These are the apps and links I currently have on my phone to study Chinese:
SuperChinese: my main study resource. There are currently 7 levels, level 7 (still incomplete, they are still slowly adding lessons to it) being HSK 5 stuff. Each lesson has vocabulary, grammar and a short dialogue where those are used in context (I love context). It has a few free lessons in the lower levels but after that you have to buy a subscription. There are many sales though. When I was a beginner I used HelloChinese instead, which has more free content, and switched to SuperChinese when I finished all the free content there. It also has social network features and chat rooms I don't use.
TofuLearn is like a flashcard app with many pre-made decks (you can also create your own on their website and import decks from Anki) and the option to practice writing hanzi. Anki didn't work for me, but I find Tofu very helpful. Practicing writing helps me with character recognition, and it also helps me remember the tones thanks to the audio in the pre-made HSK decks.
Dot is a reading app with new texts being added every day. It used to be completely free, which actually seemed too good to be true, and then they put practically everything behind a paywall and very strict limits for free users. After a couple of months they made it a little less restricted though - we still can't choose the articles but we can read as many as we want as long as we do the vocabulary exercises after each article (plus, during the Spring Festival, they made all articles available for free for 3 days and we could save the ones we were interested in to read later). It follows the new, not-yet-implemented (and harder) HSK levels, so you should start one or two levels below yours and if the texts are too easy move up.
Google Translator: not the best but helpful when I need to translate whole sentences, plus I can point my camera or open an image and it translates writing.
Pleco: best Chinese to English dictionary.
Stroke Order: not an app but a website, does what it says in the tin: shows stroke order for a specific character.
YouGlish: also a website, you can put a word or phrase and it shows videos where people say that word/phrase. Very cool.
Todaii is a graded news app that has only two levels: easy and hard. I'm around level HSK4 and the "easy" level is quite hard though (but I admit reading is my nemesis).
Oldest Spanish - Chinese dictionary found in University of Santo Thomas, Philippines. This 400 year old dictionary called “Dictionario Hispanico Sinicum” translated Spanish to Mandarin as well as Hokkien, a language from China's southern Fujian Province and spoken by many Chinese Filipinos.
If you're planning a trip soon or want to learn some super practical Mandarin Chinese expressions, I highly recommend the Huayu101 app from Taiwan's Ministry of Education. It provides sample sentences and questions for many useful topics.
It's only available on the Apple app store from what I can tell (looks like it was removed from the Google Play app store). But luckily, you can also find the content online at https://lmit.edu.tw/lc/huayu101/.
Here is a list of the topics:
Greetings 基本問候
Accommodation 住宿
Order 點餐
Shopping 購物
Transportation 交通
Asking for help 急難救助
City tour 城市遊覽
Arts and cultural activities 藝文活動
Call and reservation 電話與預約
Exchange 換鈔
Making friends 認識朋友
Hospital and post office 看病幾郵寄
After selecting a topic, you'll see a list of phrases, sentences, and questions. These are very practical things you might need to say or that a waiter, clerk, etc. might say to you.
They even have audio! To me it sounds like real people, not text to speech. Hypothetically, if you can't speak any Mandarin, you could get by by playing the audio to people.
For some sentences/questions, they even provide multiple options, and you can select the word that's applicable to you.
Besides English, the app and website also support Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesia.
I think this app is helpful even for upper-intermediate/advanced learners. I know enough vocabulary to make do and be understood, but I'm lacking knowledge of how native speakers would naturally phrase things. This app helps fill those gaps.
🎑Shanxi Architectural Culture is a museum of ancient Chinese architecture
✏️Looking at Shanxi from the civilization on the ground, the architecture of Shanxi is a treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture. There are more than 9,000 seats throughout the province, ranking first in the country. It is an important part of Chinese civilization.
y'all know i love anki, but sometimes you just don't have the time to make over a hundred flashcards every single week.
clozemaster - an app where you fill-in-the-blank for the most commonly used words in spanish (order is random).
picture dictionary - for beginners, not an SRS! just a learning tool based on pictures for vocab. i recommend using spanish for both native and target language settings.
memrise - limited use for free, and personally i only recommend this if you're taking a course or using a textbook with associated user-created courses. this isn't common in spanish, but is in some other languages
readlang - the most efficient way to remember new words is to read them in context, and readlang does offer flashcards!
on top of learning Mandarin and keeping my Russian up, I've started to review Spanish because I started a new job at a library and like 50% of our patrons are Spanish speakers. we have several fluent Spanish speakers on staff, but man it would be better for me and the patrons if I knew a bit at least. I took Spanish in high school for 4 years and got pretty good, but I've severely let it lapse. Mango Languages has a course for library Spanish so I've started that and I'm watching a lot of videos in Spanish to see if it comes back to me
it’s interesting to me when people on tumblr who are learning chinese say you don’t need to learn radicals, because………i just don’t think that’s true? as someone who grew up speaking and learning it natively i may be biased, but there’s just…….so many situations when knowing at least basic radicals and meanings is very useful.
if you’re in an area that uses traditional or simplified and you’re used to the opposite set, then knowing radicals can be key to understanding the written language on signs in the area, menus, letters, etc. if you’re reading something and you know the meaning of the characters around a new character, but you don’t know what that character is because it’s unfamiliar to you, knowing radicals allows you to make a guess at the meaning of the character and possibly connect it to the spoken version of the character that you already know based on that context, as for example a radical often lends pronunciation clues to a character.
also, knowing radicals makes it much easier to remember how to write characters—it’s much easier to remember, say, 想 as wood-and-eye-over-heart (木目心) or 绿 as silk-record (silk radical 纟plus the word 录 as in 录音, audio recording) because those are patterns you already have than to remember the individual strokes necessary to write a character. and on the topic of writing—knowing radicals also tells you the order in which to write a character, which is absolutely key to writing legible, orderly characters in a minimal amount of time!
obviously the measure of how many radicals you “really” “have to” know is going to vary by the person you talk to, but i think it’s important to have at least a passable basis in radicals if you’re going to learn chinese, a language written with radicals as important components of words.
and, lest i be remiss—here’s some resources i managed to find with a quick search.
hackingchinese page on radicals with a number of links to .anki, .txt, and .pdf files of the 100 most common radicals
hskacademy list of 214 radicals
a fluentu page that includes 214 radicals and expounds upon the meaning of phonetic and semantic components and their difference from radicals
ltl-beijing page that includes links to a list of radicals, some history behind them, a quiz, printable pdf, and more
and finally, not a link, but a recommendation for an app: download TOFU learn and use the hsk level decks! this is a very easy way to get into the habit of writing and repeating characters daily, which is absolutely vital if you want to get anywhere with reading and writing. dot languages also has a written component to practices, but the app is multi-functional and not confined to writing, nor does it give information about component and radical meanings like TOFU learn does. additionally, i would recommend downloading pleco, which is a very thorough dictionary that has the option to view the radical/component breakdown of a given character (under the “chars” tab—for example it breaks down 音 as 立 and 日) i’ve also seen skritter recommended a lot, but i cannot vouch for that.
And I thought a post like this (similar to a post on Zhùyīn done by linghxr) may be of interest to some.
Edited: 10 Sep 2023
This post has gotten a little popular lately and on scrutinizing my own post again, I've come to the conclusion that I had made some mistakes in my given character examples.
Amended now. Namely, 「唔」 and 「龍」 have now been swapped over in the examples.
「唔」 is really the “3-parts”, and 「龍」 is indeed a “2-parts” character! Amendments are reflected in orange.
What (and who) is Cāngjié?
For those who may not know, Cāngjié is another way to input 漢字/汉字 (Hànzì — Chinese characters). It is way less popular than Pinyin (or even Zhuyin) but it still has its fans, and has a few advantages over the other two.
Cāngjié is also the name of the mythical figure in Chinese legend who is said to have been the inventor of 漢字/汉字, for which Cāngjié (the input system) was named after.
Would I recommend it?
Yes, if you think you have already acquired a good (enough) understanding of 漢字/汉字, and/or just like a new challenge.
(TL;DR at the end)
Why am I learning Cāngjié (and why you may like to, too)?
1. Mostly for fun.
Have long been intrigued by both Cāngjié and Zhùyīn, and since I finally mustered up the courage to tackle Zhùyīn not too long ago, I thought I'd finally give Cāngjié a try.
While learning Cāngjié does require more effort than learning Pinyin or Zhuyin, it can also be really fun! Inputting 漢字/汉字 with the Cāngjié method is almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
The euphoria derived from figuring out and piecing together the radicals that make up a word is something that learning Jyutping (Cantonese equivalent of Pinyin), Pinyin or Zhuyin can't quite match.
And while I know I'll never be as adept with Cāngjié — my knowledge of 漢字/汉字 is nowhere near good enough to ever use Cāngjié efficiently — as I do Jyutping or Pinyin (or to some extent, Zhuyin), it'll still be fun to use Cāngjié every once in a while!
2. Helps with thinking and typing in Chinese.
The upshot of relying too much on using Jyutping/Pinyin/Zhuyin is, I'd tend to think in Roman letters or ㄅㄆㄇㄈ before I'd even think about the actual 漢字/汉字.
But with Cāngjié, because it's based on knowing radicals and joining them together to form actual characters, it'll encourage thinking of 漢字/汉字 first, so I think that would help some with 漢字/汉字 memory retention.
Now you may be thinking, why not just you know, practise actually writing then? That is the tried and proven method to better remember 漢字/汉字 after all?
Yes, of course I can do that — and am doing so occasionally — but we live in a digital age now, and the probability and opportunity to type things out is much higher than actually writing stuff by hand.
The idea here is, more looking to think of and envision characters fully in my head, and trying to lessen over-reliance on Jyutping/Pinyin/Zhuyin.
And this is where I find Cāngjié can be useful, which leads to my next point…
3. Haunted by “What if” scenario.
What if there comes a day (however improbable) where I'm presented with only a Cāngjié keyboard to use for typing Chinese? It has happened with Zhùyīn for me!
That means, no Pinyin or Zhuyin keyboards, no Handwriting tools/touchscreens to write with fingers/mouse, no speech-to-text, and no option to copy-and-paste characters from somewhere else either! What then?
4. Able to type without knowing pronunciation, and with more accuracy.
Cāngjié is shape-based. Unlike Jyutping/Pinyin/Zhuyin, where you have to know what a character sounds like before you can type it out, with Cāngjié, you can type out (again assuming no Handwriting or other tools available) characters without needing to know how to pronounce them at all.
With shape-based typing, you'd also get more accurate hits in the first few 漢字/汉字 that show up, versus sound-based methods like Pinyin where for e.g., typing out “wan” will get you a whole list under the same sound and you may have to scroll through a whole lot to get the exact “wan” you need.
You can also type both Traditional and Simplified characters without having to toggle something or switch keyboards.
So how does one begin learning Cāngjié?
Install a Cāngjié keyboard.
Duh…but of course! Heh! Gboard offers one, banded under Cantonese language input (Android user here, don't know about iPhones, sorry).
There are two versions of Cāngjié that are prevalent currently. Cāngjié 3 and Cāngjié 5. Cāngjié 5 is supposed to be an improvement over version 3 but I don't find there's much; having a slightly altered version just adds to the confusion and unnecessarily complicates matters, in fact!
If you have a choice, I'd recommend selecting Cāngjié 3 as that is more supported. Some operating systems may not be too compatible with Cāngjié 5 still, for some strange reason.
You may also come across something called “Quick” (速成) aka, “Simplified Cāngjié”.
This is simply a scaled down version of Cāngjié, it's still based on Cāngjié's formula. So you still need to know how Cāngjié works in order to use “Quick” efficiently.
You'd then need a chart like this. ↓
* the 重 (Z) key doesn't really come into use. I don't really know what it's for, but it seems to be used (paired with other keystrokes) mainly to type out various punctuation marks.
There are variants out there, some having a little more, or less, radicals shown than in the above example, but I'll say the chart here is one of the more comprehensive ones I've found so far (and sufficient enough) — other charts often fail to highlight the 難 (X) key and what it corresponds to.
You don't have to memorize the chart all at once. Just always have a chart like this on hand to refer to and with enough typing practise, you'll eventually remember which key corresponds with which radicals.
Remember the rules. ↓
“1 part” character (e.g. 寫) = first 3 & last (radical).
“2 parts” character (e.g. 唔龍) = first & last, first 2 & last.
“3 parts” character (e.g. 難) = first & last, first & last, last.
e.g. 寫 ↓
With radicals 宀，丿，臼 (first 3) and 灬 (last).
Corresponding keys: 十，竹，難 and 火。
寫 → 写 ↓
With radicals 冖，卜，㇆ (first 3)，一 (last).
Corresponding keys：月，卜，尸 and 一。
e.g. 龍 ↓
With radicals 亠，月 (first & last), 卜，コ (first 2)，ヒ (last).
Corresponding keys: 卜，月，卜，尸，and 心。
龍 → 龙 ↓ (Simplified 龍 → 龙，a “1 part” character)
With radicals 丶，ナ，ヒ (first 3).
Corresponding keys: 戈，大，and 心。
e.g. 難 ↓
With radicals 廿，人 (first & last)，亻(first & last)，土 (last).
Corresponding keys: 廿，人，人 and 土。
難 → 难 ↓
With radicals ヌ (first & last)，亻(first & last)，土 (last).
Corresponding keys: 水，人，and 土。
Occasionally, you may get a character that looks like a “2 parts” but is actually a “3 parts”. ↓
e.g. 唔 ↓
With radicals 口 (first & last)，一，一 (first & last)，口 (last).
Corresponding keys: 口，一，一 and 口。
Or looks like a “1 part” but really a “3 parts”. ↓
e.g. 奪 ↓
With radicals 大 (first & last)，亻，土 (first & last)，丶 (last).
Corresponding keys: 大，人，土，and 戈。
奪 → 夺 ↓(Simplified 奪 → 夺，a “1 part” character)
With radicals 大，寸 (first 3; the 丶 is the 3rd component).
Corresponding keys: 大，木，and 戈。
But these are exceptions, and don't occur that often.
And you can start practising!
You can try out this pretty good app called 『五色學倉頡』 (learning Cāngjié with 5 colours), for practise. It's on Playstore, just search for “Cangjie Dictionary” and it should show up.
You have to pay to unlock higher levels, unfortunately. ↓
Anyway, each character comes with colour coded hints and you can opt to turn them off if you like more of a challenge. There are also hints (提示) and the chart (字根表) to refer to if you're really stuck. Also has a dictionary component (查字典) to check out the Cāngjié input for characters.
Another option would be a website called HKCards. ↓
You can use it to check the Cāngjié input for any 漢字/汉字, and there's section for practise (倉頡輸入法練習) as well. After inputting your answer with Cāngjié keys (手田水口廿卜), you can click on the “Answer” (答案) button to see how right or wrong your answers were. ↓
There are 8 characters each time, and you can just hit “Practise Again” (再做練習) to refresh for another 8 to practise with. I've yet to hit a limit.
Unfortunately, this website has lots of ads popping up. And it only supports searching in Traditional characters (Cāngjié was initially catered more for Traditional).
Or you can just try practising randomly with a Cāngjié keyboard and check for mistakes with a Cāngjié dictionary (『五色學倉頡』 app's dictionary comes in really useful here — it appears to support searching in Simplified too).
TL;DR
Cāngjié could be useful (and fun) to know if your 漢字/汉字 knowledge is already adequate, and/or you just like a new challenge.
And if watching videos is more your thing, here's a really helpful YouTube tutorial on how to use Cāngjié (has English subs)!
Listening to 不明白's episode on the LGBT community in China, I just thought I'd share some of the interesting vocabulary I was able to pick up :
打壓 [dâ yâ] -› to suppress
報導 [bào dâo] -> to report (in the media)
針對 (zhēn duì] -> to target, to be aimed at or against
審查 (shēn chá] -> to censor out
保守 [bâo shôu] -> conservative
右翼 [yòu yì] -> (politically) right wing
極端 [jí duān]右翼 -> extreme right wing
性少數 (xìng shâo shū] -> Igbt (sexual minorities)
跨性別 [kuà xing bié] -> transgender
One of the best things about this podcast is that they post transcripts pretty fast after each episode, which makes the content so approachable even for intermediate learners like me.
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