The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
What could we say to Mandarin-speaking people who are concerned about the protests in Europe and the issues driving the protesters?
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[NOTE: For spiritual food (which is for you yourself to learn spiritual things from, and which ideally should be in your own mother tongue), please go to jw.org.
The supplementary language-learning material mentioned in this post is for helping you to learn about how the Mandarin language is used in an official publication, so that you will be better able to help others in the Mandarin language field.]
Recent analytics data from my web server indicates that the Good News brochure Pīnyīn Plus web resource has so far this year gotten several times more views than it did in all of last year, which was in turn several times the number of views that it got the year before. Whatever the reason(s) for this unexpected significantly upward trend, it seems evident that I should refocus time and effort on improving this resource.
The most recent official version of the Mandarin Good News brochure is now the 2019-08 (2019 Nián 8 Yuè) version. It uses significantly revised wording compared to the previous 2018-03 version, similarly to how recent versions of the Mandarin NWT Bible use significantly revised wording compared to previous major versions of that publication.
The above-mentioned unofficial resource based on the Mandarin Good News brochure is in the process of being revised to match the most recent 2019-08 version, with notes indicating where any material remains that is still based on the older 2018-03 version. Also, it is gradually being updated page by page to the new Pīnyīn+ format:
can be used offline in supporting browsers, icon can be added to the home screenIn the above resource, material matching the current 2019-08 Printing of the Mandarin Good News brochure is now available that covers the following:
More such revised Pīnyīn+ material will be made available as time allows. (Material matching the current 2026 Printing of the Mandarin NWT Bible (nwtsty) is indicated in the material where available.)
The above-mentioned resource also contains previously prepared material based on the previous 2018-03 Printing of the Mandarin Good News brochure:
Material with a grey background has been partially proofread. Pīnyīn material with a golden-hued background has been proofread, but not all of its “flashcards” have been added and proofread.
My time is limited these days, and work on the Pīnyīn+, etc. resources is already proceeding more slowly than I would like. So, it looks like going forward, I should focus on providing zip files for offline use of the Pīnyīn+, etc. resources, since zip files are much, much faster and easier to provide than other offline solutions that I have tried, including EPUBs.
(For recommended procedures to use the zip files for offline use, see the Offline Viewing and Printing section of the above-mentioned resource’s Introduction and Disclaimer page. Note that the top recommended procedure for using the web files extracted from the zip files on mobile devices like the iPhone and the iPad is now to use a web server app like WorldWideWeb, which is free to download and to use.)
Besides offline use, another major benefit of EPUB files is that in apps like Apple Books, users can add annotation (highlights and notes) to the material, like they can in the JW Library app. There does not seem to be a straightforward way to provide this functionality for the Pīnyīn Plus / Pīnyīn+ web material files on the web and contained in the zip files, but then, I have not heard anyone talk about annotation being important to them for a long time. (The last time a user actually talked to me about that, old school PDF files were still the main vehicles for Mandarin field language-learning material. A set of actual web standards for annotation was published by the W3C (the consortium that develops web standards) back in 2017, but so far little to nothing seems to have come of that when it comes to technology built into widely-used web browsers that the average user can actually use today.)
For now, the Pīnyīn Plus / Pīnyīn+ “flashcards” already contain much rich language-learning information, and, while not as convenient as direct annotations, well-featured note-taking apps like Apple Notes and Obsidian are now widely available. If the ability to add highlights and notes directly to the Pīnyīn Plus / Pīnyīn+ material is important to you, or if you have any other questions or comments, please email me to let me know.
(NOTE: While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING. See this disclaimer for more information.)
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
How did “shanghai” come to mean “to induce or compel (someone) to do something, especially by fraud or force”?
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A news feed for this blog is available here.
In the _"Sing Out Joyfully" (sjj)_ _Pīnyīn_ Plus / _Pīnyīn_+ web resource, proofread musical notation 🎼 with _Pīnyīn_ lyrics is now available for song 164, which was recently added to the songbook. troubadourworks.com/tiandi/sj...
— tiandi, Links News (@tiandilinksnews.bsky.social) October 23, 2026 at 3:43 PM
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The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
For Mandarin field language learners, why is it better to follow basic principles of linguistics than it is to just follow Chinese cultural traditions regarding Chinese characters?
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A news feed for this blog is available here.
The Mandarin Expression of the Week is:
Why are almost all names from other languages translated into Mandarin by sound and not by meaning? What can we say to Mandarin-speaking people about El Niño?
Comments are enabled on this blog, so if you are so inclined, comment away!
A news feed for this blog is available here.
In the _"Sing Out Joyfully" (sjj)_ _Pīnyīn_ Plus / _Pīnyīn_+ web resource, proofread _Pīnyīn_+ lyrics are now available for song 164, which was recently added to the songbook. troubadourworks.com/tiandi/sj...
— tiandi, Links News (@tiandilinksnews.bsky.social) October 11, 2026 at 12:36 PM
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