Some wonderful person is collecting all natural Mandarin conversations (comprehensible input and similar) for learners on YouTube from different channels in one playlist.
At the time of writing there are 178 conversations at different levels, from beginner to advanced.
Truly an outstanding learning resource and great if you like me don't have energy to keep up with many different accounts and look out for new channels and you can find something that suits your tastes.
And instead of doing grammar drills that you still might struggle to apply to natural language you're practising language through listening to people actually speaking it in a pretty relaxed and natural way, the way you will hopefully be actually using the language :)
i know i’ve talked briefly about the dictionary apps i use most often, but it’s been awhile since i made those posts so i decided to update the list and give more detailed accounts about each dictionary i have on my phone
it’s pretty long so i put it under a cut
1. Hanping Lite
if you’ve been following me for a while then you’ll know hanping is my ride or die dictionary app for mandarin. i’ve been using it ever since i got a smartphone and absolutely love it. here’s why:
you can handwrite characters if you don’t know the pronunciation
you can also search for characters using a radical index organized by stroke order
has stroke order animations for a couple hundred characters
can use pinyin or zhuyin for pronunciation, and there are multiple ways to show tones. i personally use color-coded pinyin without the tone marks
traditional and simplified
pre-made vocab lists for all 6 HSK levels, idioms, and common characters
the cons:
only a couple hundred characters have stroke order animations
no example sentences for words
the app is only available for android
2. Written Chinese Dictionary
i decided to try this app out on a whim a while back and, despite being thrown off by the look of the app, i really like it
you can download a free stroke animation pack for every single character
when you click on a word you can not only get a handful of example sentences, but also related words
radical index
there is a free flashcard feature. you can either use the pre-made flashcards for HSK or do your own based on a list you compile
this app also offers a handful of free short stories you can download and read in the app
here’s the one issue i have with the app:
there’s only about five or six example sentence for each word. sometimes this is enough, but there are some words that just have oddly complex examples that don’t help me understand how to use it
3. Line Dictionary
i’ve been using line as a website for a long time now but i recently checked out the app and i’m so glad i did. it’s basically the same as the website but easier to access
can handwrite characters
has both diagrams and animations for stroke order
as a sentence analyzer that you can use to figure out which characters form words together as well as the meanings of the words
gives you daily expressions, quotes, and idioms
example sentence heaven. there are so many different example sentences it’s amazing
i have nothing bad to say about line
4. 有道 Youdao
i’ve never really used it before but i know my chinese language partners all use it to help them translate words from mandarin into english so i figured it deserves a spot on the list for that alone
5. 萌典 Meng Dict.
this is another chinese app that i’ve used a bit before. it has a bunch of other features that i haven’t explored yet (i think it has a taiwanese dictionary too) but here’s what i think based on my experience so far
has the main definition in mandarin, then really basic definitions in english, french, and german
has stroke order animations
shows both pinyin and zhuyin for pronunciation
cons:
only uses traditional characters
might be hard to navigate if you’re at a lower level in mandarin
It's not made specifically for learners, but I found that by playing it on 0.95 speed I could kind of follow along, which surprised me a little bit. (Helped by the added motivation of interesting content I am sure!)
Also they don't have background music which makes it much easier to hear.
So I encourage you to give it a try if you think it sounds interesting, maybe there is a playback speed that works for you :)
Chinese Boost grammar: This page has a list of different levels of Mandarin grammar for you to explore. What you do is choose your level and then pick a grammar pattern from the articles under that level. Each article is clearly written and gives multiple examples to help you understand what you’re learning.
a folder of many many mandarin resources
Just Learn Chinese: This website has so many things. There’s vocab/idiom explanations, grammar, and best of all stories/novels. The stories are divided into different levels of difficulty and, when reading the actual stories, have a popup dictionary when you hover over a word. The website is run by a native Mandarin speaker.
Carl Gene: Carl Gene is a professional translator and this is his blog. I’d say the stuff he posts is a little more advanced but it’s certainly worth looking around. He posts about Chinese language and history, as well as his experience working as a translator and interpreter. Really interesting stuff.
中外对话 China Dialogue: China Dialogue is a website dedicated to stories about China’s environmental issues and the articles can be read in either Mandarin or English. This is a much more advanced reading source and it is not divided into levels of difficulty.
The Chairman’s Bao: This is an online newspaper that has stories for each HSK level. When you go to an article, you can highlight words you don’t understand and the definition will appear to the right of the text. There’s a wide range of topics covered in their articles so you’re bound to find something you like.
Read 漫画 Manhua Online: All of the manhua are written by native speakers (at least i think they are) and they’re free to read. The whole website is in Mandarin so it might that a little bit of legwork to figure out how to find what you want. I just leaf through the manhua that are at the top of the page.
Read Chinese: This website offers a huge number of texts for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners in both traditional and simplified characters. After reading each passage there are a few questions you answer to test your comprehension of what you just read. Each passage also has pinyin, but rather than putting it with the characters it is put underneath the passage so you are forced to focus just on the characters while reading.
Hanzi Grids: Here you can make your own printable grids for practicing hanzi. To get started you just have to quickly make a free account on the website using your email. After doing so you can start working on your grid. There are some features that you have to pay for but you can still make a basic grid without the subscription.
Easy Mandarin Books to Read: This is just a short list of suggestions for simple books to read in Mandarin. Most of them are children’s books or books of tales.
Mandarin Weekly: Mandarin Weekly is a weekly newsletter that includes loads of resources for Mandarin for all levels. The weekly emails include resources for vocab, grammar, culture, and much more. 10/10 would recommend subscribing especially since it’s free.
Ninchanese: This is a fun little website full of games and an entertaining story to help you learn basic Mandarin. There’s also an app for it so you can play both on your phone and on your computer.
Phonetic Sets of Characters: As the name suggests, this is a list of characters that have similar pronunciations. In this list they cover characters that have the same pronunciation for everything including tones and characters that have the same initials and finals but different tones. There are two other categories of similarity, but this list only covers the two.
BONUS:
The Grass Mud Horse Lexicon: This is a special gift for you all. I suggest you explore it and have fun.
Fours years ago I (quite quickly) gave up on learning Mandarin Chinese because the tones did not make sense to me. At all.
But I started again recently with new strategy and mindset, and this channel has been so much help! Check it out if you need quick explanation and practice.
Hey guys, if you need a bit more listening practice, check out this great channel. They do a series of short videos, narrated slowly then at normal conversation speed with simplified, pinyin, and english captions. Happy studying!
