Learn Chinese in 10 Minutes (ShaoLan Hsueh, Founder of Chineasy) | DLD14

The world's most popular language is more accessible than it looks. Learn not just how characters are composed and structured, but also an easy and innovative way to memorize them. And find out how technology and design are helping bridge the linguistic gap between West and East.
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[@TiagoSeiler]

"Two women together means 'argument'". OK, I'M SOLD!

[@ScourgeYT]

it actually doesn't.

[@brianwidjaja3639]

@Forever Spring ​ In ancient Chinese the character 奻 (nuan) means argument. Ancient chinese belived that when two woman are likely to be together, they may create an argument (which is sexists). But now in Traditional and Simplified Mandarin, we dont use this anymore. She even said in her book "Chineasy" this is not commonly used anymore. However, the japanese used this to ment an argument as some of the Jpaanese character are influenced from the chinese

[@zulkiflijamil4033]

奻

[@KarlDeux]

Three women together means "noise" in fact.

[@dawang5733]

I have to say she is smart in using pictures and cutting-edge marketing strategies to teach Chinese characters. Although she is really "bold" and a bit shameless to claim that she created the ways of breaking down Chinese characters. As a Chinese teacher, that's what I was taught and what I teach too. No, she may enhance but didn't invent the teaching method. Otherwise, I can also claim that I invented Chinese martial arts.

[@SuccessforLifester]

Yeah

[@junglefartmungledart7125]

2 women means argument? Feminists are gonna loooove chinese

[@jarvisdegrassetyson2916]

'Stupid' should be a picture of 2 non-redditors.

[@junchen6154]

I'm from Taiwan, people here speak Chinese but a little different from that in china. I'd say I have never seen 奻. It's not a common word in daily life or in a book.

[@asianaestar]

Marcie Chen I've never seen it either.

[@spiderobert]

***** you may enjoy the Firefox and Chrome add-on "Hide Fedora"

[@Lin4Masses]

spiderobert LOL, this is one of the greatest add-on components ever. Works great with the 'nCage' add on, BTW.

[@EffectPaul]

This is the most amazing thing i've seen on youtube this week. it even tops the talking huskies. jokes aside, this is seriously badass!

[@marisanchezredondo6828]

wow it works I was 3 years learning chinese and it wasn't easy but I see these and I love this way :)

[@Tiothir]

That's really really awesome. To learn such a different language in such a ludic way is so awesome. Shao Lan you are the best!!!

[@thomasz.6764]

In modern China, some characters she mentioned in the video, like 昍(xuan1)，奻(nuan2), have never been used. Some characters like 姦(jian1), 門(men2), have been already simplified and abolished om Mainland China (姦 has been simplied into 奸, 門 has been simplified into 门), but still used in HK, Macau and Taiwan.

[@chrislin9641]

She is from Taiwan, so that is why she is teaching traditional Chinese, however I do agree that her method is complete dogshit as a lot of the words she was talking about are extremely rare.

[@northstar1650]

It is very easy and fun way to learn Chinese characters. Thanks alot Shaolan. You did great work

[@giorozza]

Such creativity put on these characters! Very impressive. Congratulations!

[@BruceWayneReal]

I wonder how cold it was there.

[@gambet0007]

lol

[@redblack3108]

the way you explaining about characters and sound so good. thank you so much

[@Charls03]

This is a very god idea, obviously can be limited but for a beginner such as myself, it definitely sticks in my head and makes it memorable!

[@samuraipoohbear5899]

Very interesting In 5 minutes I learned 5 words how to recognize.

[@bkbj8282]

Very "god" idea. Maybe you can learn English before telling us how "easy" it is to learn a language.

[@timmymike23]

We call that a typo, dipshit.

[@samuraipoohbear5899]

bkbj8282 The person you criticize may speak multiple languages. I noticed that majority of the grammar Nazis like you speak only one or struggle with a second one for long years. Please, crawl back to your hole.....lol

[@bkbj8282]

Samuraipoohbear Hopeful projection before summary dismissal? Is that all you've got? What a weak (and incorrect) argument.

[@OrlandoRafaeldosSantos]

ShaoLan is a very important person with a great Project and very nice ideas. And yet, she´s honoring the memory of her father, a Caligraph. Congratulations from Brazil

[@OrlandoRafaeldosSantos]

ShaoLan is honouring her roots as a Caligrapher´s daughter... and teaching her former Language to the whole world. Brilliantly... ShaoLanning... Chineasining...

[@theipclub688]

Visualization is everything. Your mind doesn't understand sounds or symbols, but it's very good with images and pattern recognition. Great work, mapping all languages is going to take a lot of people.

[@iHEARTt0kyo16]

AMAAAAAAAAAAAAZING. :o Shao Lan did a great work. it would surely help a lot of Chinese learners!

[@fugaenergy]

Thank You! Amazing! Motivation to learn Chinese!

[@MadeinChinakiki]

As a Chinese person looking how to write and as a Graphic Designer - this is Fantastic.

[@NinuRenee]

This has been done millions of times on the basic level. When you do you it to +2,000 characters then i might reconsider paying for your services.

[@gambet0007]

And should probably stick to either traditional or new versions, all she has done is confuse people, not a good way to start up. I'm not even going to go in pinyin not being present problem. I've read one book, 2nd one I'll skim through as well, but they are only pass-time books, not serious learning experience.

[@georgegraham6069]

I am currently learning Chinese. After only three months of study I can say, with a fair amount of confidence, she's a con artist.

[@pantrunkirunki]

I didn't even have the intention to learn Chinese, but after this I just want to keep learning this language! it's so fun this way!

[@doreheyitsmi1723]

The only flaws are... the traditional characters,different dialects/languages (Cantonese), people will memorize the characters, but won't be able to pronounce them, the pinyin (phonetic way of pronouncing the Chinese characters) and the tones. However this is a very good way for visual learners and also a good way to show the literal meaning of the words! Shao Lan Jie, great job!

[@alexisw6613]

the book has small explanations and examples of compound words and if they used the simplified character for the pic they show the traditional in addition to the simplified and vise-verse

[@MercifiesProductions]

This is actually a really good idea. Props to them hope it catches on

[@andresvila233]

I loved it. Great concept!

[@davidmorrison3651]

Great work! Thank you!

[@Kjj17]

Her expression is so cute when she says "three- uh oh- thats adultery"

[@ambere3192]

Kathryn Mankenberg 哈哈

[@yunanqiu7200]

Guys, she is teaching you people some traditional chinese characters which is not used in mainland CHINA, only in taiwan! plus some characters she showed are not common used characters at all like the one two women together! but I have to say the idea is good!

[@888sacam]

omg this is aweeeeesome..!! Tnx Shao Lan..! :D Great work

[@apollon2012]

Very impressive! - Πολύ εντυπωσιακό!

[@g-raffasaurus2350]

Great video ShaoLan!!! Very visually inspiring & fun! :);)

[@chrisludwig4729]

This is really cute and no doubt a helpful starter for character recognition. Understanding radicals can also pay some long term dividends, particularly if you are also interested in learning to write. However, character recognition is not learning a language, particularly in Chinese where a character's pieces may give you no information on how to say the word / recognize it when spoken. For example, the origin of the character for the Chinese word for home (家) is really interesting, but the word sounds nothing like pig or roof. Even in terms of character recognition it is just a small part of a larger learning strategy. Most Chinese characters do not have such clear pictographic stories behind them. Many words do not translate precisely into English and even if you know the translation of a word, it could have radically different uses and connotations than its nearest English counterpart.

[@kaileebroadway7723]

That's very helpful for me to learn Chinese that's so innovative!

[@jrgb962]

I think it's a great invention and a great system to teach the Chinese language with a set besides fast; easy and fun. ¡Congratulations for the creators! ¡Thanks you so much!

[@Overnity]

I love it... Great Idea... '~'

[@amktsy]

I learnt through this method as well.

[@pummichell]

This is amazingl! It's a brilliant idea. That way to learn the language will be not just easier but also enjoyable than just to look and try to memorise the caracteres. The only thing would be how to speak it or write it correctly xd

[@StarhawkRanger]

Spectacular, I want to learn chinese now!

[@random4969]

LOVE this idea, im sharing your videos all over the net :)

[@falco5732]

I started approaching Chinese and after half a day I got to this all by myself. Got to brag about this, come on! Another thing I learned by myself it's that the sound of basic words are onomatopoeic, this is because Chinese language didn't really change so much from when it was created 4000 yrs ago, people needed to vocalize symbols (the process obviously was inverse from vocal to symbol). Try take a word like fire in Chinese and try to imagine why it sound like that.

[@ellenlittle6551]

This is wonderful!

[@ZachMikeMoller]

I still don't see how anyone is going to learn Chinese in 10 minutes.

[@syndicate0101]

+GIM *MMMMMMMMM, YEAH, I'M WITH YOU ON THAT...... NOT TO MENTION, HOW ARE YOU EVEN GOING TO ORDER FOOD, OR EVEN YOUR FAVORITE DISH, IF THESE "PICTUREGRAPHS", DON'T COVER IT???????.......*

[@agme8045]

I guess it means that in 10 minutes (more or less the duration of the video) you can learn basic characters of the Chinese language

[@zulflbeatz]

I'm feeling better teaching listening and speaking before reading

[@AshlynJoseph]

b-b-but how do we pronounce them???

[@PatrickBateman1987]

make something up.

[@AshlynJoseph]

~.~ ok then. you first. ;)

[@verna0072001]

Welcome my channels. learn the voice before you know the word. sometimes there's two or more sound in one word

[@dingliu6302]

part of the character gives u a hint of the pronounciation. but u r most likely need to momorize individual pronouciation of each character. it might takes a while.

[@flashyellow5893]

There are a few factors in studying Mandarin online . One place I found that succeeds in merging these is the Magic Mandarin Blueprint (check it out on google) without a doubt the best treatment i've heard of. Look at all the super information .

[@ashutoshshrestha4969]

thank you very very much this is awesome :D

[@1veggiemonster]

Shaolan Hsuen is ingenious!

[@sherrysung8334]

I like the animations and colors, but I feel like she is trying to take credit for 5000 years of Chinese evolution. Pictographs and radicals are LITERALLY how Chinese was constructed. She is not inventing anything new there and she is in fact introducing confusion by misusing words and disconnecting them from the meaning in order to force a pretty picture (or grab laughs from a tastelessly sexist joke). Again, the animation and colors is friendly and fun. I support those. But she would have served the learning community much better by having her designers study up on Chinese language and culture. (I'm speaking as someone who was raised by Chinese scholars and earned a university Chinese degree and has lived and worked in Taiwan.)

[@dot5483]

Her "new" system is what Chinese learners have intuitively done all along.

[@MrAnthWard]

This is brilliant.

[@dawnriddler]

This is amazing!

[@kev3d]

Interesting idea, but the hard part for westerners is the inflection with the speaking. In western languages, the "up" and "down" of word endings doesn't matter very much with regards to word meaning -might sound a little funny, but it will get the point across. Mandarin on the other hand, is very inflection dependent, meaning any word mispronounced has a totally different meaning. Easy if you grew up with it, very hard if you did not.

[@paxora7820]

Great idea for leaning Chinese! I sure welcome it.

[@ariarizkiramadhani3027]

this is brilliant!

[@keyerror17]

OMG, this is really interesting!

[@timbradshaw5481]

This is good for basic characters that have visual representations for objects. E.g. 日月水山休. But only like 5% of characters are like this. Others are much more complicated, and many words require more than one character to form the word. E.g. 休 is not rest. 休息 is rest. It's 2 characters. So you need to have these concepts for multiple characters for a single word, and you need to do these concepts for over 100 radicals. For example a character that I found hard to learn is, 羡慕 which means to envy. The first character is 2 ears + king + ci4 which means like 'one time'. That character cannot really be turned into a depiction unless u create a story. E.g. a country one time had a king with big ears. All that work for a half of the word (1 character of 2) for the word envy. Imagine doing this for every single character. Sure it makes sense for the characters you find hard, but unless she does this for complicated characters, I can't see how you can use this method for learning 5% of the characters and pretend that will help you to become fluent.

[@diosestavivo6647]

this is awsome.. ilove it😁

[@nastaranmoarefi9438]

Love it

[@sleepyturd]

she is brilliant

[@Silvian119]

Damn that method really works, I saw her at TED once and the day after that I acknowledge, I remembered at least 9 basics and 5 derivatives, just in the first try! HOLY THING it's really usefull :o

[@lenhu7089]

great she inspires me

[@MrTisjeboy]

THIS IS AWESOME!

[@ZomBiMaN667]

This is awsome!

[@Mitchelfin]

Love it

[@pompsjackal]

very good job..good creative!...i think good to learn very basic just few pictorials..10 min impossibe to learn..

[@ronaldronald8819]

Interesting. Will give it a try.

[@11kwright]

The more I learn about Chinese culture is the more I love it. It's also great to know that as she explains that some of the radicals stems from when women were suppressed only to serve for the benefit of men e.g. the woman symbol (if you like) or two women together means "argument" or three "adultery". It's one of the few cultures that for some reason I've always had an innate love but just didn't realise how much I loved it when I was young and inexperienced to life. When I was young I thought I didn't like Chinese people much and not because they appeared disgusting to me because they so big time don't but because I always thought they were rude and even though intelligent with an edge of primitive always being expressed. Notice how I use the words "I thought I didn't like" yet very much the opposite. However, that was before I was knowledgeable about their culture. Just goes to show as one gets older one should get wiser and go through life with eyes open as I love Chinese people in their entirety and am learning the language. I love other cultures too but I'm taking up Chinese for now in the hope to master it. I'm born in the UK and all I know is UK culture although I pride myself on being cosmopolitan can filter and fit in nicely with different cultures. I'm Jamaican descent, I wonder if people are that broad minded as I myself. Otherwise if not I consider people inferior if they lack the ability to understand and appreciate different cultures and what they bring to the table of world culture innovative and new appreciation for life. Hmmmm!

[@reanne1389]

I can't believe I actually really all of this. but rmb there r diff Chinese; China-chinese, Malaysian-chinese, singapore-chinese ect. and also there is traditional and simplified chinese. I'm Singaporean Chinese and I learn simplified what r u learning?

[@user-tw9wt3ce2w]

可以的 非常好的方法 very nice

[@nadirharouche8865]

Hi ShaoLan..Thanks for your great Project.. However not all people are Visual learners..Still , one of the most important things to learn any language is the hard work behind it..Without the effort, perseverance, regularity in Learning it is very difficult..Good luck..

[@Professorsavingsposts]

Amazing. I think 80% of us are visual learners so this is great, fantastic. We teach money saving videos using animated whiteboard and emoji's

[@haffi8338]

ProfessorSavings: Daily Money Saving Videos I think I need to watch some of your videos :D

[@AlphaMachina]

This is amazing.

[@olerise21]

Cannot upvote this enough!

[@io7246]

This is the best idea i ever found on internet Shao Lan... I speak english as a second language, learned from music, but I'm more than interested to learn chinese, either traditional, canto or mandarin, and so far this simple method just makes sense... Is there a cd, software or book you develope? Thank you, and success ;)

[@XXLCOCKTAIL]

Fantastic !!!!! :) Big LIKE!!!

[@Qedhup]

Wow, very impressive.

[@learnchinese619]

I like it.... I hope it takes off

[@awaisahmed149]

Wow. such a nice way.. I loved it. but still i want to learn much chineese..

[@samuraipoohbear5899]

I think it is very useful tool. Not a complete solution but very useful.

[@martinezrj95]

Fascinating

[@megapeople6760]

哦，天哪，这是我第一次用中文写作，非常感谢，我会改善时间

[@WaaDoku]

9:50 Seems like you have to know a lot of history for these illustrations to make sense. That's like the best way to combine studying culture and language at the same time.

[@OsukaruLee]

Great idea, I hope that projet reach a good final line

[@asgharkhan4805]

very good i am like your good literature i love china i like china in all over the world i want to learn a chinese but i am very poor i ant come to china i am very very happy to see your nice literature this possible that i am come in china only to learn chinese

[@barbarab.santos9906]

Wow Now I want to learn chinese!!! How could I buy the books or DVD's? Congrats ShaoLan!!! For the beautiful and amazing job!!! Love from Brazil

[@lambomatt2]

Awesome idea

[@andresvila233]

It atually doesn´t matter if the idea is new or not. What matters is that she put it on practice and is doing something usefull that nobody else is doing so far. She gave it a new tiwst. It´s really easy just to criticize. But how many people take the cahnce to do things, to try new things, to take old ideas and put them into action?

[@Iyana]

The crowd doesn't seem very engaged, or maybe they were supposed to be silent? I think this is an amazing way to learn, I've seen this before though when I was little. As a visual learner, images definetley help!

[@no-Name..]

What is the name of the program that came out in 1 minute and 49 seconds?

[@harryfrantz7013]

I read the piece in the wall street journal this weekend. On the one hand, I would agree that Chinese characters do imply a gender discrimination in the culture. At the same time, there are words like hao, haizi where the character seems to be built on the character for 'woman'. Some of the good things in life seem to be 'womanish'.

[@LokeKS]

There is a limit to this approach.

[@Anarcho-Pragmatist]

I bought this app and love it, but not all the characters she mentions here are included in it...

[@michelbeniard7145]

It is amusing to learn some characters, but it takes a long time to master the language, combination of characters, pronunciation and so on

[@jasonguinn2435]

Interesting idea, but have to agree with other people--this helps with remembering characters, but not speak the language. In order to communicate effectively, speaking and listening are primary and reading becomes secondary. For primary school students just starting this language, like my daughter who is very young, but for older learners or those seeking to speak rather than read, not good. Great concept.

[@donthatecuzimbeaut10]

this is beautiful

[@diosestavivo6647]

this is awsome

[@epifania.4793]

MUY buena idea, espero aprender chino, poco a poco :D

[@tannewton]

on the plus side, it helps me recognise characters. On the negative sde, I still don't know how to pronounce each character. What we actually need is a good programming language like Latex which helps us write each character stroke by stroke. So, I'm not talking about Pinyin or Bopomofo. I can easily write chinese （中文）on my computer but learning Pinyin doesn't help me a lot to memorise and pronounce each Chinese character. A much better approch would be a LaTex language with commands like {\square \vertical_bar_in_the_middle} to produce the word 中。

[@trexslapfight]

Pretty amazing

[@joelreis5366]

This is a good idea.

[@pfever]

I don't know why this became so popular. This technique is already used in many japanese books too help you in memorizing chinese characters.

[@VladimirKnobel]

1:44 what software is she using to visualize the radicals relations?

[@MikeGrafe]

Genius!

[@kuankung8]

(1) this is not a novel idea. just about every character teaching book or chinese textbook will reference this concept. (2) this is an interesting art project but not an improved language teaching methodology. in order to read, you need to be able to pronounce. this only helps with character recognition. (like knowing "d-o-g" refers to a canine pet in english, but not actually being able to sound out the letters) (3) this concept only works for a small portion of the characters. the characters used in the presentation were cherry-picked. even some of the ones chosen are a stretch of the imagination. example: the character for "cup" is 杯. does that character look like a cup? and why is there a "tree" in there 木 (as the vid stated, which usually means "wood" NOT "tree") (4) this method completely ignores the sound component that most characters have, which is extremely helpful for learning chinese as a second language and understanding characters in general (5) my personal problem as a chinese teacher is that some of the character descriptions here are not true to the original theory behind their formation

[@kuankung8]

Excellent work with the artwork and software design though!

[@Lordekadaj]

Still, is a very nice work :)

[@oremfrien]

Corbett Moy You bring up some very important points, but one of the major obstacles of Chinese is the ideograph system. If China had gone the way of Vietnamese or Korean and replaced its ideograph system with a proper alphabet (like Pinyin), so that reading would take, at most two months to learn, then you would have a point that being able to recognize "horse" but not know to read it as "ma" then this would superfluous. However, this is not the case. Pinyin is only used in academic settings, so learning Chinese has the two components of (1) learning the vocabulary and (2) connecting the orthography to the concept which must eventually be melded into connecting the orthography to the vocabulary. This system helps a lot in part (2).

[@winstongotsole]

I'm glad I'm not the only person thinking this. It is a nice design project but not at all a useful teaching methodology. Her background is in graphic design (and business and marketing) and no experience in education - as far as i know - and it shows! I'm not saying don't buy the book- - I did, - but i think it is more entertainment than education

[@Lorenzo1366]

Very clever!