Language Partners QQ?

[Madelynne]

I checked out a couple language exchange websites and may sign up but what about QQ? is that worth bothering with?

Thanks!

[count_zero]

I don't really understand the core of the question, but chatting on QQ is certainly a good way to learn Chinese. You can easily cut and paste words from the dictionary into the chat window for a reasonably natural but "learning enhanced" experience.

If you're having a "real life" conversation and you keep checking words in the dictionary it would get awkward pretty quickly.

[Madelynne]

I set up QQ and already found a nice group and 2 people who were quite helpful

they seem to want to speak mostly English but say they will help me with Chinese - we'll see

It has a very nice translate function but like you say it isn't helpful for learning

[linguaholic]

QQ is a really nice and very easy way to make Chinese friends. You have the possibility to search for people in a specific city and you can also define the gender and the age range and then just display all the users that match the criterias...then you might write a friend request and then wait and see what happens :=)

Moreover, it is also a great way to remain in contact with Chinese people that you already know, as QQ is crazy popular in China and literally ALL the chinese have a qq account and almost ALL of them know their qq number by heart ^^

Definitely worth downloading.

regards

Marcel

[Madelynne]

Thanks Marcel, you are right! I am really liking it so far

[tooironic]

As the posters above have pointed out, QQ can be a great way to practice your Chinese in a relaxed atmosphere with real native speakers. And of course you always have the time to look up any words you don't know.

I also recommend WeChat (微信), an instant messager app for smart phones. The beauty of that program is you can use it to send and receive voice messages (语音) quickly and easily. This is a great way to practice both your speaking and listening skills. It also comes with a Facebook-like feed feature of your friends' recent updates (or "moments" as they call it in the app), which can be fun to flick through while waiting for the bus.

[linguaholic]

yes, tooironic, wechat is great. I have it installed on my smartphone as well. The voice messages are indeed great and what is fun too are the funny smileys and emoticons that you put in all your messages...really good fun and the program works like a charm.

[Minigin]

im pretty sure the translate function on qq is garbage, it frequently refuses to work and when it does the translation can sometimes not make that much sense.

but certainly get it. everyone in china uses weixin (wechat) or/and qq, so its a great way to learn chinese.

when i first started learning chinese i was added by a complete random and i managed my first decent conversation with a chinese person without the use of any dictionary/online translator etc. i was so proud of myself until i found out it was an 8 year old who thought i was a famous chinese actor.

[Madelynne]

LOL cute story Minigin, I'll keep in mind the tip about the translator, would you suggest google translate instead?

[adamnhms]

LOL cute story Minigin, I'll keep in mind the tip about the translator, would you suggest google translate instead?

Google translate is pretty bad as well!

[Manuel]

I use Lingoes with QQ, its a free dictionary which pops up translations at the mouse pointer, and can even extract definitions directly from Google Translate if you want. May seem a pain to set up but once you get it going it's very helpful, and much faster than copy-pasting into Google Translate.

QQ is the best chat program ever made because it provides a huge number of ways for users to interact: remote desktop, games, music and desktop sharing, email, voice and video chat, screen capture (I find this one particularly useful). It can also send files offline and file transfers from mainland China are considerably quicker than with, say, Skype or other chat apps. The screen capture feature alone makes QQ worth it and puts Microsoft to shame. QQ is full of little great ideas and I love it.

[Madelynne]

Thanks! I will check out lingos. Have you ever tried http://dict.youdao.com/ ?

I like qq quite a bit - just starting seeing what it is all about, I like the email interface too. Much better than yahoo or gmail.

[Manuel]

I had never heard of youdao.com, just checked it out and I think it could be useful some times, but probably there are better ones out there, although I will keep it in my "toolbox",

I use Lingoes mostly for getting the pinyin of characters I don't know. With the pinyin I can ususally figure out the meaning, otherwise I look the word up in one of several online dictionaries or on PLeco which I run on my old Palm PDA.

[andysun731]

The most powerful function of Youdao is that it can search translations of a word on the internet, which was once a function of google dictionary but ceases now. The search results of Youdao are better than those of google translation now.

The most powerful function of Lingoes is that it can extract the Enghlish word and pop up its translation when you are watching websites, word files, txt files, excel files, PDF files and so on.

[andysun731]

I have some language partners on Skype who are not in China. Because of the time difference, we can only meet online at weekends. And sometimes we have a video chat to practise conversations, while sometimes we just chat in text. Maybe you need to show a plan to your friends on QQ.

[tooironic]

It's interesting to see Andy praising Youdao. From what I've seen it has huge amounts of Chinglish and inaccurate/unnatural translations and cannot be relied upon for anything beyond a simple reference point.

[andysun731]

I mean the dictionary of Youdao online, not the auto-translation function of Youdao, which is as bad as google translation function. The Youdao online dictionary can search some bilingual sentences from internet according to the word you type. I think the search function of Youdao dictionary online is pretty good, which was once the same function of google dictionary, but now google has no online dictionary function.

[Minigin]

Personally I don't think google translate is great either but its easier to learn from than qq auto translate. Maybe the best to use would be nciku?

[Madelynne]

I use Lingoes with QQ, its a free dictionary which pops up translations at the mouse pointer, and can even extract definitions directly from Google Translate if you want. May seem a pain to set up but once you get it going it's very helpful, and much faster than copy-pasting into Google Translate.

do you use the bidirectional dictionary or can you recommend one? thanks!

[Manuel]

What do you mean? There are many Lingoes dictonaries availalbe, but there are no bi-directional dictionaries as far as I know, so I have a Chinese-English dictionary and an English-Chinese dictionary loaded at the same time, this way when the mouse is over an English word I get the Chinese translation, and vice versa.

However, for the pop-up I normally only use the CEDICT dictonary which provides the pinyin and a *very* crude English translation. If that's not good enough I open the main Lingoes window and look the word up manually by pasting it into the search box. You can have many dictionaries in the pop-up, but it becomes very sluggish so I used just 2 or 3 max.