Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

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Pangu
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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby Pangu » 2014-09-29, 19:57

Lada wrote:Does anyone know good free materials for learning Mandarin?
What would you recommend for a beginner? And what do you use even if you are not a beginner already?

Thanks in advance!

It depends heavily on your personal goal.

Do you just want to know the basics about Mandarin? Do you want to just be able to have basic conversations? Do you want to be completely fluent in Mandarin?

If you just want to know the basics, there are plenty of free information just a few Google searches away. However, if you want to learn anything more than that, there won't be many free materials out there that will completely meet your needs. Learning languages is about immersion, and that requires a holistic change on your lifestyle if you are even half-serious about it.

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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby Lada » 2014-10-01, 14:35

Thank you for your reply! When you start to learn any language, you start from the basic things. I would like to get a recommendation of a course that offers you materials from the basic to the intermediate level that includes pronouciation, reading, writing, grammar etc. Just a combination of everything you need to know.

I realize that probably in Western world there're no such courses for free, then, if you happen to know and like any course whatever it is, free or not, I'll be glad to hear its name :)

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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby OldBoring » 2014-10-02, 7:41

Unfortunately, I can't be of help, because I learned Chinese through Chinese, using primary school textbooks brought from China.

You can take a look at these links, although most of them are tools or websites to practise Chinese, rather than courses for beginners.
Or something more useful, you can take a look here or here.

The easiest way to find free courses online on Chinese is to search "Chinese course", "Chinese 101", "Mandarin course", "Mandarin 101", etc. on Youtube.

Chinese learners are a bit inactive in this forum... I hope somebody else can advise you with resourses that they have used themselves.

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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby Lada » 2014-10-02, 8:36

Youngfun, thanks a lot for these links! :D

księżycowy

Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby księżycowy » 2014-10-02, 12:44

I used to use the links on this page back in the day. You might find it useful.

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Re: Useful Links / 有用的链接

Postby OldBoring » 2014-10-26, 17:06

In this thread I've ordered the links in a more rational way, dividing them into categories. Please contribute with more links here!

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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-11-17, 7:33

I also have used the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and a videotape + textbook series from Learning Express, Inc. (学习快车) called Follow Me Learning Chinese (跟我学中文). There's also this book, which looks pretty useful for reading Traditional Chinese. In college, we had to use Practical Chinese Reader Books I-II; later, I got Books III-V as well.

For learning Chinese characters, I have this, which was pretty cool and useful, but actually this turned out to be much more thorough and useful even though it's also a lot more boring if you're not already into Chinese character etymologies. I also took a course on the Chinese writing system once, and the two books that were required were Chinese by Jerry Norman and The Languages of China by S. Robert Ramsey. The last two are not language materials or courses, but I think they're worth mentioning because they really helped me understand how the writing system works.

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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby Lada » 2014-12-04, 14:02

Thank you guys for additional links!

I've recently found a very interesting course which seems to be a good start: http://chineasy.org/

It's available in major European languages, the promo lesson is here on youtube.

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Re: Resources / 学习资源

Postby OldBoring » 2014-12-05, 12:29

mod

From now on, this thread is about resources for Chinese (both online links and printed material), and thus has been renamed to its current title.

The thread "What language materials/courses do you use" has been merged with this one.
Any new thread/post with the purpose of asking/proposing new resources will be merged/moved here.
While unnecessary long succesions of posts that do not contribute any new resource will be split.

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E-books for learning Mandarin

Postby ChrisM123 » 2015-07-16, 11:23

Hi all,

I have really enjoyed using the "Big Cat and Little Dog" series on my Kindle to practise reading basic Chinese. They're aimed at children, but I have enjoyed them!

There are a few e-books available for learning Mandarin. Here is a fairly new one, currently available for free on the Kindle store ("How to Learn Mandarin: Tips for Beginners"):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011JBFN64

I was just wondering what other people have found useful to learn Mandarin?

Thanks

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby Núria Harket » 2016-06-20, 17:50

Hi
Just come across this, I hope it is is useful to you, peeps

http://www.meetmandarin.com/blog/

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby Núria Harket » 2016-08-24, 19:45


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Re: What language materials/courses do you use?

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-28, 21:48

księżycowy wrote:I used to use the links on this page back in the day. You might find it useful.

This used to be such a useful page, and now it's awful! :headbang: There's still http://www.zhongwen.com/, though.

księżycowy

Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-28, 23:16

At first I was like, why is Vijay quoting me in the Chinese forum....? :lol:

I haven't even seen that link in forever. I vaguely remember it, and even the one you posted.

I'm hoping in the next year or so to get some use out of this thread/subforum. We'll see.

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-28, 23:35

księżycowy wrote:At first I was like, why is Vijay quoting me in the Chinese forum....? :lol:

:lol:
I'm hoping in the next year or so to get some use out of this thread/subforum. We'll see.

Cool! I'm trying to do something for Chinese other than using the Chinese forum so I can actually improve my Chinese instead of just practicing it here (and talking about Chinese in English). :silly: I've kind of been toying with the idea of joining WordReference or something as well because I haven't seen many active Chinese-speakers here lately.

księżycowy

Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-28, 23:42

I'm toying around with the idea of learning some spoken Taiwanese or Cantonese over the summer, pending how my other languages go.

Regardless, Chinese (in a few variations) is on my list.

I've had a similar thought as well. In fact, I think I'm already registered at Word Reference. I just have never posted there yet. :lol:
I'm also thinking of using lang-8 once I get better in my languages too. I'm already registered there too.

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-29, 0:22

I haven't been doing anything with any varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin, just posting songs in them and occasionally listening to clips of them (and nonstandard varieties of Mandarin) being spoken. :P I'd go after them, but I want to expand my range of Papuan languages first! (Though not before starting Amharic ;)).

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby reineke » 2017-02-20, 1:09

Courses

FSI/DLI courses

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/chinese.html
https://www.livelingua.com/project/fsi/Chinese/
http://fsi-dli.yojik.eu/

http://www.chineseclass101.com/
http://www.popupchinese.com/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/global-studies-and-languages/21g-101-chinese-i-regular-fall-2014/

Grammar

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/

Pronunciation

http://forvo.com/languages/zh/
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Main_Page

Reading

Understanding Chinese Characters (Vladimir Skultety)
https://www.youtube.com/user/theforeverastudent/
http://www.zhongwen.com/
http://marcopoloproject.org/
Simplified News http://www.thechairmansbao.com/
http://justlearnchinese.com/mini-novels/
http://pinyin.info/rules/index.html
Simplified literature http://mandarincompanion.com/
Sentence mining
http://www.jukuu.com/
http://ce.linedict.com/#/cnen/home

Multimedia

http://www.slow-chinese.com/
http://english.cntv.cn/learnchinese/
Radio Garden (Brun Ungle)
http://radio.garden/live/

Streaming TV
Kylin TV (not free) http://www.kylintv.com/kylintv/us/eng/home

https://www.dramafever.com/
http://www.tudou.com/
http://www.youku.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sloppycheng

Tools

http://www.mandarintools.com/
http://www.chinese-tools.com/

Dictionaries
http://dict.cn/
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php
Chengyu Dictionary
An english dictionary of chinese idioms
http://www.chinese-tools.com/chinese/chengyu/dictionary

SUBTLEX-CH http://crr.ugent.be/programs-data/subtitle-frequencies/subtlex-ch
These are the Chinese word frequencies discussed in the Plos ONE article of Cai & Brysbaert, which you find here (http://www.ugent.be/pp/experimentele-psychologie/en/research/documents/subtlexch/cai.pdf)

Popup dictionaries
Perapera Chinese popup dictionary http://www.perapera.org/
Zhongwen popup (Chrome)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zhongwen-chinese-english/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde?hl=en
Zhongwen Chrome user guide: http://zhongwen-chrome.blogspot.com/
Zhong Wen popup Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zhong-wen/

Other tools
Hanping (Android) http://hanpingchinese.com/
Pleco https://www.pleco.com/ (crush)
Skritter Chinese & Japanese characters, made fun (and not free)
https://html5.skritter.com/home
Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations. It's collaborative, open, free
http://tatoeba.org/eng
http://talkify.net/
Lang-8 http://lang-8.com/

Classical Chinese

Searchable and Archived Classical Chinese Texts https://chinalinks.osu.edu/c-links1/texts
The Chinese Text Project is an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world: http://ctext.org/
Classical Chinese Literature Resources https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/resource_lit.chinese.html
Yasue A collection of calligraphy, paintings, and classical Chinese texts in traditional characters.
http://www.yasue.cc/hon-lo.html
The Online Index of Chinese Buddhism http://www.buddhiststudies.net/oicb.html#dictionaries
a primer in chinese buddhist writings http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/a-primer-in-chinese-buddhist-writings/

Collections of links

Marjorie Chan's ChinaLinks contains annotated links to over six hundred China and Chinese language and linguistics-related websites.
https://chinalinks.osu.edu/
http://learningchineseonline.net/
http://www.class.uh.edu/mcl/www/chinese.html
http://www.hawaii.edu/eall/chinese/resources/
http://www.hackingchinese.com/
http://digchinese.com/

Other

Shamelessly stolen from rdearman (while he was on the phone):

----------------------------------------------------------
Various Resources
-------------------------------------------------------

YangYang Cheng on YouTube
Online Chinese Character to Pinyin (Vocabulary List Builder)
Calibre
Learning Chinese is Fun (Episode 1)
Introduction to Chinese Characters
Chinese Frequency Lists
Online Flashcards Texas.edu
Chinese character stroke order rules
Chinese Dictionary Lookup
Coursera Online Chinese Course
Defense Language Institute Mandarin
Growing Up With Chinese
University Page which has LOTS of links to Chinese resources available on the Internet.

Television Shows in Mandarin
( Say It ) 好好说!慢慢讲! Episode 1
Say It Season II Ep 1
http://www.viki.com/tv Has a lot of Mandainr, Korean and other shows which have subtitles in just about every language.

Food shows:
李囯煌 -- 香港
Food Source 3 - Episode 01 (食在好源头 3 - 第01集)

Kids Shows
childrens stories with sub-titles
大耳朵图图

Collections of Materials
http://web.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/pdf/online2.htm
http://data.hskhsk.com/lists/ - HSK Vocabulary

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-09-16, 4:10

YouTube videos/channels:

Easy Mandarin (this is lesson 1; there are at least five lessons now)
ChineseCorner
Slow & Clear Chinese

Plus the learning resources on the website for Singapore's Speak Mandarin Campaign

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Re: Please contribute your resources / 请贡献学习资源 / 請貢獻學習資源

Postby atalarikt » 2018-03-06, 5:28

وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ خَلْقُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِلْعَالِمِينَ۝
"And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge." (Ar-Rum: 22)

Jika saya salah, mohon diperbaiki. If I make some mistake(s), please correct me.
Forever indebted to Robert A. Blust for his contributions to Austronesian linguistics


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