinese Characters decks, and may not apply to other decks.)

Studying in this way creates what I call a ‘stored memory’ of Chinese characters, expressions and sentences. These characters are not part of your ‘working memory’ just yet, but they’re waiting to come forward to help you understand. And they will come forward as you watch / listen to films, TV programs, Chinese speakers etc. The ear begins to pick out the expressions studied and it then takes only a few seconds (sometimes minutes) to recall the characters from the ‘stored memory’. This process of recalling characters moves the information from ‘stored memory’ to ‘working memory’. Once you begin to recall the expressions in active conversation the vocabulary becomes forever yours.

Anki may not be the answer to all your Chinese problems. Use it wisely and it becomes an excellent adjunct to your studies. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

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Really, it depends on what you want from the language and what situation you’re in. If you’re going to spend any time in China, then learning to speak becomes priority number one. If opportunities to interact with Chinese speakers are few and far between then learning to read and write might be more useful. However, at some point, you’re going to need to learn to speak Chinese. So where do you start?

Pinyin Syllable Chart Helps in Learning Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation

Let’s forget tones ( 声调 shēngdiào ), for a moment and address simple pronunciation. If you look below you will see the ‘pin yin syllable chart’ which lists the 412 possible sound combinations that you will need to learn if you wish to speak Mandarin.

Chinese PinYin Chart with Audio (click the image or  here)

This chart may look daunting at first but think about it for more than a second and you’ll realise something. If you take those 412 sound combinations and multiply them by 5 (for the 5 tones – yes I’m including the neutral) you obtain a total of 2060. That total represents all the sounds you will ever need while speaking Mandarin. Every sentence you will ever use will contain one or more of those 2060 sounds. So learn them.

My first two weeks of lessons in China consisted primarily of pronunciation drills, and continued repetition of those 2060 sounds until the class could accurately reproduce them. Was it dull? For sure! But I was with 15 other people and we were all terrible. We all laughed and we all got better, eventually. Once you have the basics of pronunciation then the learning process becomes much much easier. Learning to speak Chinese without this foundational aspect is like trying to speak English without knowing the alphabet!

During those first two weeks, I set myself the task of looking at the pinyin chart in the front of my textbook and pronouncing all 412 sounds using a 1st level tone. Then I’d go through them again with the 2nd tone, then the 3rd, and then… well I’m sure you get the picture. Was this boring? Yes. It sure was. However, I don’t regret the time I spent trying to get those sounds right. It reinforced the drills I’d done in class and it taught me how to listen more accurately.

Yes, by speaking more accurately you’ll be able to listen more accurately! If you were learning English then accurate listening would assist your accurate spelling. Alas, such benefits are not really yielded in character-based languages like Chinese. However, with practice, you’ll pick up the nuances of pronunciation that you didn’t notice at the beginning. For instance, you’ll learn, probably quite early on, that the ‘a’ in ‘yan’ on the pinyin chart is pronounced ‘yen’, like the Japanese currency, whereas the ‘a’ in Yang does not have that ‘e’ sound at all.

There are two other examples that spring to mind regarding pronunciation; firstly the difference between 霎 shà, a shower, and 下 xià, to fall. The sounds ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘zh’, and ‘r’ are made with the tongue raised toward the roof of the mouth, while the tongue is pushed down, below the bottom teeth, for the sounds ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘x’. If you look back to the pinyin chart you will notice that ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘zh’, and ‘r’ are grouped together as are ‘j’, ‘q’, and ‘x’. The sounds are grouped this way because of the identical tongue position required to produce them.

For the second example: 吃 chī and 车 chē, both are first tones, and to the beginner very similar in sound. However, to the Chinese ear, these are two distinct sounds. As I mentioned above the tongue should be raised to help create the ‘ch’ sound but creating that ‘e’ sound at the end can be problematic. It took me a long time to achieve but in the end, I realized that flicking my tongue down, so it neared my lower teeth, during the pronunciation of words like chē helped produce that elusive ‘e’ sound.

These differences in pronunciation are obvious to Chinese natives and become increasingly obvious the more time you devote to spoken Mandarin. At first, you’ll think you’re saying something correctly but the sound you think you’re making and the sound you’re actually making are very different. You will know when your pronunciation is correct because you will no longer receive those blank looks from Chinese shop owners. Instead, you receive a smile and the vegetables you ordered. And that smile, at the end of the day, makes the effort of practicing pronunciation worthwhile – because in that moment you have successfully communicated with another human being in another country using another language.

Recommended Resources to help with your Chinese pronunciation:

• Chinese Pronunciation: The Complete Guide for Beginner
• How to Improve Your Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation
• From Frustration to Fluency: Master Chinese Pronunciation with 6 Techniques

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