Learn Chinese characters-to Add Fuel

With the increasing influence of China, Chinese language learning is becoming popular and Chinese characters or phrases can be seen on more and more occasion such as “中国制造” on products, or people chanting “加油” in Olympic Games. So, what do these words mean? And how do we pronounce them? No hurry! From today on, we will introduce the series of ”learn Chinese characters”, good news for those who want to learn pinyin or Chinese characters.

In this article, we will particularly focus on the word"加油 (jiāyóu)". Jia4 means to add in Chinese, while You2 means gas or fuel, so literally, "加油 (jiāyóu)" means "to add fuel". Why do Chinese say “add fuel” to encourage their players? It may confuse many foreigners who is trying to learn mandarin.

What is the relationship between petrol stations and athletes? When a car is running slower, probably the gas is running out. The example is just like an athlete running out of energy. It means something like "Come on!" or "Go! Go! Go!" and can be heard during any sporting event or game in China. Isn’t it interesting?

Now do you get the meaning of 加油 (jiāyóu)? You can stay tune to our “learn Chinese characters” series, which will introduce more popular Chinese characters in the future. You can also seek Chinese tuition at iChineselearning school, one of the best online mandarin schools in China.

The Chinese is Coming

The Chinese is coming! I do not mean the Chinese people are coming, but the Chinese language is coming! If so, are you ready for the Chinese language learning?

Why are the Chinese studies becoming so popular? There are some reasons. First, Chinese has long history full of legends. Second, Chinese is spoken by the largest population in the world. Third, China has raised its international influence, furthermore the rapid economic development dramatically. Fourth, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games has provided a good chance to show the Chinese culture to the world, and thus attracted more foreigners to study Chinese.

As a Chinese tutor, I'm very pride myself on the popularity of Chinese language. The fact that more and more foreigners study Chinese reflects China’s economic development in a sense. Take America as an example, from kindergartens to a high school, there is a rapid rise of interest among American pupils to study Chinese language. On the other hand, over two hundred Confucius institutes have been set up in 69 countries; from TV we can see many foreigners take Chinese learn online. The number of foreign students who are attracted by the mysterious and charming language and come to china learning Chinese also increases steadily every year.

While Chinese learn online is a fever among foreigners, many Chinese learners tend to ignore the importance of their mother tongue, grammatical mistakes constantly occur in their essays, not to mention coarse wording and improper style. That’s why we should attach equal importance to our mother tongue when we study Chinese.