#mandarin resources

[bonbonmacaron]

I started reading this serialized fantasy novel in Chinese called Twig 枝丫. It’s about trees growing in people and controlling them 😱 Very spooky and intriguing. It’s written by a student and specifically for intermediate learners. The Substack has vocab lists for each chapter and audio, which is amazing! The best part is that a new chapter comes out every Friday. I’m only on chapter 10 so far, so I’m not caught up yet. If you also want to read it, you can just look up the Twig 枝丫 Substack. I pasted the chapters into Pleco to look up words.

I’ve also been watching this show called Women in Taipei 台北女子圖鑑 and it’s really good. I feel like I can understand about 80% of it. Apparently it’s an adaptation of a Japanese show, so I might also watch it in Japanese. Oh wait I just looked it up, it’s an adaption of Tokyo Girl, which was the first show I watched in Japanese 😅

[woaihanyu]

A slide that I’ve prepared for the Mandarin Speaking Corner I co-run at my job!

[studying-thelights]

Mandarin Resources

Here are some of my favourite resources for studying Mandarin.

Reading

Yes! Chinese Reading (website) (free): I use this for reading stories and learning new words, any new word I look up on Pleco then add to my list on HackChinese

Writing

Tofu Learn (app) (free): I used to Skritter to practice writing characters until I found Tofu Learn, it's basically a free version of Skritter. I have just been working through their HSK lists and it has been so helpful. The app format isn't as shiny and nice looking as Skritter but it's free so that's why I prefer it.

Vocab Learning

HackChinese (website) (paid): This is my favourite learning tool. I used to use anki for learning vocab but I actually prefer this site. I create a list for my class each term and also work through the HSK lists, meaning I have a lot of overlap in my lists, since this site is specifically for Chinese it will remember your progress on words across lists, so you don't have to relearn words that you already know. It uses SRS and the website has visualisations of your progress which I find really motivating! There are discount codes online and there's a 20 day free trial, when I did it if you completed 5 days in a row they gave you a 40% discount. If you're struggling to learn/remember vocab then definitely give it a go.

[bngrc]

Mandarin Pronunciation Guide (Does Not Cover Tones)

Sheet1 https://www.ipachart.com/,https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:IPA_pronunciation_key 拼音,_,b,c,ch,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,sh 拼音,IPA,_,b,t͡s,ʈ͡ʂ,d,f,g,h/ħ,ɖ͡ʐ,k,l,m,n...

There are a ton of guides explaining tones, but relatively few explaining Mandarin vowels, dipthongs and consonants. 

Pīnyīn vowel pronunciations vary depending on what which consonants they follow, in ways that most pronunciation guides don’t bother to explain in detail. 密 mì rhymes with 皮 pí but not 次 cì.  全 quán rhymes with 选 xuǎn but not 换 huàn.

The rules for how they vary are actually pretty consistent, though.

So. I decided to make a comprehensive Mandarin pronunciation chart, with IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols, and example words.

You can just copy-paste the words into google translate and listen to the google TTS if you can’t make sense of the IPA symbols

[chinese-study-blog]

Lower-Intermediate Chinese: TV show study resource: study with TV-show break-down, line by line [Ode to Joy 欢乐颂]

STUDY “ODE TO JOY” WITH JEN WHO BREAKS DOWN EACH SENTENCE LINE BY LINE IN A QUICK AND EFFICIENT WAY TO HELP YOU LEARN CHINESE SPOKEN IN TV SHOWS, [NO INTERSPERSED BITS OF ENGLISH SPOKEN BY THE TEACHER OR TOO MUCH EXPLANATION OR ‘FLUFF’]

What’s good about this resource?

1. Very little English is spoken, as we all know intermediates looking step up to upper-intermediate want as little English as possible when learning.

2. Sentences are repeated several times both in the show and by Jen to help you hear clearly and remember

3. You can almost watch it like a TV show as it cuts each sentence and repeats several times but goes straight back to the TV show and plays the next sentence. There is little ‘fluff’ for example when the teacher says “XXX means YYY” and “if you want to say ZZZ you can say AAAA”. We don’t want this English interspersed in our learning!

4. there is a round up of important points and the end where the teacher speaks a little English and gives extra examples to help clarify new words. this is useful for bridging the intermediate gap or you could skip it because its the same content as the first part.

The full playlist is below:

[alpine-langblr]

my Mandarin Chinese Resources

link

Includes: - Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese Level I, II, III, IV, and V (30 audio lessons each level) - Routledge Colloquial Chinese 1 (pdf and audio) - Routledge Colloquial Chinese 2 (pdf and audio) - Assimil Chinese with Ease (2005 edition) - Routledge Frequency Dictionary Mandarin Chinese (5000 most commonly-used Mandarin words) - 500 Common Chinese Idioms - Tuttle Reading and Writing Chinese

(photo by Nuno Alberto)

[orientalismx]

Hi Rachel sorry to bother you. I’m currently learning Chinese in college. I’m very serious about this and I’m hoping graduate with a minor in Chinese. Can you give some tips on how to remember writing the characters?

Hey sweetie, how you doing? First of all, that’s great!! Don’t give up on that. And I don’t know if my tips will help you but, I will try to give some of them.

One of my tips to remember how to write the Chinese characters is understanding the reasoning behind stroke order. Learning the rules for strokes will make it much easier when you writing new Chinese characters, trust me. It’s very helpful.

And another tip is to recognize the radicals. Radicals are elements that denote a broad category, so knowing the radicals and the meaning behind them will at least give you an element of a character when you trying to memorize it. For example, the radical 口 (kǒu) meaning “mouth”. When characters contain this radical (normally on the left side), you’ll know that the said characters are related to the mouth somehow, either in terms of an action like eating, or part of speech, as an exclamation.

吃 (chī) – to eat

叫 (jiào) – to call

吗 (ma) – particle used at the end to form a yes/no question

哈哈 (hā hā) – haha

In addition to these tips, you can also write the Chinese characters on post-its and paste in your house, haha!! As well as being useful you’ll see that memorizing words will be much more fun! And of course, my little angel, don’t forget that writing multiple times is also a great way to memorize characters.

Hope this helped you! Have a nice day bby. ♡

[studiousbees]

Hello, everyone! After over a month, I'm back with another video. I wanted to make another grammar video... but I've been sick lately and my voice isn't doing so well! So instead, I decided to show you guys some of my favorite books for studying Mandarin. Enjoy, and happy studying~