Chinese languages

hey y'all im really interested in learning chinese but i have 0 knowledge about it, i just had two quick questions, do chinese characters have different meanings like japanese or do they only have one meaning all the time? and the second one was could someone tell me the four tones used in chinese?...

Shanghainese and Mandarin are languages as different as English and German. Each has it's own peculiar set of words and both languages sound completely different. Woooo I would disagree with that. You're right in the sense that Shanghaihua does sound different to putonghua but a fair few of the pro...

i can't see any REAL good english-chinese dictionary on the web, but 林語堂 is sometimes useful. Better than having none.

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/

Hi! Yes, the traditional system is complex and a simple alphabet would free up ressources for other things. And, nah, I think the classics might be somewhat overrated, because most people do not read them unless forced to (I for my part read them willingly, but I'm a happy minority :P ). Using bopo...

The example shown in the original post is convincing, but it falsely takes the homophones too simple, and therefore, you overlook how chinese characters help distinguish the meaning of those homophones. See this example: di. And this sound represents 55 meanings. di1 氐 低 羝 堤 提 磾 嘀 滴 鏑 鞮 di2 狄 迪 的 糴 ...