A Short List of Resources for Studying Chinese

[艾墨本]

@Luxi Is there any option to disable the "shadow" of the character when learning strokes? I liked how Inkstone left it blank and moved your strokes into the right place to suggest better placement. Skritter does something similar but... that price tag.

[Luxi]

3 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

any option to disable the "shadow"

 

The shadow disappears after the first 1 or 2 'reviews' of the character. Sometimes tends to disappear too early for my taste, but there are ways to 'unlearn' characters to keep on practising them.

@艾墨本，may I assume from your post that you can access TL in China? Website or app?

 

[艾墨本]

1 minute ago, Luxi said:

The shadow disappears after the first 1 or 2 'reviews' of the character. Sometimes tends to disappear too early for my taste, but there are ways to 'unlearn' characters to keep on practising them.

That's great!

1 minute ago, Luxi said:

@艾墨本，may I assume from your post that you can access TL in China? Website or app?

Yes. I can access it on an iPhone in China. No VPN.

[furiop]

2 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

On another note, has anyone used inkstone recently? I'm in China and have just discovered it is not available in this region.

It's a strange destiny: an inexpensive but vey valuable project like Inkstone cannot have a market! 
No one is interested in developing the original project, no one tryied to buy it and sell it.

But it's a very genial tool.

Skishore aka K. Shaunak https://www.skishore.me/ abandonet it without trying the crowfunding...

https://github.com/skishore/inkstone/blob/master/README.md

[艾墨本]

Is anyone getting a "403 forbidden" on Jukuu? It doesn't seem to be a VPN thing...

[SunnySideUp]

Same for me. I can open the site just fine and click on their featured words, but then get hit with a 403. This is on firefox.

Tried to open in chrome just for the fun of it ... and lo and behold... it works. Does chrome work for you?

[Jan Finster]

On 7/30/2017 at 2:37 AM, mlescano said:

I propose complementing this topic with a poll that allows multiple selection. With names of voters shown. And every time a new resource is recommended by at least 3 people, add it to the poll.

 

It would really be interesting to do a poll that allows multiple answer selection for this topic. @roddy &  @imron is this possible?

[china-euro]

wow and ummmm
I have not used 50% of these resources...but i will try all and see what takes me from hsk 4 to hsk 5-6

These resources took me to hsk 3 in a year.
-chineseskill
-hanping
-debo chinese
......pdfs of all hsk words......

+
-trainchinese.com
-Pin1yin1.com

music, tv, shows, news sites took me to hsk 4-5 ish.


I did not like these for various reasons:
Hello Chinese
skritter
anki
memrise
duolingo


I will check these out tgis week and give updates:
arch Chinese
jukuu
zdic
Talki
MDBG
Perapera
Pimsluer audio
NPCR
Ink Stone
Lingq.com
https://cn.bing.com/dict/?mkt=zh-cn
https://context.reverso.net/translation/
Tofu Learn
Ninchanese
Pimsleur
EdX Beginner Chinese
Coursera Beginner Chinese
EdX Intermediate Chinese 
EdX Business Chinese  
New Practical Chinese Reader  
Google Chrome: Zhongwen
Mozilla Firefox: Perapera Chinese 
YellowBridge
Jukuu  
Wenlin 
Pleco
Built-in-dictionary - (MacOS) 
Chinese Grammar Wiki
Hacking Chinese
Tone Trainer  
SpeakGoodChinese
 

 

What helped you to hsk 6?

 

[laowai-guide]

Hi @艾墨本 , would you be able to add the Laowai's Unofficial Chengyu Guide to the list of resources? It's a free online database that I launched a few months ago whose entries include not only the translation of the story behind Chinese idioms (if applicable), but also usage examples, English-language equivalents, origin details, and more.

 

I created the website because I knew that English-language chengyu resources were lacking. I certainly had a love-hate relationship with chengyu when I was a student, but once I figured out that chengyu came from stories, historical events, or pieces of literature, everything suddenly started making sense, and I wanted to share that with others.

 

You can see my original Chinese Forums post announcing the launch of the website here.

 

Thanks!

[MTH123]

On 7/11/2016 at 11:35 PM, 艾墨本 said:

SpeakGoodChinese (program for training tone pronunciation, see discussion)  [free?]

This is a really helpful thread. Thank you for it. Is SpeakGoodChinese currently worthy of being on your list? Is there a better alternative these days?

[matteo]

I'd like to recommend this podcast channel, targeted at learners at HSK 4-5 level. 

https://www.youtube.com/@ChinesePodcastWithShenglan

The podcasts are weekly and discuss about several topics - more or less current - with focus on explaining the "Chinese point of view" on the matter.  

The language is simple and the speech very slow (maybe a tad too slow, I usually prefer to increase the speed a bit), which makes it really suitable if you are looking to get a lot of listening input in at a comfortable comprehension level. 

What makes the podcast stand out in my opinion is that in spite of the simple language, the discussions are interesting and not overly dumbed-down. 

The author of the podcast, Xiao Shenglan 肖胜兰 , is also a teacher on Italky. I've had a few lessons with her and so far I'm very positively impressed.

She is very prepared and uses the podcase as a base for conversation, which has the double advantage of forcing you to spend time listening before the lesson, and making sure you always have something interesting to talk about.

[Jan Finster]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:33 AM, matteo said:

The author of the podcast, Xiao Shenglan 肖胜兰

 

Her podcast is an underrated gem. ?

 

[laoyumi]

We just launched Dtlingo, an online Tutoring platform aiming to help more Chinese language learners to learn in a smarter and more efficient way. Hope that our website can be added to the list. The website link is https://www.dtlingo.com/. 

[Alex60]

Wow, that's quite a list! It's amazing how many free resources are out there for studying Chinese.

First of all thanks for this pic goes to @alanmd appreciate it! 

 

 

I used the official tool from chinesetest to check the difficulty level of the vocabulary in my text. https://hyq.zzchinese.com/play/gjzwdj 查询文本中词汇所在的等级 (free)

 

I generate the texts for free using the AI assistant in https://classroom.laoshi.io/users/chat/ (free)

 

 

 

In the near future, this method will be a great way to prepare for the HSK.

 

 

[malazann]

I found a pretty useful new app recently that transcribes video/audio fairly well (doesn't distinguish between speakers though), offers translation and you can query an LLM to get a breakdown of the sentence or just ask questions about it (the developer instructions make the latter a bit annoying though) 

https://miraa.app/

The ability to transcribe youtube videos is pretty useful. I think this app is especially useful for beginners. It even has a shadowing feature called "echo" that lets you work on pronunciation by listening and recording single lines. 

I know that this is just one of many recent language learning LLM-enhanced apps, but I am willing to pay the $10/month for the 30 hours transcription limit. You start with a couple hours for free I believe. Has anyone come across any new apps worth mentioning?