What are /r/ChineseLanguage's favorite Products & Services?

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Very interesting question, and there are some good answers here already.

To expand on u/maenlsm's point, one of their functions is as proof of a work's provenance. The different stamps and inscriptions together tell the story of where the work has been over the years, who has owned it, what role it has played within large-scale literary/artistic culture, etc.

The great variety of stamps and writings, each a work of art in its own right, on an old, important work make it much harder to forge.

In the West, we tend not to do this directly on the work itself, but with supplementary documents and works—bills of sale, correspondence between artists, gallerists, buyers and sellers, historical attestations to and depictions of the work, etc.

The Mona Lisa, for instance, isn't even signed! Imagine if Leonardo daVinci had written his name next to her left ear, then Francis I, its first owner, had put his royal arms in wax next to her right ear, with a little, beautifully calligraphed note: Nous aimons cette peinture.

The German theorist Byung-Chul Han explains the phenomenon in great, enlightening detail in his book Shanzhai.

Unfortunately, "Use my program and be fully literate in a couple of years," doesn't win a ton of downloads, and that's really all that those lying shit heaps care about.

Use an SRS program like Anki.

Put your phrases in there, and practice writing them when you review each card. Be honest when you select if you got it correct, and it will track how often to show you each item in the deck based on how well you perform.

I bought the complete Studio Ghibli dvds which have 21 movies and most have Chinese voice and Chinese subtitles. It's really good. Similar to this.

I've also got 200Gb of Shaw brothers kungfu movies voiced in mandarin which I found online.

CCTV have some good documentaries and you can find them on their website or some on youtube.

Or what about Topgear China?

If you rotate the text 90 degrees counterclockwise, the text read vertically top to down looks like >織田製

which would mean "made by 織田". 織田 is a Japanese family name that could be read something like "Oda", "Ota", or "Osada".

maybe 弄玉吹箫, here's the full explanation. I'm chinese, personally will not use it on my chinese GF cake, it's a tad weird, but maybe work for you westerner.. Also 吹箫 is a synonym for blowjob on internet slang, hope you get some luck, ;)

"Speak a little bit slowly!"

Ref: http://www.bing.com/translator

More proper ways are maybe:

• 请说慢点儿。 Qǐng shuō màn diǎn er. Please speak slowly.
• 请慢一点儿说。Qǐng màn yīdiǎn er shuō. Please speak slowly.
• 请说慢一点。Qǐng shuō màn yīdiǎn. Please speak a little more slowly.
• 请慢慢地说。Qǐng màn man de shuō. Please say it slowly.

Edit: 的说->地说

Spectacularly relevant google result. Probably someone using the same study materials as you. Consensus from the Chinese speakers there is both are correct, 没 is more natural.

Sorry man, but it's not really possible to learn even conversational Chinese in a month. Or two. the videos on youtube of people who say they've done so are either:

-spending 12 hours a day in study.

-conning you by repeating canned lines they've learned and practiced dozens of times.

-Sherlockian geniuses.

-all of the above.

If you mean "survival Chinese" like the type you'd need at a restaurant or store, then yeah that's possible.

Although I think it should be a small part of a comprehensive learning approach, if you just need the basics Memrise is great.

restaurant survival is a good course I used when I first started.

apart from that Memrise's own Mandarin 1 course would be a good starting point.

One of the most useful articles I've found for understanding the whole radical/phonetic system is this one: What if English were written like Chinese?

It's a bit of an oversimplification, but it really helps you get a sense of how a lot of the combinations work.

And while I'm throwing links at you, here's a comment I wrote on Hacker News refuting an article that complains about how difficult Chinese is to learn. In short, it says that yes, Chinese is difficult, but it's not impossible, and modern technology helps a lot. Please do read it, though, as it goes into a lot more detail and even has links to useful resources.

祝你好运！

Also interesting for me as a non-native speaker, why the 一个 was placed in the end.

http://www.italki.com/question/106845

Apparently it serves to "highlight your love or hate", i.e. to put an emotional emphasis on the meaning.

You can install and use this keyboard: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin&hl=en

If you use this to type English, then long pressing on vowels will allow you to type characters with tones, including the third tone.

I wrote this a semester ago about this very subject. Sorry it is so long. I actually made a web page just now so that I could put it online.

https://sites.google.com/site/myperusalintoknowledge/

tl;dwtctl(too lazy; didn't want to click the link) Lots of stuff influences how you sound. Just look at the headers if you want to know the basics. Generally, the amount of sentence final particles you use will highly influence the way you come across.

A lot of times you have Chinese subtitles embedded in the video (not closed captions).

Here's one way to look up the text quickly:

• Screen-capture region (on the Mac it's control+command+shift+4)
• open Yandex Image Translate
• paste (Mac: command+v, PC: control+v)
• lookup translation

Unfortunately I don't any magic tricks or anything. I like the Tofu Learn app for repetition iOS / Android. It can be pretty glitchy sometimes, but I try to do some writing on it every day and my vocabulary is gradually increasing.

Otherwise I'd just suggest learning the basic characters and notice when they are being used in the more complex characters. Some random examples:

• 熊 (bear) is just 能 (can, is able) with the four dots underneath
• 题 (topic) is 是 (is) with a 页 (page) next to it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Hong_Pao

It's widely called the King of Tea in China. You can get it on alibaba:

http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=da+hong+pao

https://www.clozemaster.com/ is a website where you can learn a language through mass exposure to vocabulary in context. There are a lot of languages available including Mandarin Chinese. It's also available as an app for iOS and Android. The vocabulary is split up in different HSK levels. It's fun to do and a great way to learn new characters.

TL;DR: This app listens to your clipboard and when it detects that you've copied something which Chinese characters in it, it pops up a transliteration into pinyin with tone marks.

Author here. I wrote this app to help me learn Chinese. Been learning Chinese for ~5 weeks. I found I was constantly switching between WeChat/HelloTalk/etc and Google Translate so I could convert text into pinyin, then deleting parts of the sentence to find out what each word meant so that I could understand how the individual words form that meaning.

So I made this app for myself, but maybe you'd like it too.

Features:

• Listens to clipboard & transliterates every Chinese-looking thing it finds (you can disable the auto-popup)
• Click pinyin terms to see the original word + definition.
• For multi-character words, click on a character to get a definition for it.
• Quick access to Google Translate.
• Draws over other apps, so you can quickly access it from anywhere (drag the window to the bottom of the screen to hide it)
• Drag window to iconify it.

I wrote this over the past 3 nights, so it's a little rough. Please let me know if you think you would find it useful, what other features you think would be cool, etc. Let me know if you'd like to try an early build of it :)

I'm going to China for a month in 2 days, so if you prefer to talk on WeChat, 我的微信是reuben_bond - just let me know you're from r/ChineseLanguage.

EDIT: Thank you everyone for the interest here and via DM! Here are the development builds. Hopefully the latest version supports Android 4 and up, but I believe it's best to use Android 6 because the popup translation window is only supported on Android 6 (aka M)

For those that say "this is Pleco by another name" it clearly is not. Pleco is not available on Kindle devices (e.g., Paper White) and it also does not support MOBI or AZ3 files. Moreover, bookmarking, highlighting, and all the other Kindle features are not available when using Pleco's reader functionality.

OP is using CEDICT which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License and has posted his source and attributed CEDICT. As a community we should encourage efforts like this. 感謝OP!

Pressing Shift+Space bar will toggle between fullwidth and halfwidth characters on Windows 7. Yes, it's a terrible key combo.

Hanping Chinese Dictionary is the best dictionary app on Android.

HelloTalk is an awesome way to practice and have native speakers correct your grammar. You can either chat with people, or you can use it like Twitter and post about your day. Native speakers will see your posts and correct them for you.

You should check out the Man With the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi! https://www.amazon.com/Man-Compound-Eyes-Chinese/dp/7513310254

It’s written by a Taiwanese author and takes place in Taiwan, I’m not sure if that would affect her interest. It’s a great book about environmentalism with some fantastical elements!

I know it was originally written in Chinese, but I’m not sure if there is an edition in simplified or just traditional Chinese if that affects things for her.

Which "default Chinese keyboards" are you referring to? If you are using Gboard you shouldn't have any of those problems.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, and it probably won’t be worth it to you. You can get a VPN to get into China. I know I used Astrill’s mainland server to do a bunch of stuff last time I was in America. Worked like a charm

If you have a VPN like Astrill it will allow you to actually VPN into China so you can use sites like qiyi, youku, sohu and others to watch all sorts of TV, and it all has subtitles.

You can still get on these sites and browse their collection, like here for example, and after finding the Chinese name you might be able to find it on Youtube or other sites. Many are dubbed Japanese anime, but you can find kids shows and other stuff as well.

I can vouch for this and other apps, such as Hellochinese, which is very entertsining.

Hellotalk is also very good for sending voice-messages in chat, which helps getting the tones right and reaching fluency.

Agree with this ^. I don't think it would be disrespectful in any way.

You might want to decide what fonts you'd like for your tattoo, esp. if your tattoo artist doesn't know any Chinese calligraphy.

For example, simplified Chinese fonts for "七 九 柒 玖" provided by Google(very limited):
https://fonts.google.com/?subset=chinese-simplified&preview.text=%E4%B8%83%20%E4%B9%9D%20%E6%9F%92%20%E7%8E%96&preview.text_type=custom

Those fonts that are more flowy and mimicking handwritten calligraphy might be more appealing, only in my personal opinion.

Good source: link

Gist: between verbs, 地 is not necessary unless the first verb is already compounded. After an adjective and before a verb, it is:

1. not used if the adjective is monosyllabic

2. optional if the adjective is bisyllabic

3. required if the adjective is compounded

Finally 地 is necessary if counter words are used to show the gradual-ness or the repetition of the verb.

As a native speaker, 简单聊聊 sounds somewhat discordant but not unacceptable.

These new-age spiritual quotes are tough because they almost never match up to the original saying. It's a third parties interpretation using idioms and sayings that make more sense in the target language.

For example, your "A good traveler..." quote is cited as coming from Chapter 27 in the Dao de Qing by wikipedia. So I go to look up the original work, which I found here. I think you can see the differences in interpretation.

Anyway, I think your "Good Traveler quote" is an interpretation of this line:

善行無轍迹，善言無瑕讁

But honestly it doesn't make sense in this way, without interpreting the whole passage. Even then, to me it doesn't make much sense why they would say "A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving". But I'm no philosopher.

I don't think a textbook is essential in the later stages of learning Chinese (say, past intermediate) but I do think it is essential for the begginer and early intermediate stages to have some structure. Some might disagree with me, but this is my opinion. I recommend the Integrated Chinese series because that's what I used for my first three Chinese classes and it teaches you the most important radicals before moving on to the first chapter. By learning the most important radicals first you will recognize them in the characters you learn and it will improve your reading and writing too. I'm sure you can find it on Amazon. For an alternative textbook, you could try the HSK textbooks like this one below, which will help you prepare for the 汉语水平考试 or HSK. However, if you are planning to go to Taiwan then I recommend preparing for the TOCFL, the Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language. I'm currently preparing for HSK 5 and using their HSK 5 book. If you have any other questions please let me know!

https://www.amazon.com/HSK-Standard-Course-Chinese-English/dp/7561937091/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=7561937091&pd_rd_r=2f17ab72-e543-11e8-b700-5929859c94c3&pd_rd_w=cgEAe&pd_rd_wg=T1uGF&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&a...

If you go slowly and are mindful of your mistakes (what you're learning) it might help some of your techniques. But as a beginner you will get more out of reading a good book on basic drawing concepts, like "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".

Incidentally (I can draw and play musical instruments) I haven't heard that speaking a tonal language from birth helps musical skill at all, and have only encountered anecdotal evidence that east Asian characters help drawing skills. To Chinese speakers, tones aren't "tones" they are just a method of pronunciation. To get good at tones, my theory is that you have to accept them as a form of pronunciation, thinking about every sentence you speak as a bar of music is mentally exhausting and inefficient. The tones in Chinese are also distinct from scale and timbre, which makes it even more complicated because it's possibly to say things in high tones in a hoarse or deep voice, etc.

I have seen people with terrible handwriting who write Chinese characters, sometimes in under a second (and they are barely recognizable). You are thinking more of calligraphy than handwriting, calligraphy is an art form that bridges drawing and writing, the latter being more technical these days than artistic, even though technical efficiency was presumably not the original philosophy behind Chinese characters.

An online version with the option to toggle between Simplified and Traditional:

http://ctext.org/art-of-war

 

Sort of curious why you wouldn't put in a tiny bit more effort to read Traditional though, especially considering that The Art of War is in Classical Chinese.

I would also recommend checking out /r/chinesebookclub if you want some reading practice. A Classical Chinese text isn't really going to help you with reading Modern Chinese.

English is my second language, but obviously I'm no where near perfect nor native level. I think there is little difference between studying your 1st and 2nd language at top level. Both require tremendous amounts of effort. And to be honest, most people we know, me included, can't even use their native language perfectly. To use 2nd language perfectly, one probably needs to master his native as well. For example, I'm bad at writing and speaking in both Chinese and English, and the reason is not about vocabulary or grammar really.

From my experience with English, I think total immersion is recommended. Besides that, I ~~procrastinated with~~ watched huge amount of movies/TVs/comedies to improve my listening. Journaling everday helps me get comfortable with writing. But in order to write properly, I was recommended to read books like The Elements of Style, plus practices and peer reviews. For speaking, social events and public speakings are both needed.

Another thing is culture, as in "getting the reference" (for lack of a better term). There are so many aspects about a culture, that I am not even sure how long would it take for a person to master it. I began to get more references after I started watching comedies and the daily show. But there are still many things going over my head on a daily basis.

I'm doing the Coursera one right now. It's as simple as the outline makes it look. There's a 2-6min video for each section where the teacher shows the pinyin and demonstrates the pronunciation. The quizzes (5-20 questions) are a mix of selecting the word you hear, and defining the word that is spoken/written. In the last two days at work I completed the first four weeks of course content on my lunch and coffee breaks.

It's got some (really small) extra reading/translation bits that are un-graded but for some reason, unlike other Coursera courses I've done, there's no easy option to download the study material.

So, it's free, no harm in trying it out. Or, as in my case, it cost me a few bucks but now I have paperwork that says I've studied a second language - although in reality it's probably the least useful Mandarin course I've taken (but first massive online course, so maybe it ranks better by that metric) and you have unlimited retries on the quiz so anyone will eventually get a certificate if they pay the fee.

The Alison course looks like it covers the same content plus maybe a bit more, though I haven't started it yet (for reference, the Coursera course says it is 6 hours of video/quizzes while Alison advertises theirs as taking 10-15 hours).

Hopefully I didn't sound too harsh. In reality I think the course is designed very much as a general-interest course and someone's first exposure to the language. In that regard, it probably performs quite well.

I did a search of this game (edit: on readdit) yesterday and a lot of people had criticisms. Many of them revolved around the fact that you just learn vocab words but some of them were more legitimate then that. Also influent is contained in humble's weekly bundle for one more day.

There is a central committee in the Chinese government that localizes foreign words. They did a bang up job on this one...not

Here are two pronunciations from native Arabic speakers: http://www.forvo.com/word/%D8%AF%D8%A8%D9%8A/#ar

If you use Firefox there are some excellent plugins that will give you pinyin tool tips for characters

I have used this one in the past, you might also want to try it out.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perapera-kun-chinese-popup-tra/

Checkout librivox, change the language to Chinese. Available on the web and for mobile. for the lazy.

I have been self-studying Chinese for the last two years. The tools I have found most useful are graded readers and the website www.lingq.com which allows you to read and listen to a huge library of content appropriate to different levels. I have blogged about my self studying methods and resources in more depth here: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2021/02/28/leaving-the-classroom-self-studying-my-way-to-chinese-fluency/

Yes, books with audio is the absolute best for learning. Better than TV shows, podcasts, radio etc in my opinion.

I saw on lingq someone has added a spy novel (written by a guy currently on trial in China for espionage charges lol) called 致命弱点。 Seems they've only uploaded the first eight chapters but definitely appeals to my interests.

At some point you're gonna wanna move away from Chinese-English dictionaries to Chinese-Chinese dictionaries. I like this one from the Taiwan Ministry of Education. For many entries they have a recording of the word, the definition and an example sentence. Also, if you want more example sentences check out Tatoeba.

You'd probably be interested in looking into minimal pairs for practicing listening. I did a quick google search and this memrise course came up: https://www.memrise.com/course/736375/minimal-pairs-of-initial-chinese-consonants/ I didn't look at it, but it may be relevant. You could also make your own list of minimal pairs and see if someone on a site like rhinospike would record them.

練字 Practice Writing (Characters).

Use a spaced repetition program like anki with your character list, with zhuyin/pinyin on the face. Then you write it. If you were correct, move on. If you were wrong, carefully study it, then write it correctly a few times and mark it wrong.

Some people are going to suggest using skritter. That's fine if you want to do that, but I don't think it successfully builds the muscle memory required to "write" by hand, certainly it helps you learn stroke order. It also has a silly subscription cost which I don't find worthwhile at all. But at the end of the day, whatever works for you.

The Confidence Chinese series would probably suit you. There are three books in the series:

1. Getting Started
2. Living in China
3. Working in China

Each one comes with a CD for listening exercises, and a slim volume of key vocabulary. The chapters are a mix of written dialogue, written exercises and listening exercises.

Here's an Amazon link to the first one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Confidence-Chinese-Vol-1-Getting-Started/dp/1845700104

I don't know if it's region locked, but you can only buy ebooks on your country's Amazon anyway. Here's the UK link

To Op, if you’re completely self studying, I’d second this recommended book. I studied at a community college on the east coast and used this book series, then transferred to a university on the west coast and that department was using the same series. All can be found on amazon. They go by leve 1 part 1, level 1 part 2, level 2 part 1, etc. They’re not too expensive as far as college textbooks go. Also, there is an accompanying workbook for each level, which can be good if you want the extra practice. And be aware that the series sells the same books, that look the same, in traditional or simplified. Downside to those books is they don’t follow the HSK sequence exactly, but are good for genera vocabulary and grammar, plus there is lots of resources for the books online.

Another series that follows HSK more closely is: https://www.amazon.com/HSK-Standard-Course-Textbook-English/dp/7561938187/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=hsk+3&qid=1562244237&s=gateway&sr=8-2

I'd suggest using tone colors to read things. It helps you associate the tone with the character, and then it's easier to remember because it'll be more visual than auditory. Write things in the tones' colors, convert text to colored text, etc.

I use pastel highlighters to color the characters on paper, and this to color online text.

Pleco and other dictionaries with the tone colored, so that's helpful. With the dictionary having colors, remembering the tones is a more passive process with new words you look up. You can customize which tone is which color, but I prefer red1 green2 blue3 purple4

It's really helped in my experience. I didn't completely ignore tones at first but I didn't pay that much attention to them, so many words I had to correct/solidify the correct tone.

The correct name is 新仙剑奇侠传/新仙劒奇俠傳

If you are in favour of this kind of turn-based RPGs, you should definitely try 轩辕剑三外传——天之痕, which is also available on mobile:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softstar.swd3e&hl=zh

I taught myself Chinese using this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gupik.autolang.zh . I was disappointed with Memrise so I wrote my own app. Went from knowing 600 characters to knowing 1200 in 2 months, now at 1300 I can actually watch 非诚勿扰 and mostly understand the subs (sorry for the plug, I don't know a better way to say this).

Since prices are a bit difficult to find, for everyone's convenience:

1 month: 10USD

3 months: 25USD

6 months: 45USD

12 months: 80USD

So even with the discount a 12-month subscription is still 5.67 per month.

OP, if you're with the TCB. I'd buy a subscription for up to ~20 per year, or like 2~2.50 per month. This is just way too much. It's close to Google Drive and VyprVPN put together (other subscription services I buy)!

It's a shame, because the articles are great quality.

Not the best site around, but better than nothing:

www.zhongwen.com

Go to the central "Read" option at the menu on top and you can find

Dao De Jing - Lao Tse The Analects - Confucian Doctrine of the Mean - Confucian The Great Learning - Confucian Classic of Filial Piety - Confucian The Art of War - Sun Tzu Tang Poems

I don't know of any youtube videos but I have this app and it's pretty good. Someone on /r/languagelearning made it but I can't remember who.

To my knowledge, there aren't any quality classical -> English dictionaries. I'm really excited for this one to get published A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese https://www.amazon.com/dp/900428365X/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_sxAMub1HY10K8

If you can handle a classical Chinese -> modern Chinese dictionary, and can find it, http://www.amazon.cn/%E7%8E%8B%E5%8A%9B%E5%8F%A4%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%AD%E5%AD%97%E5%85%B8/dp/B007HJO2HO is excellent, but I had to have a friend but it in China for me since it's hard to buy stateside.

>I'd love it if somebody could find something similar with Traditional Chinese transcripts instead of Simplified though!

warpzero, have you considered something like a simplified->traditional converter for your browser? (another one)

I for one really like podcasts. Popup Chinese is my favorite and they have a large online archive for learners of all lessons. They explore grammar by providing a dialoge and breaking it down sentence by sentence [or word by word in the beginning], and telling you how and why the grammar works.

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/advanced-chinese-telephone-kungfu

Once you have a basic understanding of grammar, I really like going to a chinese website. You can explore very quickly with a chinese translator in-browser. Just swimming around on a site like bbc zhongwen can get you some fun vocab from headlines.

here's a good translator:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde?hc=search&hcp=main

Also, you should know that all google services are banned or restricted in mainland China. You won't be able to use google maps, gmail etc. The maps part won't be a problem if your are a iPhone user, but if you are on android then you probably want to get a openstreetmap app on your phone. The only one I know of is osmand, but that doesn't mean it's the best or anything like that.

​

EDIT: If you don't have a great international roaming data package from the country you are living in, get a local card as soon as possible! Friends of mine have told me that there are people at the airport that will sell you a SIM card, but I've never seen it (and I'v never needed it).

I love my teacher! She’s the kindest, most patient person ever and she’s taught me more than I thought possible in just a few months. Here’s a link to her profile,
https://preply.com/en/tutor/78895

I don't quite understand what you are asking. You said:

>Not looking to play the actual movie video and TTS over the original audio

OK...

>but just displays the text and plays the audio in sync with movie.

Are you saying you only want to hear the audio timed with the subtitles, but no video? Anyway, Aegisub is full featured subtitle editor, and anything you can do with subtitles and associated audio/video, Aegisub should be able to do.

I don't know grammar terms, but I heard about stative verbs [1] [2] before, from this subreddit.

cool stuff.

Would be really awesome when/if you can break characters down into more than two components.

Wenlin has a similar feature, but called it's CDL, but the data is much more robust (no offense). I've always secretly wished that Wenlin would open source CDL so that others could actually use it.

arch Chinese has all simplified mandarin character stroke order on their website. I'm not sure if you'll be able to access it via a phone as its flash based.

I like to use Wenlin but its only available for Windows. It runs fine for me under Wine. Not sure if you can run Wine in OSX

Find someone on italki (the 'community' tab has the free stuff). Narrow the search down to the city you're in.

http://www.italki.com/partners#learn=english&speak=chinese&country=CN&native=1&page=1

> If you have suggestions for improvements and good translators which I can integrate with, I'd love to hear them.

Perhaps http://www.bing.com/translator ? I know bing is usually pretty fast in China, I have know idea how easy or hard it is to integrate or how good its translations are

Mango Languages is the best language learning suite I've seen, and I've played with quite a few. Best part is that I get it for free from my library. Once you get a login through your library, you can also download their app and get all the languages on your iOS device for free as well. Check your library!

However, I did start with Pimsleur, which worked wonders for my Chinese tones. Again, your library might have it. Otherwise it's quite expensive.

EDIT - I see from your comment history that you're Swedish? If your library doesn't have access to Mango and you can't ask them to purchase it, PM me and I can set aside some time to teach you on Skype. I'm in Chicago.

I haven't used flashcard programs in a few years but when I did I liked Mnemosyne the best.

Some of the things I remember liking are that it's free software (and in the Debian repository) and imports/exports useful file formats like CSV.

Another important feature is the ability to rate how well you remembered the flash card. The website should explain it all.

I haven't used them myself, but from what I've heard HelloTalk and italki would probably be just what you are looking for. Maybe someone with experience can tell you what the differences are and if one is better than the other.

EDIT: By the way, going to China is going to be great! If you have an open mind, a positive attitude and a willingness to learn then you will find that the people here are generally super nice. I'm going to generalise a lot here, but the only really annoying people are women in their 50's. :-)

Have you considered a language exchange? I mean finding yourself a Chinese language partner on HelloTalk or something like that - someone who you can help practice English, and they help you with Chinese.

Beware that natives who don't have experience in other languages, or don't have teaching experience in general, will be able to point out errors but might have a hard time explaining how you can improve.

Getting a proper teacher, as u/e-vi suggested, is the most obvious option in this case. I'd suggest a private teacher (instead of group classes) - iTalki has a lot of Chinese teachers and tutors, maybe you could try that.

If you have a smart device, I'd highly recommend using the app LingoDeer! If you are familiar with the language learning app DuoLingo, it functions in a very similar way. It can strengthen vocabulary and grammar skills by teaching through reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It also follows a structured course of several lessons, and it is all completely free (at least last time I checked)! https://www.lingodeer.com

>snowflakes become a blizzard

are u trying to say 星星之火，可以燎原 ？

You should be well over 1000 word/expressions if you've done all 3 of the memrise courses. Even so, if that's all you've done, your conversational skills are going to be lacking. Download HelloTalk and start chatting with people. Head over to Italki and start meeting with a tutor once or twice a week. Start watching Chinese TV shows on Netflix or viki.com. Start watching the mandarin corner videos.

This is another good memrise course to improve your reading skills.

I personally feel that the PinyinInput IME in shivasprogeny's post is the best way to go about typing pinyin.

If for whatever reason you don't want to deal with an IME, then second best way to do it is to use some sort of app and then copy/paste the text to where you want it. I just found this one online:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/webime2_pinyin.php

You can save the page to your hard drive and it will work just fine. I have another app that I saved a couple of years ago that was a flash file that you might prefer. I just uploaded it to Sendspace if you want to try it out. I don't know if this one is still available online; I couldn't find it anywhere else.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/dawuat

Yo, I use Signal, not Whatsapp because what's app is proprietary and so can't be trusted, but uses ones contacts in the same way. It worked in China when I was there although notifications may be delayed due to the firewall. https://signal.org/download/ I have added your phone number to my contacts so I should be able to see you once you have it. I'll PM my number.

Second option:

http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

If your PC has the voice (Text to speech in Chinese), this should work. If you don't have such a voice, maybe here:

http://www.eguidedog.net/ekho.php

Chinese inks are water soluble which allows you to easily wash them off the brush. I always use this one and as for brushes, I usually use the ones made with yellow weasel hair (“wolf“, or 狼毫) or mixed goat-weasel hair. They're a bit stiffer and more precise than pure goat hair. I never bought any calligraphy stuff in the USA, but I had a quick look now and the brushes offered on Amazon look fine. Use bamboo papers such as 熟宣纸 or 半生熟宣纸 and do not use 生纸 as it's not quite suitable for beginners. Bamboo papers are the best choice, of course, but if you're just starting with Chinese calligraphy, you can use printer paper first to find out if you like it or not.

Looks like you can find a bihua plug in for Honso keyboards on Android here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=klye.plugin.zh_bh

I didn't download it to try it, but hope this helps.

If you don't have android, you can probably set up an emulator on a computer.

Personally, there are two possibilities I would consider here:

1) Keep on with more advanced extensive reading with graded readers. Someone mentioned Journey to the West below; I would read the graded reader version of it (volume 1 found here https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SGNCQYX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0), with 12 books total getting harder as the series goes on. Also, the Graded Chinese Readers series (can be found on Pleco) is all short stories and starts from 500 words all the way to 3000. This can be really good practice.

2) This is my personal suggestion: just pick one of the easier native books and grind out reading it until it becomes easy. It's always going to be a big jump to native material, but it is the most important thing to improve imo. My first book(s) were 活着 and 撒哈拉的故事. At the start, you understand very very little, but just learn 1/2 of a page to a page a day, and come back and reread that and a little more each day and you will naturally pick up vocab. I don't use SRS and pre-studying ut if that helps, feel free to do it. You will only understand a few words here and there at the start, but eventually you will start to naturally pick up all the important vocab and it will become easy to read several pages a day and you will be searching up words much much less.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me. Good luck friend.

I have been using an earlier edition of this book for 20 years more out of occasional amusement on how some characters are derived.

Reading and Writing Chinese from Tuttle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080484299X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_EMQ4YV1XCXW3FK8RK1XT

For example, 安, peace, roof over woman.

It doesn't really matter what pen you choose to use. Any signing pen or ballpen with a tip size of 0.7mm or 0.5mm would do. 1.0mm tips are also good for practice and calligraphy. For writing Chinese I would say to avoid 0.33mm and even thinner tips.

As for making hooks, it's mostly about strength and speed control. It's a bit complicated but I will definitely mention this in the actual post.

The exact pen I've used to write this: https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Black-Hi-Tecpoint-Extra-Rollerball/dp/B00LXAOICW/147-7898700-3448839

I can recommend the best book I ever used for learning Chinese. It's a bit old now, printed in 2003 but I'm sure it holds up very well.

This book is good for someone who is at about HSK 2 or HSK 3 I believe.

The book is:

Chinese Language and Culture an Intermediate Reader. (汉语与文化读本）

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Language-Culture-Weijia-Huang/dp/9629960060

Here's why I really like this book:

1. The book is in both traditional and simplified Chinese. So if you are learning one or both you are covered.
2. The book is essentially a bunch of short stories and narratives instead of stupid dialogs.
3. By the 3rd or 4th lesson you will be able to read a complete narrative on the Great Wall's history and historical value.
4. All the narratives are based on traditional Chinese culture and help you understand some interesting points of Chinese legends, history and modern life.
5. The book starts relatively easy and gets harder at the correct pace. By the end of the book you will be reading stories that are a few pages on the order of 1,500 character essays.
6. The book introduces TONS of vocab and characters, but they all fit within clean and coherent narratives.
7. There are core vocab to the story and additional expanded vocab to learn which is great if you want to push yourself.
8. By the end of this book you probably can read approximately 1,000 to 1,5000 chars.
9. I believe the book is Taiwanese, so it is not filled with garbage propaganda or brainwashing ideology.

I've been studying Chinese since 2004 or 2005 and I can confirm this book was the most interesting and useful resource on my Chinese journey.

If you like the look of theses, and would like some more, feel free to suggest themes that you would like to see, either on here or by messaging me.

If you would like to try out my app called Rose, currently in open beta on android, just click here. You can also message me if you wish to be a part of the closed alpha, which receives more frequent updates.

I hope that theses images, and my app, will be of use to you all and I wish you all the best in your studies!

There's a free app called Hanbaobao which could work for you.

Otherwise, both Pleco and Hanping (Popup) have paid add-ons that work pretty well.

For copying and pasting texts or reading digital books I think the free version of 读书 app can work as well.

Classical Chinese Primer is supposed to be good, but I’ve never looked at it. I’ve never heard of Classical Chinese: A Functional Approach, but I do know some of Prof. Dew’s other work, and it’s good stuff, so I’m sure that book is also of high quality.

While looking at those, I also noticed Classical Chinese for Everyone by Dr. Bryan W. Van Norden, which I’m embarrassed to say I wasn’t even aware of. But on reading the reviews (and having followed Dr. Van Norden for several years), I’m sure it’s also excellent.

There really is a ton of good stuff out there!

Have you ever used/looked at Classical Chinese Primer or Classical Chinese: A Functional Approach?

I don't think the accompanying text matches the audio word-for-word, but the 逻辑思维 podcast might be worth checking out. You can only listen to it on the host's app. There are also a lot of audio books and online lectures on that app that you might find useful.

Just a basic HSK 1 book I picked up on Amazon. Hope this helps!

https://www.amazon.com/HSK-Chinese-Study-Book-included/dp/B08X5WCTFJ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=HSK+1&qid=1614441414&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFRSE8xUksxUklGRTYmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA4ODE3NjcxS1gyTlM...

I bought this one Classical Chinese Primer

But a lot of people also recommend this

Practical Primer of literary Chinese

This is a book series for native Chinese children: 四大名著(注音彩绘版共4册): 匿名: 9787551013901: Amazon.com: Books

They are written in vernacular Chinese with a more traditional/classic Chinese writing style. They really pay attention to form, sound, and stay very faithful to the original Four Great Classics of Chinese literature.

My favorite story is Journey to the West.

This book addresses the issue more thoroughly for Chinese than any I've read, though there's still lots of work to do.

I don't know of any that treat the subject generally.

I can recommend you the book 500 most common chengyu by Jiao, Liwei. I used it for my thesis and it has explanations, stories and etymologies on the most well known chengyu.
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/500-Common-Chinese-Idioms-Dictionary/dp/0415776821

I think it's really admirable that you're deciding to take on the challenge of writing Chinese characters. I don't agree with the other commenters that writing is useless. I've met a lot of Chinese learners and I have met very few that couldn't write in Chinese at all but could read it well. The two skills go hand in hand the same way that listening and speaking do.

I think the best approach depends on your skill level as a student and your own learning style. You can use anything to learn (books, apps, private tutors), so just go with what you like. The going may be a bit slower with some methods, but as long as you stick to it, you can be successful. The easiest thing to do is practice writing new vocabulary you learn down. Just make sure to look up the stroke order before doing that.

Personally, I have had the best results when I buy specific textbooks for the specific topic I want to learn. I think that this is generally the best approach in terms of having comprehensive and organized explanations laid out for you. However, the tradeoff is that they can be pretty dry, can't be carried around in your pocket like an app can, and require some discipline to stay on track. For books, you can buy books specifically on characters or use a regular textbook. The book I used was Reading and Writing Chinese and I really liked it, but I think any book that mentions "radicals" or "components" in the description and has good reviews should be pretty solid.

I have never used the Duolingo Spanish, so I don't know how good that is (apparently that was their first course, so they may have worked out the kinks by now), but the ones I used were awful. The Chinese in particular really horrible, it teaches you how to write grammatically incorrect English instead of teaching you Chinese. You are much better off using the HelloChinese app.

Of course apps can only take you so far, you will need other material.

I like Anki for flashcards.

And I like the New Practical Chinese Reader (paper book) https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Chinese-Reader-Vol-English/dp/7887039754

I found a copy of 'Selected Poems' by Xu Zhimo, so that's a start. I think a lot of the other works you're looking for haven't been translated yet. I did a quick search but it doesn't look like there's an English translation of 象牙戒指. There's copies of Shi's work on amazon but none in English. You might be out of luck for some of them, there isn't a huge market for Chinese to English translations of poetry, especially.

edit: just as a side note, amazon suggests "shipping men" for shi pingmei. um, no, amazon, i most definitely did not mean that

So you're OK with thinking about radicals, stroke count, and page number, and you're OK with delving into the learning process of working through a dictionary? There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I promise you it won't help you with spoken language or natural fluidity. Just sayin'.

Also, the 现代汉语大词典 is $20 on Pleco... this is very, very cheap, considering its utility and convenience. I would have paid upwards of $150 for this Pleco dictionary. And, like I explained earlier, the physical copy is inherently less valuable, and it ironically costs more than $26 on Amazon. Here are the links: http://www.pleco.com/products/pleco-for-iphone-ipad/pricing-bundles/, https://www.amazon.com/Xiandai-Chinese-Language-Institute-Sciences/dp/7100017777/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527729725&sr=8-1&keywords=xiandai+hanyu+cidian

Well, the Google books link certainly didn't give a preview. Amazon did, and from what I glanced at, I can't recommend this book.

1. There are many errors in its character explanations. The book claims that 周 is of a "pictophonetic structure", but this is incorrect. Similarly, it uses largely disproven adages like 止戈爲武 (止 rarely or never means stop as part of other characters).

2. It is generally a mistake to use Simplified Chinese when talking about characters - the main body of the text can be in Simplified (here the body text is in English), but the characters mentioned should never adhere to any particular country/region's script standard (including ROC, Hong Kong, Japan, or PRC). The way the characters are presented are extremely confusing - proper books should always trace the original shape (Oracle Bone, Bronze, Bamboo and Slip, Lesser Seal, ...), or use a 隸定 method of transcription into modern script.

For a comprehensive text on the subject matter, please see Qiu Xigui's <em>Chinese Writing</em>.

HSK Standard Course might be a good series for you to look into then! You can order them on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/HSK-Standard-Course-Chinese-English/dp/7561937091/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1544390395&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=hsk+standard+course&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41EtPyPqDAL&amp;ref=plSrch

you could buy this on Amazon. Just switch the region to China and enter 繁体字帖 Or just check out the link: https://www.amazon.cn/dp/B001198JTI/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_zh_CN=亚马逊网站&amp;keywords=繁体字帖&amp;qid=1559409352&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1

Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters https://www.amazon.com/dp/0824833236/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fab_kBGHFb2H2H3CN

I’m sure there is a free pdf of it somewhere too. I highly recommend following the authors method to a T until you complete book one. Doing this along side your study you will be a legend among your class.

I am very passionate about you doing this and NOT the methods the others say. As I strongly believe this will give you the greatest results the fastest

Reading and Writing Chinese: Third Edition, HSK All Levels (2,349 Chinese Characters and 5,000+ Compounds) https://www.amazon.com/dp/080484299X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GQGFFb8H5V23F

There is also this book on radicals.

You could buy one of those practice rolls that where the "paper" turns black once you draw on it with water. Like that, you can practice writing with a brush without wasting tons of paper and messing around with ink.

Like this one on Amazon.

This app has almost same Chinese to English database with Pleco, but also has English to Chinese database. and it quite popular in Singapore,Malaysia and Indonesia.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.thana.dictionarychinese