Learn Chinese - Free online lessons

Hi, Chinese-tools.com has just released his 40 lessons program to learn Chinese Mandarin:

The address is : http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/chinese

Entirely free and prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication.

Looks very well done. However, I only see the first 10 lessons. Where are the other 30? Am I missing something?

Chris

Looks nice, but I don't like the fact that it is in simplified characters.

I also only see 10 lessons, what gives?

***EDIT***

Hey! 400 posts! cool

I like it... eases in very well... but I only get 10 as well...

It lacks audio too, if you learn Chinese on your own, you defintely need audio.

To Nipponman,

You know how to convert to traditional, of course mainland will teach in simplified.

These are a few you might like:

This one is really big, advanced, you can learn a degree in Chinese, you can download all audio, Chinese, pinyin, English and learn offline:

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chinese/

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content.htm

http://classes.yale.edu/chns130/chwebtext/

Traditional chars and audio

http://faculty.virginia.edu/cll/chinese_reading/

Sample readings (reposting).

http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Edporter/sampler/sampler.html

Atitarev, thanks for the links the sdsu one is pretty good and a couple of the others are just what I was looking for... cheers...

Thanks a bunch atitarev! Hot dang that's a lot of chinese:shock:

***EDIT***

http://classes.yale.edu/chns130/chwebtext/ I'm glad to see that they have redone their page, it used to look different.

No worries, enjoy it, guys.

I find it efficient to learn by songs.

If you like Jackie Chan's songs you can get both lyrics (as image, not text) and audio. There's a lot in Mandarin, especially the latest ones but there's also in Cantonese, even English. You will have to match lyrics to MP3 files.

http://www.jackiechanmusic.com/lyrics/index.html

http://www.jackiechanmusic.com/dload/index.html

This Russian site has Chinese fairytales in Chinese with MP3 audio files. Nice and clear audio. The first fairy tale is about a little droplet. The translation is only in Russian, sorry guys but the text is not too hard.

http://www.qiaojiao.narod.ru/hua.htm

The home page is this but there is not much in it, it's under construction

http://www.qiaojiao.narod.ru/

Here's the first fairy tale and my 5 minute conversion to pinyin:

小水滴的新家

春天到来了，温暖的阳光照在大地上，唤醒了沉睡的万物。冰雪融化了，小草发芽了，花儿开放了……住在小水池里的小水滴也醒来啦。

他睁开眼睛，往四周看了看，只见平静的水池中，小青蛙在欢乐地歌唱，小鱼儿和小蝌蚪正自由自在地游来游去，哇，我的家多美啊！他伸了伸懒腰，心满意足地想。这天晚上，天上「淅沥淅沥」地下了一场春雨。水池里的水越涨越高，最后漫出了水池，带着小水滴和他的伙伴们，流进了附近的水河。

河里的水流好急，风浪好大，他们会把自己带到哪里去呢？小水滴从来没离开过家，觉得害怕极了。他忍不住哭了起来。

小河听到了哭声，关心地问他：「小水滴，你为什么要哭呢？」。「我的家在小水池，那里风平浪静，鸟语花香。还有我的朋友小鱼儿和小蝌蚪。我好想念他们哦！」

「別担心，小水滴。等我们流到大海里，你可以找到一个更美的新家，和好多好多的新朋友。」小河安慰他说。

最后，他们终于来到了大海。看着那无边的海水，金黄的沙滩，小水滴惊喜地想，原来世上还有比小水池更大更美的地方呀！他高兴地大叫：「我爱我的新家！」

Xiǎo shuǐdī de xīnjiā

chūntiān dàolái le，wēnnuǎn de yángguāng zhào zài dàdì shàng，huànxǐng le chénshuì de wànwù. Bīng-xuě rónghuà le， xiǎo cǎo fāyá le，huār kāifàng le … … zhù zài xiǎo shuǐchí lǐ de xiǎo shuǐdī yě xǐnglái la.

Tā zhēngkāi yǎnjīng，wǎng sìzhōu kàn le kàn，zhǐjiàn píngjìng de shuǐchí zhōng，xiǎo qīngwā zài huānlè de gēchàng， xiǎo yúr hé xiǎo kēdǒu zhèng zìyóuzìzài de yóu lái yóu qù， wa， wǒ de jiā duō měi a！tā shēn le shēn lǎnyāo， xīnmǎnyìzú de xiǎng.

Zhètiān wǎnshang， tiānshàng「xīlì xīlì」dìxia le yī chǎng chūnyǔ. Shuǐchí lǐ de shuǐ yuè zhǎng yuè gāo， zuìhòu màn chū le shuǐchí， dài zhe xiǎo shuǐdī hé tā de huǒbàn men， liújìn le fùjìn de shuǐ hé.

Hé lǐ de shuǐliú hǎo jí， fēnglàng hǎo dà， tāmen huì bǎ zìjǐ dàidào nǎli qù ne？xiǎo shuǐdī cónglái méi líkāi guòjiā，juéde hàipà jíle. Tā rěnbuzhù kū le qǐlai.

Xiǎohé tīngdào le kūshēng，guānxīn de wèn tā：「xiǎo shuǐdī，nǐ wèishénme yào kū ne？」. 「Wǒ de jiā zài xiǎo shuǐchí，nàli fēngpínglàngjìng，niǎoyǔhuāxiāng. Háiyǒu wǒ de péngyou xiǎo yúr hé xiǎo kēdǒu. Wǒ hǎo xiǎngniàn tāmen ò！」

「bié dānxīn，xiǎo shuǐdī. Děng wǒmen liúdào dàhǎi lǐ，nǐ kěyǐ zhǎodào yī ge gèng měi de xīnjiā，héhǎo duō hǎoduō de xīn péngyou. 」Xiǎohé ānwèi tā shuō.

Zuìhòu，tāmen zhōngyú láidào le dàhǎi. Kànzháo nà wúbiān de hǎishuǐ，jīnhuáng de shātān，xiǎo shuǐdī jīngxǐ de xiǎng，yuánlái shìshàng háiyǒu bǐ xiǎo shuǐchí gèng dà gèng měi de dìfang ya！tā gāoxìng de dà jiào：「wǒ ài wǒ de xīnjiā！」

Update*

http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/chinese

For everybody that cares, these guys have put up more lessons. It seems that they have some work to do though, not all of the lessons are up yet.

Thanks Nipponman... good to see that there are more lessons being put up... they arent too bad...

Check also www.chinesepod.com for free lessons in Chinese with audio and transcripts. It is really funny to practice basic Chinese this way.

Greetz, Noor

To Koh-i-Noor:

Is the subscription free to Chinesepod? And will the free subscription allow to download audio and transcripts?

Already discussion on Chinesepod here

Thanks, Roddy, shame it's not free.

Chinese Radio International lessons are free. Go to:

http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/ce_chinese/

The files are Windows media streaming format so to save them on your hard drive you will need some recording software. You can get some freeware for this at: http://sdp.ppona.com/

I knew about the site but found new great things there, Johnmck, thanks a lot! I'll the recording software too, thanks.

Do you know a similar one for RealPlayer?

I was able to download mms and many real media streaming media files with Xi Net Transport--just by dragging the link to the "drop area". http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm

With real media, sometime you need to use a text editor to open the small file that is downloaded and get the real link inside.

the first and second years of the great online course could be found at:

www.eblcu.net/lesson/

attention: the courses are not free!!!! they just forgot to close the directory...

I was able to download mms and many real media streaming media files with Xi Net Transport--just by dragging the link to the "drop area".

http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm

With real media, sometime you need to use a text editor to open the small file that is downloaded and get the real link inside.

The real link file maybe of no use. You can downloaded it (a small file) but you can use it only if you're on the internet. Johnmck provided a link to free software that converts an MS Media Player stream into a file you can download and listen to offline. That's actually working, thanks, Johnmck. I wasn't able to find a similar free and working program that does the same for RealAudio, I'll keep looking.