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Mythic Mandarin

Blog: How Chinese Works

Clear guides to how Chinese works: the sounds, the writing and the grammar, each with examples, common mistakes and practice. Every guide links to the HSK levels where you use it.

  1. How Chinese Works

    Sounds and tones, characters and words, and grammar built from word order and small words: the whole language on one page, with where to go next.

    11 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3

  2. Chinese Tones

    How the four Mandarin tones and the neutral tone work, how pinyin marks them, and the tone changes you will actually hear.

    10 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2

  3. Chinese Characters vs Words

    Why Chinese has no alphabet, what a character is, and why knowing characters and knowing words are two different skills.

    9 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3

  4. Chinese Word Order

    Chinese has no verb endings, so word order does the work. Learn the basic sentence, where time and place go, and how questions and negatives keep the order.

    11 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3

  5. Chinese Measure Words

    Why Chinese needs a measure word between a number and a noun, how 个 works, and the common classifiers worth learning first.

    9 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3

  6. Simplified vs Traditional Chinese

    Two ways to write the same language: where each script is used, why simplification happened, which characters differ and which one to learn.

    10 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 3, HSK 5

  7. Separable Verbs and Common Particles

    吗, 呢, 吧, 了, 过, 着 and the three de, plus verbs like 见面 that split in two. What they do and when to learn them.

    12 minute read · Useful for HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3, HSK 4