Tag: Vocabulary

If you thought learning Chinese was hard, then pop over to the musical instrument vocabulary list for a break. All you have to remember is the suffix 琴 (qín), and you’ll have the names of most instruments half memorized—violin is 小提琴 (xiǎotíqín), keyboard is 电子琴 (diànzǐqín) and the harmonica is 口琴 (kǒuqín). You can even use 琴 as a shortened way of saying these instruments (我在练琴, I’m practicing qin), which works out great until you realize that people have no idea whether you’re playing a piano, a guitar or an erhu.