Exciting milestone — MandarinMap GPT has now been used over 60 times, with a full 5-star rating from all users!

Designed to help learners build real Mandarin fluency, MandarinMap GPT offers:

Sentence building from the ground up
Tone flow and pronunciation practice
Reading support with Pinyin + vocabulary
Business Mandarin training
Interactive learning games

It’s based on the Mapping Mandarin™ method I developed — rooted in cultural understanding, tone precision, and decades of teaching.

It's in the GPT Store MandarinMap GPT https://tinyurl.com/4amh74dk
Works great alongside my Substack lessons and book Pinyin and the Art of Tones.

Thanks to all who’ve supported it so far!

Well, this is strange. Somebody just emailed me saying that they had found an old Chinese book and were wondering if it was valuable. The title is 網俠, or "Knight of the Nets", which I'd never heard of and can find no information on.

The thing is, it's not really text. The pages are filled with random characters in what looks like a square grid, but most of the squares are blank. Sometimes there are short sentences at the top of the page, often in the second person, like they're addressing the reader.

The scan I was sent is a bit hard to make out, so I copied some of the grid on paper. As best as I can tell, the accompanying sentence here says something like "you [honorific] hear the sound of water falling on coins of gold".

There is no information about the author, the publisher, or the year of publication, only a date of some sort on the first page: the first day of the fourth month.

Any ideas?

So yesterday, I was giving a lecture on Lin Yutang and his MingKwai typewriter and a student informed me that, apparently, it had been found.

Let me elaborate: The MingKwai was a revolutionary machine that could be used to type a theoretical maximum of 90 000 Chinese characters, almost twice as much as in Imperial China's largest dictionary. The legacy of its "Magic Eye" viewfinder system and Lin's statistical analysis can still be seen in how Chinese is written on computers today. According to Thomas S. Mullaney, it marked the birth of "input". Its only prototype was believed to have been lost, possibly thrown away or disassembled for parts.

And it was found. In a basement in New York. This January.

*high-pitched noises*

Original Facebook post that is either reporting the find or a very elaborate scam: https://www.facebook.com/groups/127768622643436/permalink/950194670400823/?rdid=WoJvYLekDUuGmSYh&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2Fp%2F19qjBZdYpj%2F

Blog post by Richard Polt with pictures: https://writingball.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-discovery-of-lin-yutangs-mingkwai.html

The #ChineseLanguage and its #writingsystem represent one of the most enduring and unique linguistic traditions in human history. Rooted in the Sino-Tibetan language family, #Chinese evolved in a completely different cultural and historical context compared to the #IndoEuropeanlanguages. In this post, we briefly explore its origins and development and its linguistic characteristics and significance:

https://www.fabriziomusacchio.com/weekend_stories/told/2024/2024-12-27-chinese_language_and_writing_system/

The Chinese character for castle, 城, kinda looks like a castle, doesn't it?

#RandomThoughts
#ChineseLanguage
#JapaneseLanguage

#ChineseLanguage
I know it's a question for which most people would probably have a similar answer, but I'm asking it anyway. :3
When you say Chinese language, without specifying which one, do you mean:

Here's the recent post on Mapping Mandarin™ at Substack. This is a short story I wrote about an experience living with Mongol herders in a yurt. It's difficult, but should be interesting for native speakers or high level learners.

#Chineselanguage #中文 #mastermandarin #polyglot #multilingual #languagelovers

https://mappingmandarin.substack.com/p/one-night-in-a-yurt-advanced

Many of us are familiar with the expression 马马虎虎 (horse-horse, tiger-tiger), but do we know the story behind it? Discover the intriguing tale below.

Enjoy short readings in Chinese selected for Mandarin language enthusiasts!

Enhance your comprehension and expand your vocabulary through engaging, culturally rich stories and book excerpts.

https://mappingmandarin.substack.com/p/intermediate-524

Check out the newest Mapping Mandarin reading!

Subscribe to have them delivered directly to your Inbox.

#Chineselanguage #中文 #mastermandarin #polyglot #multilingual #languagelovers

https://mastermandarin.substack.com/p/the-story-of-ghost-dog-intermediate

For anyone who can speak #Chinese #ChineseLanguage #Mandarin ... having an issue with a poor translation.
ANY idea what "Left Peptide" and "Right Peptide" means in the context of a car headunit / radio?

As far as I can tell, it has something to do with what side the steering wheel is on I think, or which side the driver sits at, or something about the driver's door.
I can't tell what it actually changes though.
#Mistranslation

EDIT: Mystery solved: https://kolektiva.social/@astridn/112569381592830880

Кто учит летом английский, а кто китайский)

Нашел сегодня приложение. Клон #duolingo, адаптированный под изучение китайского. Рассматривается, конечно же, севернокитайский (Mandarin). Можно и иероглифы на экране рисовать, и произносить, и слушать, и переводить. В Play Market отзывы хорошие. Для первых трёх месяцев выглядит как отличный вариант.

В отличие от Duolingo, грамматика здесь вводится и объясняется, благо в китайском она простая. Начинаются уроки не со слов, а с произношения слогов, что тоже выгодно отличает данное приложение от Duolingo. Также не все произносится роботом: в уроки встроено произношение настоящих китайцев.

Приложение называется #HelloChinese. Кто тоже мечтает общаться с производителями всего на свете на одном языке и читать Конфуция в оригинале, качайте!

Any good Mastodon instances for Chinese culture or Chinese language (especially for learners)

Thanks you
非常感谢

#Chinese #ChineseCulture #ChineseLanguage #Mandarin #China
#中国 #中国文化 #中文· #普通话 #汉子 #汉语

Are you learning Mandarin? Have you read the story of Sima Guang (司马光)?

Check out this simple version by Master Mandarin.

Subscribe to receive Master Mandarin Substack posts directly to your inbox.

#mandarinlanguage #Chinese #Chineseculture #Chinesehistory #Chineselanguage #mastermandarin #cultur668 #Chinesecharacterstories #polyglot #multilingual #languagelovers

https://mastermandarin.substack.com/p/the-story-of-sima-guang-intermediate

Check out the newest Master Mandarin reading!
#Chineselanguage #中文 #mastermandarin #polyglot #multilingual #languagelovers

https://mastermandarin.substack.com/p/bear-opens-a-store-upper-beginner?r=l8kgj

Remember that HSK I took? I PASSED!!! #exam #hsk #hskexam #test #chinese #chineselanguage #chineselearning #passed #passedthetest #relief #mandarin #putonghua #汉语 #水平 #考试 #普通话 #通过 #成功

https://youtube.com/shorts/8hi_H3uq8x8

Global News BC: B.C. translator reaches settlement with British Museum over unauthorized work https://globalnews.ca/news/9883539/b-c-translator-reaches-settlement-with-british-museum-over-unauthorized-work/ #globalnews #britishcolumbia #news #CopyrightInfringement #Chineselanguage #Entertainment #BritishMuseum #Chinesepoems #translations #Copyright #YilinWang #World

Just learned a new #chengyu: 心灰意冷 xīnhuīyílěng, discouraged or disheartened.

I think you could translate this literally as ‘heart in ashes, thoughts cold.’ Baidu Baike says it’s from Journey to the West: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%BF%83%E7%81%B0%E6%84%8F%E5%86%B7/1678217

This wiki bio I wrote last year came up on my watchlist and in re-reading it I'm very unhappy with how awkward this translation sounds (I didn't translate it, I read 0 Chinese, it was in a book somewhere).
Can anyone suggest a more elegant Chinese-to-English translation for this 平民女子会 ?
It currently says "Association for Women Masses" which does not sound idiomatic in English...

article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siem_Piet_Nio

Interesting that the Chinese expression for reconsideration – "think twice" in English – is "三思"/"think thrice".
-
#ChineseLanguage #Mandarin #三思 #thinkTwice

Found an old undated guide to writing letters in Chinese 言文對照廣註寫信必讀 in a Singapore used bookstore. I scanned it and posted to the Internet Archive for anyone who wants to browse it. One book by this title is on worldcat as dated 1921. #china #chineselanguage #asianists #histodons #internetarchive

https://archive.org/details/xiexin-bidu