Learning Mandarin

[Hanak]

Maybe a guy told this allready, but CHINESE POD is great.

www.chinesepod.com

[Kymus]

I just saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=troxvPRmZm8

and there's a FB page for it here: https://www.facebook.com/ShaoLanChineasy

It's a simple concept and I think that gnerally Chinese characters are taught in this manner.

Bonus: The chick's hot

[hskwarrior]

http://books.google.com/books?id=PUi...a%20Wu&f=false

[Kymus]

http://books.google.com/books?id=PUi...a%20Wu&f=false

That hurts my brain

[rett]

http://books.google.com/books?id=PUi...a%20Wu&f=false

I actually have that book. I got through a few chapters, sort of. It's interesting and full of cool observations but presupposes that you already know Chinese or are interested in comparative lexicology. It would probably be good to read during second or third year of academic studies of Chinese.

[wenshu]

http://www.slow-chinese.com/

[Matthew]

Had some time to use FluentU recently and wanted to comment based on my limited exposure for those considering it.

Definitely seems worth some time practicing with this method.

Thought I would pass an update on to this thread for staying updated.

FluentU, which is a great service, has now taken away some of the most awesome features on the Free version.

Although it is competitively priced (http://www.fluentu.com/pricing/), still have to amend my previous post for this.

They do take continuous user feedback, and have implemented most of their improvements based on that user feedback.

It seems the beginning period of their business was completely free for taking that feedback and building a great learning experience out of it.. and now that they're competitive enough, perhaps starting to charge for "Basic" and "User Plus" accounts.

[Matthew]

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Arch Chinese
http://www.archchinese.com/

All around Chinese character learning tool.

I'm just becoming familiar with this - and haven't yet well played around with it. I intend to post an update when the time comes.

Pros
-Offers extensive character drawing practices
-Has Mobile device character practicing pages/compatability
-Offers extensive amount of printable notecards, pages, character writing practices, and more

Drawbacks
-Not a language-fluency development site - seems to be more characters and writing focused.

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[Cheng oi]

Pimsleur ---& ---- mp3 player

[wenshu]

http://www.slow-chinese.com/

慢速中文 was recently updated after a 2 year hiatus with a new look and 3 new posts. This has been my main study material aside from intermittently trying to practice with native speakers for some time. Its difficulty level is perfect for me, I understand enough (my reading/writing is far more advanced than my spoken chinese) that each new lesson adds a manageable amount of vocab and grammar. This won't be the case for everyone and obviously it is focused primarily on written Chinese nevertheless I think it is second only to Skype as a Mandarin learning resource for its combination of a somewhat formal written form interspersed with spoken common usage while covering current events as well as both historical and current cultural topics.

[Matthew]

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Mandarin Companion (Reading Books)
http://mandarincompanion.com

"Graded" chinese books for different level learners

I'm just learning about this now and will likely buy in the near future several of their books. Basically, they have books that are comprised of smaller character sets than normal for language learners. E.g. several books that only use 300 basic characters that most Chinese learners know within a couple years of study.

Pros
-Offers graded books for beginning learners
-Might assist relative beginners with reading continuous paragraphs/pages. It takes a certain focus to read characters for extended periods of time. Most first/second year chinese courses don't have a person reading more than a paragraph or page at a time. So having a small novel changes the platform.

Drawbacks
-Not a teaching/learning resource. Only serves as a way to practice, and develop reading ability.
-Perhaps not that much better than reading online, from a chinese newspaper, or other site once vocal has developed to a certain point.

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[Matthew]

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“The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism”
http://aummagazine.com/archives/283

Excerpt from news article (bolding my own):

Aided only by a crew of graduate students, Robert E. Buswell Jr., a distinguished professor of Buddhist studies in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science, and Donald S. Lopez Jr., a distinguished university professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have compiled the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of Buddhism ever produced in English.

At 1,304 pages, “The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism” is five times bigger than its nearest competitor—a dictionary published in 2003 by Oxford University Press.

Scheduled to be published Dec. 11 by Princeton University Press, Lopez and Buswell’s new reference work is also the first dictionary to cover terms from all of the canonical languages and traditions of Buddhism.

“Past Buddhist dictionaries have tended to focus on terminology from just one or two languages and traditions,” said Buswell, founding director of UCLA’s highly regarded Center for Buddhist Studies. “Our dictionary provides the most important terms, concepts, texts, authors, deities, schools, monasteries and geographical sites in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It also contains selected terms and names in Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Sinhalese, Newari and Mongolian.”

Pros
-Offers language comparison through multiple asian languages
-May provide insight into more ancient terminology, usage, and certainly context.


Drawbacks
-People who aren't interested in Buddhism may not want to buy it or open the pages

------------------------------

I haven't bought it myself yet, but if I get money in the future, may very well. It's a great self-discovery learning method to pick apart available english translations and the chinese texts themselves, but sometimes it leaves us "off by a hairs breadth" and we miss the entire meaning. We know that this might mean our understanding will be "off by 1,000 miles in the end" and so this dictionary may offer more keen insight into the cultural transition of buddhism and buddhist terminology

[Faux Newbie]

http://www.slow-chinese.com/

慢速中文 was recently updated after a 2 year hiatus with a new look and 3 new posts. This has been my main study material aside from intermittently trying to practice with native speakers for some time. Its difficulty level is perfect for me, I understand enough (my reading/writing is far more advanced than my spoken chinese) that each new lesson adds a manageable amount of vocab and grammar. This won't be the case for everyone and obviously it is focused primarily on written Chinese nevertheless I think it is second only to Skype as a Mandarin learning resource for its combination of a somewhat formal written form interspersed with spoken common usage while covering current events as well as both historical and current cultural topics.

I actually used the audio stuff for a while, I didn't follow the course, I just needed audio material that was between intermediate and advanced, and, among other programs, that one helped out. I was working in a plant that allowed ipods, so I had something like thirty hours of Chinese. Different podcasts, stuff like that.

Anyway, slow-chinese was pretty good. Even though I wasn't following their course as much as using the audio to hear more Chinese, they did seem better about making the progression sensible than a lot of other podcasts do. I'd lived in China a bit before when I listened to them(I was in the US while listening), so I was in a weird position where audio of Chinese was either way too basic for me, or pretty much newscasts(newscasts in Chinese could not be spoken faster).

Anyway, always liked that one. There was another podcast, from Beijing, that was good, but seemed to skip the whole "not intermediate, but not fluent yet, either" phase. Can't remember the name of it now, it tended toward comedic material. This is going to drive me nuts. I think it was the most used of the Beijing courses at the time. Oh well.

Going back in a few months for at least two years. It'll be nice, my Chinese is at a point where more classes are a bit pointless, though I need to find more excuses to write, which is probably my weak point now.

[wenshu]

I actually used the audio stuff for a while, I didn't follow the course, I just needed audio material that was between intermediate and advanced, and, among other programs, that one helped out. I was working in a plant that allowed ipods, so I had something like thirty hours of Chinese. Different podcasts, stuff like that.

Anyway, slow-chinese was pretty good. Even though I wasn't following their course as much as using the audio to hear more Chinese, they did seem better about making the progression sensible than a lot of other podcasts do. I'd lived in China a bit before when I listened to them(I was in the US while listening), so I was in a weird position where audio of Chinese was either way too basic for me, or pretty much newscasts(newscasts in Chinese could not be spoken faster).

Anyway, always liked that one. There was another podcast, from Beijing, that was good, but seemed to skip the whole "not intermediate, but not fluent yet, either" phase. Can't remember the name of it now, it tended toward comedic material. This is going to drive me nuts. I think it was the most used of the Beijing courses at the time. Oh well.

Going back in a few months for at least two years. It'll be nice, my Chinese is at a point where more classes are a bit pointless, though I need to find more excuses to write, which is probably my weak point now.

It would be a nice addition if they offered the audio at normal conversation speed in addition to the slow. I'm really liking the new posts and that they removed the old text book lessons so it's all original content now. I find that some of the lessons make for really entertaining topics when practicing with people, especially the ones on internet slang.

[Matthew]

there is a Reddit (mix between a forum/chat format) sub-section where people discuss/post/share about Chinese that I discovered and thought some people might want to utilize:

www.reddit.com/r/chineselanguage