We all wrestle with the language during our time in China, and most of us are either studying or have studied Mandarin in the past. We’ve also all experienced the frustrations, as well as joys, that come with learning any foreign tongue. Here’s an amusing site to make Mandarin study a little more lighthearted.

… kaifan 开饭
This imperative sentence sounds even more succinct than its English equivalent, “Let’s eat!” It could be a call from a loving mother, ready to serve dinner, or a call to arms for starving students rushing to the school cafeteria as soon as the bell rings.

Pleco, a New York-based company who specialize in developing tools to learn Chinese, have announced a new iPhone feature that looks like it will be invaluable, not only for those learning Chinese characters, but for anyone who lives here and isn’t fluent in reading Chinese. The feature uses the iPhone camera to look at and “read” Chinese characters through an Optical Character Recognition system. There’s no need to take a photograph – you just point you camera and the app provides an instantaneous definition.

Here’s one for Chinese language lovers: Sinoglot, a fascinating group blog about hanyu and the myriad other languages spoken within the PRC’s borders.