Language Reference Information

Literary Chinese

Introduction to Literary Chinese A gentle introduction for learners with minimal background in modern Chinese or even none at all, this article outlines development and history of the language, grammar, important authors, and gives a number of examples with text in both Chinese and English

Language Reference Materials

An Introduction to Chinese Grammar

An Introduction to Chinese Grammar 汉语语法入门 — Introduces Chinese parts of speech, phrases, sentence elements, sentence use, aspects of an action, special predicates and complex sentences.

Chinese Culture

Introduction to Calligraphy

Introduction to Calligraphy 书法入门 — Introduces materials, holding and moving the brush, drawing strokes, fundamental strokes (Yanti), and copying.

Decorative Designs in Chinese Art

Decorative Designs in Chinese Art — This article describes decorative art on pottery, bronze ware, and many other art works and artifacts. Decorative art is distinguished from fine art in that decorative art is most often uses repeated designs and is applied to artifacts that have functions in themselves. Decorative art has a fascinating story to tell about Chinese culture that is not as easily told using words alone.

Lists

Frequently Used Words

List of Kangxi and Simplified Radicals

List of Common Nominal Measure Words

List of Common Nominal Measure Words 常见名量词表 — Updated to include over 3,000 matching measure word / noun pairs.

Time, Measures

Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and 24 Solar Terms 天干地支与二十四节气

Basic and Accounting Numerals 基本数字和大写数字

Nouns of Location 方位词

Currencies 货币 — Currencies: from the Afghani to the Zimbabwe dollar, each country's unit of currency.

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