Officially Recommended: Chinese Grammar Wiki

[sinosplice]

Hi guys!

I haven't been terribly active on Chinese Forums, but I've been lurking since way back. The amount of good stuff posted here is a little overwhelming, frankly. I occasionally see links to Sinosplice here, and I'm always happy to see that, but today I'd like to announce the release of a major project of mine which I've been working on for over a year, and I'm very excited to finally be releasing.

It's called the AllSet Learning Chinese Grammar Wiki, and it's pretty much what it sounds like. The project began as an internal resource for AllSet Learning. It became quickly apparent to me that you can't mix and match various study materials like we do for our clients unless you have some kind of over-arcing framework for tracking acquisition of vocabulary and grammar patterns. The Grammar Wiki is my solution to the grammar part of this issue. But in developing this resource, I realized that there's no single resource on the entire internet which does a good, comprehensive job of covering the grammar of Mandarin Chinese. There are some decent books, and users of this forum do a great job clarifying various grammar patterns, but I believe there's still room for a Chinese grammar resource with greater cohesion (like what Wikipedia has).

Creating a resource for an entire language's grammar has been a massive undertaking, and so I've gotten a good start on it over the past year with the help of some excellent reference books and four especially hard-working interns (including the famous "East Asia Student"). We've done it as a wiki not to open it up to anonymous edits, but to make it easier for interested parties to get involved, and because I think what Wikipedia is doing is very much the same thing that's still needed for Chinese grammar (on a smaller, more niche scale).

The Grammar Wiki content belongs to AllSet Learning, but it's freely available to all through a Creative Commons license. I'm really hoping that learners all over the world will find it useful, and that some of them will even want to give back to the project by serving as an editor. In fact, I'm thinking of all the places for volunteer editors to come from, Chinese Forums is definitely the most likely!

This is the first "public-facing" project we've done at AllSet Learning, and I'm looking forward to talking to users about what they like, what most urgently needs improvement, etc. I know we still have a lot of work left to do, but I think we're off to a decent start.

The wiki link is:

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

And our blog post which more thoroughly explains the wiki's structure and features is:

http://www.allsetlearning.com/news/introducing-the-allset-learning-chinese-grammar-wiki/

I'll definitely be back here to answer questions.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

[siledouyaoai]

Great to see it up and running, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks.

[大肚男]

awesome, I was looking for such a resource, and this looks promising.

[imron]

I'm sure there's a pun in there somewhere with 中文语法维基 and 中文语法危机*

*before anyone mentions it, yes I know the tones are different, but they're close enough

[paotale]

seems to be a great resource for language learners. Curious as to whether you would like contributions or help

[cababunga]

Wow, John, this is great! Thank you for such a wonderful resource. I already found my first eye opener there (Separable verb).

I'd like to propose one addition to the site though. Considering a lot of reading happens on mobile devices these days, I think it would make sense to make it friendlier for the small screens. Since you seem to use Mediawiki and I can see how nicely Wikipedia can look on my phone when I choose mobile view, it seems like adding same feature to your Grammar Wiki shouldn't be difficult. (I'm speculating, of course; I never touched Mediawiki myself).

[roddy]

Good stuff. Have you ever thought about starting a blog as well?

[Don Kirkby]

There's a question on chinese.stackexchange.com asking for grammar textbook recommendations. I see from your front page that you used several textbooks to prepare your wiki, so which one would you recommend?

[semola]

personally I would reccomend his wiki, all the informations are useful, concise and "foreigners oriented".

I think being able to master those informations it's enough to speak properly up to an upper-intermediate level. If you need something more I'd reccommend 实用现代汉语语法in chinese, though I think an english version might exist.

[deathtrap]

Oh my, grammar points ordered by difficulty level? where have you been all my life!

[drungood]

This is incredibly useful and well organized. Thank you!

[jbradfor]

Do you welcome others to get an account to work on it? Or if we find errors, should we just contact you? [in this case, the perapera-kun instructions as http://resources.all...:_Pinyin_Popups are a bit out of date for version 9.]

Also, I assume you don't object to people linking to / quoting specific parts of it to answer questions posted here?

[JonBI]

Eagerly awaiting the advanced level grammar, especially if you get the really dense ones in there, and the really 文言文 patterns.

[sinosplice]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Now getting settled back into work after the CNY holiday.

@imron: I'm sure there's a pun in there too. If this thing really takes off, one day a group of the "old elite" in a BLCU basement in Beijing will call an emergency meeting about the 语法维基危机.

@paotale: Yes, we're definitely interested in getting the help of editors. Please get in touch!

@cababunga: Good suggestion. We have ideas for mobile versions, but they may have to wait a bit longer... Sorry!

@roddy: Isn't the proper term "weblog"? Intriguing idea, nonetheless...

@Don Kirkby: That's a good question! I'm fairly partial to Integrated Chinese, but I know it's not perfect. We're planning on putting up a "Recommended Books" page soon.

@jbradfor: You can contact me directly, or use the contact email on the wiki. Both fine. We will have to look at those Perapera-kun instructions...

@JonBI: We'll do C1 first, which is advanced without too much 文言文. I do plan to eventually take it to the 文言文/古文 level, though...

Thanks again, guys!

[arialblack14]

Fantastic site!

It is exactly what i needed!

Bookmarked it

[navaburo]

Hey, site is fantastic. I just wish I could switch it to mobile view for use on my phone!

Keep up the good work.

[weigeren]

I love it, and it is currently my #1 source when looking for grammar online

[歐博思]

Excellent work with the website, it's a fantastic resource. I'm eagerly    awaiting the C2 grammar points. Any ETA on C2 at the moment?

[sinosplice]

欧博思,

 

Sorry, no ETA on C2. It might be a while.  Even A1 and A2 are still keeping us pretty busy! When we first launched the resource, it was sort of "skeletal," and we've been going through and filling it out systematically since the launch, making additions nearly every day.  The good news is that we've made huge progress on the lower level pages, but the bad news is that there's still a ways to go, especially for the highest levels!

 

Don't worry, though... Comprehensive C2 grammar coverage is still definitely part of the plan.

[欧卡去饭馆儿]

I have made Anki decks using the Chinese Grammar Wiki webpage. I did not have the sentences used as examples translated due to too much info being given at once but you can change that yourself by copying the deck or what-have-you. So far I have done A1 (HSK 1) up to B2 (HSK 4). C1 (HSK 5) isn't completed and C2 (HSK 6) hasn't been started yet from what I know. I will put a link to Anki's website with the search box looking for "chinese grammar wiki": https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/chinese%20grammar%20wiki .

 

The original website is: http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Main_Page     --where there is more info to be had. I made the decks to be convenient for myself and because no one had made any that were retrievable to my knowledge.  I love this webpage and I tell my friends who are also studying Mandarin to take use of this as well.  THANK YOU   for a well made FREE comprehensive grammar resource.