English for Chinese (blog postings archive)
Issues in English and Chinese language study

A few years ago I started to blog about English studies particularly from a Chinese student's perspective. I chose Blogspot as the blog site because of its clean interface, performance, as well as web site up-time and projected life expectancy. Unfortunately, this site is completely blocked in mainland China, where I would expect the majority of the readers to be. To make my blog postings accessible to that special area of the world, I manually archived some of the articles from my original site, English-for-Chinese.blogspot.com, as shown below.


Correcting a petition January 20, 2024
Oxford comma November 26, 2023
Shall or will? October 29, 2023
Phonetic symbols /i/ and /u/ in some dictionaries mislead English learners May 14, 2023
Study time: vocabulary vs. grammar April 28, 2023
Grammatical particle 把 in Chinese and word order January 15, 2023
Translation of a few function words (几个“虚词”的翻译) November 21, 2022
Debate about dropping English as a mandatory course November 13, 2022
dastardly July 8, 2022
Use International Phonetic Alphabet to help improve pronunciation June 22,2022
Words often mispronounced by Chinese learners April 26, 2022
Mutual intelligibility to distinguish between language and dialect: case of Chinese and Cantonese April 3, 2021
2021: The Year of "牛" February 4, 2021
English teacher's accent (英语老师的口音) January 24, 2021
First floor vs ground floor 楼层的称谓 December 3, 2020
"drawing" and "painting" November 15, 2020
Do not use etymology to determine current meaning of a word September 8, 2020
Linguists' responses to school dismissing professor saying 那个 in communication class September 7, 2020
Tones are better immune to interference August 2, 2020
Adjective in the form of the past participle of an intransitive verb July 25, 2020
"self-driving" vs "self-driven", "self-limiting" vs "self-limited" February 10, 2020
What's special about English "until"/"till"? September 27, 2019
Word order flexibility July 24, 2019
Mutual intelligibility in writing only February 28, 2019
"below" is not an adjective August 4, 2018
Basic Chinese Characters July 6, 2018
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End/Outcome of Classical German Philosophy April 30, 2018
A few word-play jokes March 11, 2018
The Multilingual Idioms List February 4, 2018
Chinese translation of a poem by Kahlil Gibran November 11, 2017
Language difficulty September 14, 2017
自由: "freedom" or "liberty"? April 16, 2017
Comparison of Chinese and Western etymology January 9, 2017
Tian Ji's horse racing and the electoral vote system November 11, 2016
Why is it rare to see Chinese etymology? September 4, 2016
"Oriental" is not derogatory May 28, 2016
English "can" and Chinese "会" March 12, 2016
Restrictive and non-restrictive clauses January 20, 2016
* What language is popular? A revisit November 25, 2015
On a proposed new name for China combining Mainland and Taiwan November 7, 2015
Funny Chinese transliterations to help remember English words September 26, 2015
Prepositional separation as a difficulty of Chinese July 13, 2015
Translation of a poem "Snow falling on high branches..." May 23, 2015
Thought experiment: reading speed of a trilingual March 26, 2015
2015: The Year of "羊" February, 2015
"Dragon" for "龙": a mistranslation? February, 2015
New Chinese acronyms February, 2015
Excerpts from a book on second language acquisition February 28, 2015
Affective meaning of "中国" (China) January 31, 2015
Which English letter do Chinese pronounce wrong the most? December 6, 2014
Why Chinese choose uncommon English names November 9, 2014
* Scholarly translation should be literal October 4, 2014
Technical translation: word "apply" as a case August 15, 2014
"We should all be learning Chinese..." thus they say June 11, 2014
"He" (他) and "she" (她) mix-up for Chinese students May 11, 2014
"第几" has no English equivalent: a follow-up March 29, 2014
Joke due to translation: "Oracle bone script" was registered as a software brand by Americans March 1, 2014
Chinese religious language January 11, 2014
"Modern" and "现代" or "近代" December 8, 2013
"Thought" and "以为" September 28, 2013
Translation: a case study, "feminism" and “女权主义" August 9, 2013
Translation of "computer", "calculator", and others May 19, 2013
Incorrect English in a petition to the White House May 5, 2013
"主席" (Zhǔxí) was Chairman, is President March 16, 2013
Reposting: Bilingualism and mental health January 18, 2013
2013 New Year's wish: Less new usage of 被 (bei) January 1, 2013
* A joke about Chinese calligraphy in inscription November 12, 2012
"谢谢叔叔!" "Thank you Uncle" said not to a family relative November 6, 2012
* Translation: "Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set" October 15, 2012
"NBA" as an entry in Chinese dictionary September 10, 2012
"第几" has no English equivalent August 5, 2012
eCollegeFinder's ESL article July 20, 2012
Off-topic: ESL blog award June 29, 2012
Linguistic authority June 26, 2012
Interjection (叹词) June 2, 2012
虚词"虽然":empty word "although" May 23, 2012
虚词"当然":empty word "of course" May 23, 2012
虚词"很":empty word "very" May 23, 2012
Chinese "empty word" 虚词 May 21, 2012
Off-topic: Learn English to know China May 2, 2012
Follow-up to "Why the Chinese language should not adopt phonetic writing" April 9, 2012
Learning ... as a second language February 19, 2012
* "Ni Hao Ma" (你好吗) is not a native Chinese greeting December 29, 2011
Chinese dance "Flower Kidney" December 5, 2011
Why the Chinese language should not adopt phonetic writing? October 5, 2011
Technical document needs literal translation September 26, 2011
Chinese Accent in English Pronunciation August 26, 2011
Levels of translation quality proposed by Yan Fu: A small example June 26, 2011
Translation of "technical" May 12, 2011
Proper name translation (2): standardization March 14, 2011
Off-topic: What language is popular? March 7, 2011
* "有情人终成眷属" and "Money talks" on Google Translate February 24, 2011
Proper name translation: semantic or phonetic February 6, 2011
"最近" is not always "recently" February 2, 2011
Translation of a sentence in Classical Chinese January 16, 2011
Requested to translate a poem December 20, 2010
Off-topic: Travel to Chongqing October 15, 2010
"user group" or "users group"? April 16, 2010
Chinese translation of "Insight" March 5, 2010
How could some old time Chinese scholars learn foreign languages? September 9, 2009
Off-topic: Language education to solve Chinese ethnic conflict July 8, 2009
"ever" for 曾经? April 26, 2009
Learn English from native speakers March 18, 2009
"Last January" vs "January last year" February 14, 2009
"idea" not to be pronounced like "idea-r" January 20, 2009
"Later" and "recently" are used in past tense December 29, 2008
No concatenation of sentences with comma December 13, 2008
关于背单词是背英文解释还是背中文解释? November 19, 2008
牛津双解还是朗曼双解? October 19, 2008
* How to read keyboard symbols September 10, 2008
* "up to now" and "up till now" August 25, 2008
与老外交流最不该说的八句话 (Taboos when talking to non-Chinese) August 17, 2008
"Romantic" vs "浪漫" August 1, 2008


Contact me
To my Homepage