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Skritter March 2015 Newsletter

New forum, confusing pronunciation, radicals and tongue twisters!


Have you seen our new forum? We hope that a brand new forum with many new functions will make it even easier to discuss learning Chinese and Japanese, as well as Skritter itself. You will still be able to read the old forum, but everything new will be happening on the new one. Welcome!

We also have three new blog posts you might be interested in, all introduced and linked to below. As usual, this newsletter also includes the character challenges we've posted since the previous newsletter. Last but not least, we list the top users of the month!

Things to check out on the Skritter blog

Can you pronounce these Chinese words correctly?
Sometimes it's hard to know what the standard pronunciation is in Chinese. Should it be "bēibāo" or "bèibāo" for 背包 "backpack"? Should it be "jǐnkuài" or "jìnkuài"for 尽快 "as fast as possible"? Take this short quiz to check your knowledge! Comes with explanations as well.
Read more...
Understanding Chinese characters: Components and radicals
The difference between character components and radicals can be confusing for new learners. In this article, we discuss the difference and how that can help you understand how Chinese characters are structured.
Read more...
Japanese tongue twisters (早口言葉)
早口言葉 (はやぐちことば) literally means "fast mouth words"). Try them out! Remember that some of these are difficult for native speakers, so don't be discouraged if you find them hard to pronounce quickly! Trying to get it right can be great fun and a good way to test your pronunciation too.
Read more...
Skritter Blog
@SkritterHQ
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Social media highlights


Character guessing games: We run weekly character guessing games on Facebook where you can also win free weeks of Skritter. See if you can figure out the answer to these: Please check our Facebook page for more info!

1) Guess what Chinese character this is a mnemonic to: "Do you want to look that horse in its mouth or not?" (by Skritter user CleverClogs)
(still open, send a direct message to us on FB for a chance to win free Skritter time)

2) Which Chinese character does not belong in this group and why? 美、洋、娘、提

3) Guess what Chinese character can form words with: 东、中、冰、顶

4) Japanese challenge: 意ッ牌破一鮭ヲ埜無、煮灰刃差毛沙卦ヲ野夢、産陪派左気火都ヲ之務

If you want to know the answers and/or look at older challenges, please check this forum post. If you want a lot more challenges, just scroll down in that post for links to all previous challenges.

Apart from these character challenges, we also share our favourite links daily on Twitter, so if you don't want to miss out on what's going on in the world of learning Chinese and Japanese, please follow us!
 

ZanDatsu

Time Spent:
127 hours
New Words Learned:
2267
New Chars Learned:
642
Total Chars Learned:
2476

Alexanderrts

Time Spent:
83 hours
New Words Learned:
249
Ne
w Chars Learned:
55
Total Chars Learned:
2030

zludr

Time Spent:
71 hours
New Words Learned:
2482
New Chars Learned:
467
Total Chars Learned:
2112

steevo

http://www.skritter.com/userphoto/steevo

Time Spent:
69 hours
New Words Learned:
215
New Chars Learned:
149
Total Chars Learned:
2197

Tomcorral

http://www.skritter.com/userphoto/737594030

Time Spent:
63 hours
New Words Learned:
227
New Chars Learned:
662
Total Chars Learned:
918

stephenmp

http://www.skritter.com/userphoto/503496647

Time Spent:
61 hours
New Words Learned:
16
New Chars Learned:
44
Total Chars Learned:
662

All learners (this month*):

Hours: 22,096 (2.5 years!)
Average retention: 86.8%
Items studied: 14,541,701
New characters learned: 326,254

*stats are calculated the Monday before the newsletter

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