New Online Chinese Resources Links
I figured it was about time I set up a page with links to the Chinese learning resources I personally find most valuable and regularly use. So it’s up: Online Chinese Resources.
A few notes:
– I work for ChinesePod and think it’s great, so yeah, I’m going to recommend it. This should not be a big surprise. I’m aware of quite a few podcast alternatives, and I’ve listened to a few, but I have very limited actual experience with them.
– The list is not exhaustive; there are plenty of monstrous ones out there, and the problem is that they’re all way too long. This one is pretty short, and based on my own experience, which is what makes it useful.
– I am open to suggestions, but I won’t add anything until I’ve had a chance to check it out and spend enough time with it to decide it’s a must-have resource.
I’ll be updating the list pretty regularly, but I intend to keep it brief.
Mousover popup for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde
You don’t need a subscription to Chinapod to access the pinyin chart.
Hey John, I’m an instructor for Mandarin Chinese here in Hawaii and I wanted to tell you about Wordchamp (www.wordchamp.com).
It’s a great flashcard tool and I’ve blazed through tons of vocabulary using it. I even often pull the vocabulary lists from ChinesePod and then create a list on wordchamp so I can do the quizzes.
Hope that helps if you haven’t already seen it!
If you like WordChamp, you like Memrise (www.memrise.com) even more, at least for the flashcard/absolute recall part of it, and for the sense of community you get from it. And Memrise is free.
When I tried to install “Zhongwen by cschiller13579” (“Translate Chinese by hovering over words with the mouse”), I got this message:
“This extension will have access to your browzing history and private data on all websites”
Hmmm…that doesn’t sound too cool. How risky do you think that might be, now or in the future?
Maybe I will just stick with MDGB….
In online dictionaries, I also like the baidu one, on dict.baidu.com. Nciku usually has more sample sentences, but I think baidu includes some words that are not in nciku.
Some more links:
http://www.lingualism.com/chinese.html
Nice post! Great resources. Thanks!
You can also consider posting about http://socialmandarin.com
It’s only a month old, but it tries to grab all those great posts and resources and share it with other learners. Like Digg/Reddit only for Online Mandarin Resources.
P.S. – Please excuse the blatant marketing, but I would love to see more people sharing resources. The great thing about Mandarin learning, is meeting these other people and sharing the experience of learning Mandarin.
Excellent list! One minor correction: Pleco is free on the iPhone/iTouch. Certain modules, like the reader and the custom handwriting recognizer, are not free but can be purchased from within Pleco itself.
I used Pleco for a couple months without paying for any modules and I thought that even in that state it was the best Chinese dictionary for iPhone (it even let me add the CC-CEDICT and AdsoTrans dictionaries for free).
Wow, Perapera-kun is really cool, you don’t even have to be online to use it! SO much easier then using a dictionary and a piece of paper!
I really like the newest release of EZ-HAN (Version 1.3). It is a VERY COMPREHENSIVE Mandarin dictionary for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It’s more than just a bi-directional dictionary. It does Mandarin text translation analysis for students of all levels, business professionals and travelers. You can paste in emails, webpages, etc. for translation. Additionally, it instantly translates between Simplified and Traditional scripts (i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese). It has more than 105,000 Mandarin words and phrases with more than 500,000 English words and phrases. Users can search by characters, Pinyin, homonyms, rhymes, etc. There is even a full tutorial at http://www.at-tariq.com. Go to the Products link and click on EZ-HAN. I speak ten languages, am a serious student of Mandarin and have been using it for months. The newest version is a vast improvement over the previous and very useful – especially since I read BBC Chinese on the train to and from work. I also get assignments over email.