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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2370 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Chinese learners, where do you start? It's a tonal language with an impenetrable writing system. I know there are other Category 5 languages out there, but this one is probably the hardest to start, right? Japanese was easy to start; just read Genki and start doing the homework. Anyway, how do you start learning Chinese?

It helps that they set up a romanization system, Pinyin, so you can read/write at a basic level even without learning any Hanzi.

IMO the Chinese grammar structure isn't too hard for a native English speaker, and there's no verb conjugation whatsoever, so there are some upsides.

I've been doing Chinese on Duolingo for a couple of years now, only because my husband (who's doing Spanish) bought a family membership. It's only been tolerable because I studied Chinese in a classroom setting several years earlier, and retained a lot of the basic grammar; I would absolutely not recommend Duolingo for a newbie. HelloChinese seemed good, although you do hit a hard paywall before too long.

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