How to Read Chinese: Tones

How to Read Chinese: Tones

If you’re just getting started with Pinyin, start with our first three posts, What is Pinyin?,  Pinyin Initial Sounds, and Pinyin Final Sounds. As mentioned previously, Pinyin uses Roman letters to transcribe Chinese sounds. In Chinese, each character corresponds to one syllable (which can be one word, or part of a word). Chinese syllables consist…

12 Chinese Zodiac Characters and their Unusual Idioms
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12 Chinese Zodiac Characters and their Unusual Idioms

The 12 animals of the Zodiac are represented by Chinese zodiac characters. These characters represent the Chinese zodiac animals. Below, we’ll explain each animal and its character. We’ll also show you a popular and often slightly unusual idiom for each zodiac animal. Chinese Zodiac Characters The Chinese Zodiac are referred to as 生肖 (shēng xiào)….