Simplified or traditional: which characters?

Picking one adds that script's coursebook, writing workbook and first reader to the kit and takes the other script's books back out. Pick it again to clear it. You can still drop any single book from the cart.

Your first month

Tick a line when it is done

How Mandarin works

Mandarin sentences follow the same subject, verb, object order as English, and words never change shape. There is one form of every verb, and time is shown with words like "yesterday" or a small particle after the verb. Nouns have no plural and no gender, though counting anything takes a measure word between the number and the noun (roughly like "two sheets of paper"). The sound system is small: about 400 syllables, each said with one of four tones, so many words sound alike and context does a lot of work. Writing is separate from sound. Each character is one syllable and one unit of meaning, most words are two characters long, and pinyin (the standard spelling in Latin letters) is how you look words up, type them and learn to say them. About 1,000 characters cover most of everyday text, and educated adults know several thousand.

A blue enamel street plate on a weathered concrete wall, three white Chinese characters above their pinyin spelling — Characters above, pinyin below

Tones and pinyin

The four tones are high and flat, rising, low, and falling, plus a light neutral tone on some unstressed syllables. The same syllable with a different tone is a different word, so learn every word with its tone, never as bare letters.
Pinyin letters do not sound like English. Q is close to "ch", x is close to "sh", c is "ts", and zh is close to "j". Learn the chart with audio before you read any pinyin aloud on your own.
The third tone is taught as a dip that falls and rises, but in normal speech it mostly stays low. When two third tones meet, the first one rises instead.
Three pairs cause most early mix-ups: zh, ch, sh (tongue curled back) against j, q, x (tongue flat behind the lower teeth), and the u sound against the rounded-lip vowel written with two dots.
Practice tones in pairs, not one at a time. Almost every word is two syllables, and the hard part is moving from one tone to the next without the second one drifting.

Hear the sounds explained

A gray road sign against a blue sky, four Chinese characters on its top line and the road's name in pinyin on the line below — A road name in both systems

How characters work

Characters are assembled from about 200 repeating components. Learn the common ones early (water, hand, mouth, person, tree, speech) and new characters stop looking like random drawings.
Most characters pair one component that hints at the meaning with one that hints at the sound. Spotting that split lets you guess at a new character before you look it up.
Stroke order follows a few fixed rules: top before bottom, left before right, horizontal before the vertical that crosses it. Correct order makes handwriting legible and makes handwriting lookup in a dictionary app work.
Write each new character by hand a few times in a grid, saying it aloud as you go. Then test yourself the next day from memory. Copying a character fifty times in one sitting does much less than recalling it five times across a week.
You will type far more than you write. Typing is done in pinyin, picking the character from a list, so recognizing characters matters more than producing every one from memory.

Take a character apart

A black-and-white desk shot of a poem copied in neat brush characters on gridded paper, with a copybook, an ink bottle, an inkstone and a brush around it — A poem copied out by brush

A covered street at night hung with dozens of glowing neon shop signs in Chinese characters

Where Mandarin can take you

Open one to see where to start

Travel MandarinEnough to order food, read a metro map, bargain and get a taxi home. A few weeks of survival phrases and numbers changes a trip.

Start here

Learn to say and recognize the ten things you will need on day one of a trip: hello, thank you, how much, this one, the numbers one to ten, restroom, and I do not understand. Say each one to a voice-input keyboard until it types the right characters.

HSK PrepThe mainland proficiency exam gives you a fixed word list and a clear target at each level. The first level tests a short list of everyday words and no handwriting. It is in simplified characters, and Taiwan runs its own exam in traditional.

Start here

Download the official word list for the first level and mark the words you already know. Then try one sample listening section untimed, to hear how slowly the beginner level is spoken.

HSK official site

Brush CalligraphyWriting characters with a brush, slowly, for the pleasure of the shapes. It doubles as stroke-order practice, and you can start with plain water on a reusable cloth.

Start here

Fill a cup with water and write the eight basic strokes, then the character for "eternity" (which contains all eight), ten times with a brush. Watch one stroke-order animation first so each stroke starts at the right end.

Arch Chinese

ConversationRegular talk with a tutor or an exchange partner. Mandarin grammar is forgiving, so beginners can hold a slow, real conversation sooner than they expect.

Start here

Install a free language exchange app this week and send one voice message in Mandarin: your name, where you live and that you have just started. Ask your partner to tell you which tones came out wrong.

HelloTalk

Reading and showsGraded stories written with a few hundred characters, then subtitled dramas, comics and song lyrics. Chinese-language shows nearly always carry character subtitles, which makes them unusually good study material.

Start here

Read one newbie-level story in a graded reading app tonight. Tap only the words that come up more than once, then listen to the audio while following the characters.

Du Chinese

The two official exams

What trips beginners up

What to expect, and the habits to drop

Expect native speech to sound like a blur for months. You will read and say far more than you can catch by ear, and only hours of listening close that gap.
Expect to forget characters. Losing ones you knew last week is normal and is what spaced review is for, not a sign you are bad at this.
Expect slow reading for a long time. US government language trainers put Mandarin in their hardest group for English speakers, at about 2,200 class hours to professional level.
Drop the idea that tones can wait. Words learned without tones have to be relearned, and wrong tones are the main reason beginners are not understood.
Do not lean on pinyin past the first few weeks. If the romanization is always printed above the characters, your eyes will read it and skip the characters.
Do not learn characters as isolated pictures. Learn them inside words, with their sound, or you end up knowing shapes you cannot say or use.
Do not switch scripts or stack three courses at once. Pick one script and one main course and finish its first volume.

Close-up of a pale wall panel filled with columns of black brush-written Chinese characters — A wall of running text

Where to learn and look things up

A dictionary app is the one tool every learner uses daily.

Draw an unknown character with your finger and it finds it, with audio and example sentences.

A free grammar wiki sorted by level answers most "why is this word here" questions faster than a textbook index.

A free university video course gives you a teacher's voice and a weekly structure if you would rather watch than read.

A spaced-repetition flashcard app schedules reviews for you.

Make your own cards from your coursebook rather than downloading a deck of 5,000.

An online tutor for 30 minutes a week is the best money you can spend on tones.

Community tutors on lesson marketplaces often charge less than a restaurant lunch.

A learner forum is the place to post handwriting for correction and ask which of two similar words to use.

The dictionary, a grammar wiki, a course, tutors and a forum

A hand holding a brush upright over red-gridded practice paper, finishing a row of large black Chinese characters — Brush practice on gridded paper

About the kit

Everything you need to begin is free, so nothing here is marked essential. The two general lines are the things free apps do worst: a grammar reference you can flip through, and squared paper for writing characters at the right proportions. The coursebook, the character workbook and the first reader all depend on your script, so they sit behind the Simplified Characters and Traditional Characters add-ons. Turn on one of the two, not both. The travel, exam and calligraphy add-ons are for the directions above and can wait until you know you want them.

Strips of bright red paper hung side by side, each brushed top to bottom with large black Chinese characters — Brushed couplets on red paper

Pack the book satchel

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The grammar reference and the grid notebook start in the satchel. A script's coursebook, workbook and reader stay out until you pick that script in section 01, and the travel, exam and calligraphy lines stay out until you switch them on in section 06 or with the chips in the cart.

Mandarin grammar reference

recommended · Reference

Apps teach sentences without saying why they are built that way. A grammar book with short entries lets you look up one pattern (word order, measure words, the particles after verbs) and see ten examples of it.

budget

Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student's Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors

4.6(315)

$7.89

Learning Mandarin

Simplified or traditional: which characters?

Your first month

How Mandarin works

Tones and pinyin

How characters work

Where Mandarin can take you

What trips beginners up

Where to learn and look things up

About the kit

Pack the book satchel

Mandarin grammar reference

Chinese character grid notebook

Simplified Chinese coursebook

Simplified character writing workbook

Simplified Chinese graded reader

Traditional Chinese coursebook

Traditional character writing workbook

Traditional Chinese graded reader

Mandarin travel phrasebook

Beginner HSK vocabulary cards or word book

Beginner HSK practice test book

Water-writing calligraphy practice set