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
Why Your Tones Collapse in Sentences
Your flashcard tones are fine. Your sentence tones are mush. That is not a contradiction — isolated syllables and connected speech are two different skills, and almost nobody is taught the second one.
Nadia Haddad · May 4, 2026 · 5 min read
How to Learn Chinese Tones (When Your Language Does Not Have Them)
Tones are not decoration and they are not an accent you can add later — they are part of the word. Here is why they feel impossible at first, and a practice protocol built on minimal pairs, tone pairs and recording yourself.
Nadia Haddad · November 3, 2025 · 7 min read
How these are written
The same editorial rules apply here as to the rest of the platform.
- Every article is versioned and attributed to a named author, and is reviewed by a second person before it is published.
- No official vocabulary list, syllabus, scoring rule or examination date is reproduced or invented. Where an authoritative figure is needed, the article says so and points at the examination authority.
- Chinese examples are tone-marked and checkable, and are held to the same standard as the dictionary.
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