I have recently started learning mandarin by myself since my school doesn’t offer any classes, I was wondering if you have any tips for studying or websites that I could use?
Hi there, sorry I took so long to answer this because this answer took me a really long time to compile 😂 First of all, great to know you are learning Chinese! Actually Mandarin is just a spoken form of Chinese, but I assume you are planning to learn how to read and write Chinese as well :D I’ve received quite a few questions about learning Chinese ever since I started this blog, so I thought I should write a detailed answer about this.
Before you start, do note there are actually two sets of (overlapping) Chinese characters out there,
1. Traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan and Hong Kong)
2. Simplified Chinese characters (used in Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia).
I’m from Singapore so I learned simplified Chinese, I can generally read traditional Chinese as well though I have great difficulty writing them because I’m too used to simplified characters 😂😂 You don’t have to learn both, but it’s good to know the difference since you will probably encounter both types of characters at some point when you are studying Chinese/ consuming Chinese entertainment.
I definitely recommend learning Hanyu pinyin to help with the pronunciation of the words, but do note that pinyin is neither the Chinese alphabet nor meant to be a substitute for Chinese characters. There is no alphabet for Chinese… we do have Chinese radicals (further explained here) which is not really an alphabet but more like components of a character 🤔 For the most part, to learn Chinese characters you have to memorise them. Maybe you can set yourself a goal of memorising a few characters a day to kickstart the process, actually if possible I would recommend getting a Chinese copy book/app like this one:
Writing the characters over and over is the best way to remember the words imo, also this will help you practise your handwriting!
A good dictionary is a must, for Chinese-English dictionaries the best one I have tried so far is the app Pleco. I used to have this book of 成语 (Chinese idioms) and 俗语 (Chinese sayings) as well that I had to memorise for school, but I think you can just learn them online (found some here) if you want :D You should probably wait till your Chinese reaches intermediate~advanced level before starting on those though, if not the whole thing might be kind of confusing.
For websites, I have never tried learning Chinese online before so I don’t have first-hand experience of any of the online Chinese learning sites, but I did find this list of online resources for learning Chinese which is really comprehensive. it covers sites and apps for everything from reading and writing Chinese characters to all types of podcasts. Actually you know what, there are more resources available online than I thought, there are even apps for you to connect to native Chinese speakers (I didn’t even know those existed until I wrote this answer) 👀 That list of sites and apps pretty much covers every aspect of learning Chinese so I don’t have much else to add tbh 😂😂 Just gonna recommend some entertainment options that will hopefully make your learning process more enjoyable!
(Below are mostly my personal song/ show/ manhua recommendations)
For songs there are really way too many so it’s kind of hard to draw up a list, maybe you can start with the songs of some of the more famous artistes like Jay Chou, A-mei, Eason Chan, Faye Wong, Mayday, Stefani Sun, Jam Hsiao… You can search for Mandopop playlists on Spotify for a start! I’m personally quite fond of 逃跑计划, Lala Hsu and 陈粒’s songs.
Also randomly recommending 夜空中最亮的星 and 平凡之路 because they are my favourite songs (夜空中最亮的星 almost made me cry the first time I heard it, even now after listening to it for so many times it still gives me the same feeling 👵🏻).
For dramas my favourite drama by far is Nirvana in Fire (琅琊榜), which imo is the best drama I’ve ever watched. My sister and I were obsessed with this show and recommended it to all our friends, it was so good!!
(side note I think Hu Ge’s face is especially suited for historical dramas)
Some other dramas I liked were Ode to Joy, The Fierce wife (Taiwanese) and The Legend of Zhen Huan, Nirvana in Fire Season 2 was also just released this year! My friend recommends Tens Miles of Peach Blossoms which she said made her cry a lot, and I think Yang Mi’s latest drama The Negotiator is quite popular too though I haven’t watched it yet. I actually don’t have a lot of dramas to recommend because I don’t really watch them 😂😂 But coming from someone who don’t particularly like watching dramas, Nirvana in Fire is really so freaking good…
Anyway besides songs and dramas, my other recommendations are 1) Web novels and 2) Manhua.
I highly recommend reading web novels (I mostly read on them on qidian), the Chinese web novel community is seriously gigantic and I’ve honestly only explored a very very very tiny fraction of their offerings because there are so many popular web novels out there. Btw even if you can’t read Chinese there are English sites (webnovel l wuxiaworld) where you can read the Chinese web novels translated into English for free, so you can enjoy them regardless of your Chinese abilities :D One well-known novel on both the English and Chinese site is The King’s Avatar (全职高手), which was made into a gorgeous Chinese anime last year
Btw if you download the qidian app they have this audio book function that I thought was pretty handy, you can listen to your favourite novels being read to you ->
(Click 听书 and it will lead to the audio)
(One of my favourite novels 惊悚乐园／Thriller Paradise!)
For manhua I mostly read my manhua on kuaikanmanhua, 腾讯动漫 and occasionally dongmanmanhua. I made a short list of BL recommendations previously here, some other non-BL manhua I’m currently following are:
DOLO命运胶囊 (the art for this series is really beautiful)
看脸时代 (This one is Korean and really popular, it’s translated into English as well under the title Lookism but personally I prefer the Chinese translation)
A friend of mine recommended Duoluo Dalu (novel here) and Battle Through The Heavens (novel here) which I haven’t read yet, but if I’m not wrong both series are popular 👀
That’s all I can think of for now! Kind of off topic but from the perspective of an overseas Chinese I think Mainland Chinese entertainment have improved a lot in recent years. When I was young I could only remember a few shows from China like 还珠格格, Journey to the West, and Return of the Condor Heroes, and my own childhood was dominated by Japanese manga and Taiwanese Mandopop/ idol dramas (that’s how I learned to read traditional Chinese lol). But now there is an increasing number of quality productions from China, which is great for someone like me who is fond of Chinese entertainment (sadly Singapore’s Chinese entertainment scene is pretty lacking and Hong Kong and Taiwan’s entertainment industry have been declining, Singapore is currently pretty much dominated by Kpop and K-dramas). Hopefully Chinese entertainment will continue to get better and better in the near future ^^
In any case this list is non-exhaustive, but my answer is getting way too long so I’ll just stop here. I’ll add any future recommendations under the recs tag, hope this helps!
