Articles published in February 2013
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Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese
The normal thing to do when we learning characters or words is to focus on deepening our knowledge, researching components and understanding more about what we’re trying to learn. Some problems can’t be alleviated this way, however, instead they call for horizontal vocabulary learning, i.e. to putting the character or word into context and to compare it with similar characters or words. Only then can we grasp the bigger picture.
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Hacking Chinese meet-up in Taipei 2013-03-02
I’ve been in Taiwan for almost six months and even though I have met some people I previously only knew over the internet, I still haven’t arranged a proper Hacking Chinese meet-up. Time to change that! The first meet-up ever is planned for next Saturday (March 2nd) and will be held in Taipei.
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The Cthulhu bubble and studying Chinese
What does learning Chinese have to do with the Cthulhu Mythos? Quite a lot, actually. This article is about your bubble of safety and what happens when monsters (weird, difficult cases) appear and what you should do to avoid insanity. In short, don’t poke the monster in the eye; when encountering strange cases, either ignore them or memorise them, don’t waste time understanding everything you hear or see.
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Improving your Chinese by translating from another language
I think translation is one of the best ways of improving writing ability. Translation forces you into linguistic environments you wouldn’t have ended up in if you wrote the article yourself. This article is about how translation can be used to improve your written Chinese.
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Hacking Chinese 2012/2013: What was and what will be
2012 was a very good year for Hacking Chinese. The website has expanded enormously and so has the number of readers. This article details some of the most important developments, some of the best articles and also some random facts. Lastly, it discusses the future. What will happen in 2013?
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