How Mandarin is actually learned
Long pieces on method: what tones really are, why word counts mislead, how review scheduling works, and what an examination does and does not measure. Written by the editorial team, reviewed before publication, and revised rather than quietly deleted.
Learning Chinese as a French Speaker: What Transfers and What Interferes
French gives you one of the hardest Mandarin vowels for free, and then takes back the interest with phrase-final stress, a missing h, and twelve years of conjugation habits. An honest inventory for francophone learners.
Sofia Ouazzani · July 27, 2026 · 6 min read
Learning Chinese as an Arabic Speaker: What Transfers and What Interferes
Your first language is not a neutral starting point. Some of what Arabic gave you is a genuine head start in Mandarin — and some of it will quietly produce the same three errors for years. Here is an honest inventory of both.
Nadia Haddad · July 13, 2026 · 6 min read
Chinese Has No Conjugation — And That Is the Hard Part
No tenses, no persons, no agreement, no irregular verbs. The relief lasts about three weeks. Then you discover that what replaces conjugation is a system of aspect, time words and context that is genuinely harder than an endings table.
Sofia Ouazzani · June 1, 2026 · 6 min read
The 把 Construction, Explained Slowly
Most learners do not struggle with 把 — they avoid it, for years, behind a set of workarounds smooth enough that nobody notices. Here is what the pattern actually does, the three rules that govern it, and the places where no workaround exists.
Nadia Haddad · April 20, 2026 · 5 min read
The Measure Word Problem: Why 个 Is Not Always Safe
You cannot count a noun in Chinese without a measure word, and the general-purpose one covers less ground than beginners hope. The dozen that handle most of daily life, the traps inside them, and how to store a measure word so it arrives with the noun.
Nadia Haddad · January 26, 2026 · 5 min read
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