Have any of you guys used qq to practice Chinese?

[wenjing*girl]

I got qq a few months ago because my students kept asking me to give them my number.

I started going to the chatrooms to practice my Chinese and it was really helpful.

You can download it here:

http://www.qqba.com/qq/down_view.asp?id=255

[wame]

oh,Qq thing,

did those folks in the chatroom know you are a foreigner out there?

must be interesting

btw what`s your qq No.?

[browny]

I've been using QQ for about a year now, it's really funny! people add me and always say 天啊 or 鬼佬！ really shocked. hehe. It's an awsome way to study chinese, I'm a PHP programmer to, so I made a website to help people use qq:

http://qq.bur.st

You can do translations to english + pinyin (mandarin or cantonese) and it has audio as well. If you have time check it out!

[Kink]

I just downloaded it but it seems like I got a wrong encoding "ʲôѽÎÒ²»¶®" , nu clue what this means (edit: hmm, I can see it in my browser.....)

Does anyone know how to solve this?....

MY QQ# is 123223712 btw

[browny]

if you want to use QQ, you have to change your page table to "Chinese (PRC)" check out this: http://qq.bur.st/chinesecomputing.php

it tells you everying you need to do. I added you on qq too, i'm browny

[woliveri]

Guys,

I have qq installed on my machine, I have chinese fonts, etc. no problem.

However, I don't know how to add another person to my chat list.

and

I don't see the link for chat rooms.

My chinese character recognition is not that strong so I'm fumbling around in qq, but I am learning.

Please help.

Thank you,

[browny]

that's ok! I was like that when I first started too. open QQ, then at the bottom right corner of your QQ window you will see a microfying glass icon with "查找". click on that, then click on the tab: "高级查找" then select your search paramaters, (online user, has webcam, provence, city, age, sex) then click "查找". you'll then see a list of people, you can add a person by clicking on "加为好友". check out this pic:

[wame]

Hi, folks.must be very interesting about all QQthings.

thanks browny for your website,it must be very useful for those people want to improve their Chinese.

btw ,my QQ no. is 23533254 anybody want to improve chinese or learn sth about China can add me

[BeijingSlacker]

I would advise against using QQ for any serious Chinese studying.

Lots of QQ users are not-so-educated people who have too much free time on their hands and nothing better to do. They find it so depressingly difficult to write Chinese properly that they invented a whole lot of trash language.

[browny]

haha some of what you said is true, for instance, if I said "见日月不为明目" on QQ, no-one would understand what it meant. But if you are a beginner (or intermediate) chinese student, QQ is really great fun, and can make learning chinese enjoyable!

[wenjing*girl]

Actually, I got rid of qq now because it was causing a problem with my Macafee virus scan. Each time I went to the internet unless it was through qq it would turn off Macafee. I think it had to do with having my computer settings set to Chiense (PRC). When I set it back to English, it worked fine.....but why use qq if you are just using it for English and won't show Chinese? Has anyone else had a problem like this?

[wame]

you r right,slacker,i now using QQ more on private things like communicating with my old friends,not chatting(or picking up ) with girls anymore

[igotyofire]

Sorry to bring back an old thread but this question is releated to QQ, i was curious does QQ have chatrooms or do u just add a person to your list? particulary voice chatrooms?

[gougou]

It does have chatrooms, classified by quite a lot of criteria. Not sure about voice chat rooms, though.

[self-taught-mba]

Wow! Just stumbled across this thread. What a great resource thank you for putting it together. I have used qq occasionally in the past, but you just open up the door to access for people at all levels. thank you

[anthony_barker]

I've used skype in the past as well - there is chat and voice.

Seems to be more popular in Taiwan along with MSN and yahoo chat.

Here is the wikipedia entry for qq - also not bad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ

I guess I will try the linux gaim plugin some time.

[Sarevok]

I guess I will try the linux gaim plugin some time.

Any luck with that? That Gaim plugin does not seem to be working for me... I will have to try those other possibilities for linux, like eva for example, and hope it will work

[heifeng]

I OD'd on using QQ over the new year when I was bored out of my mind. Here's the summary of my experiences:

-If your Chinese is good enough typing and vocab-wise people will never know you are a foreigner, so there's no real need to tell them at all（just don't use the 视频　option). If you do this you'll probably get stuck in talking about the same boring stuff you get stuck with anyway since your a foreigner so there's no really point on going on QQ or chatting in Chinese anonymously on the internet at all...The funniest thing that happened to me was that I would chat to someone in Dongbei and actually talk to him thru QQ w/o the camera and he had no clue I was not Chinese, but instead thought I was from the south or far west and never practiced speaking putonghua so kept criticizing me and telling me to practice bo po mo fo de te ne le.....very few people in China will ever tell a laowai to their face they have room for improvement, so it's somewhat refreshing and funny....

-If you use a provocative name past 11 and you can see how many strangers you can chat with at once. You'll see your typing skills flourish. But your chatting will mostly be superficial stuff ranging from grumbling about work to 谈性．

-It is a good way to chat with people from around China.

-I would also agree most people are slackers, especially the people who go on every single day, but you'll occasionally run across some people with a reasonably good vocabulary...

-Mostly I learned the following: profanity, curse words common throughout different parts of China, anatomical part names, certain actions related to those anatomical parts, some chengyu....on second thought I agree that you will not learn that much intellectual Chinese, but if you want to learn to talk like a 小混混 it's the most effective way. Plus the more time you spend in pool halls/ internet cafe's...the same thing...but trust me, your teachers will not be impressed...

And that is when I decided that my time could be better spent elsewhere....plus the internet cafe's are actually getting anal about having ID on you these days....

[赫杰]

I strongly recommend using QQ/MSN/(hell I have even used AOL) to study chinese. It seems many people like to point out you will mainly have meaningless or boring conversations and learn a bunch of cusswords, and eventually just stopped using it. When I first started using QQ a little over a year ago (in america), yeah it was kinda like that, I would randomly add bunches of people talk about stupid stuff, like you said, mainly to study chinese I guess and increase typing speed and what not. And yeah, because I had no camera, half the time was spent trying to convice them you were a foreigner (if you decided to tell them)

But the problem here is not with QQ, its how one uses it

QQ/MSN/AOL/ETC proves most useful when you actually make friends that you like, get their number, add them, and have conversations with them. Some of my most meaningful conversations here have been through QQ, the first time I talked to who is now my best friend here in china, we talked for four hours on many things, mainly philosophy, and there was nothing boring about that. And wow, I learned a whole lot of new (and quite useful) material then, haha.

I feel in many ways QQ is better that actually speaking to a chinese in person, you have the material right there in front of you, you can save it, study it later, or do whatever you want with it. Also, you got an electronic dictionary and a wealth of resources at your finger tips to use if you need to keep the conversation going. Whereas when you talk in person, if you encounter a place where you dont understand, its a little troublesome to always be like...uhhh wait, can you said that again, what does this mean? And in QQ, you can very clear on what is being said to you and take your time to study the material, not to mention quote what the other person said.

I have used QQ/MSN/AOL/ETC to deepen relationships, hold business meeting, job interviews, study chinese, collect data, make new friends, handle important things such as flights and visas, transfer documents, and so on

It's just a tool, like anything else, it depends on how you use it, if you don't want strangers adding you and harassing you about meaningless BS than just switch to 隐身, in fact I have always been on 隐身.

I love QQ/MSN/AOL/ETC, am on all the time, and again strongly recommend it! If not to deepen your chinese, then just to use it!

J

[Sunlight]

Hi, QQ is good for improving chinese as in pinyin and word recognition. And moreover, most users are chinese and uses chinese.

By the way, anybody has spare or unused registered qq numbers no longer in need, would greatly appreciate if you can forward with password.

Thanks,

Sunlight

Shanghai