Online References

DEmeant0r · 19-08-2003 6:00pm #1

Don't know if these are any good since I haven't the time to look at them, but it's a start:

Oral Exercises

Well This isn't free, it costs about $350 for each course, it's well worth it if you really want to learn the language I suppose:

http://www.eblcu.net/newenglish/index.html

I haven't had the time to search for more so add in some if you want.

DEmeant0r · 20-08-2003 7:12pm

I've had a heavy trawl over some tutorials and links and came up with quite a few very good websites:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/ - All sorts of Stuff there
http://www.cantonese.ca/ - same thing except in more of a dictionary type.
http://www.chinalanguage.com/ - A very good websites for English/Chinese - Chinese/English Dictionaries, even includes a chinese character library!

Anyways whoever is going to moderate this forum should pin this link up

DMT · 10-09-2003 1:31pm

There's also the excellent Pimsleur language courses. Do a search on amazon.com and read endless good reviews. Expensive but worth it. Also available in mp3 format in "certain places".

DEmeant0r · 12-09-2003 11:04pm

Or alternatively you could go to Eason's or your nearest bookstore and buy a Linguaphone cd (I've not tried it yet, so don't me if it's no good)

DMT · 12-09-2003 11:44pm

But there's a big difference between Pimsleur and Linguaphone. Pimsleur is completely audio, no written material whatsoever and is structered in a way that avoid rote repeatition..

I've tried both Linguphone and Pimsleur and found Linguaphone to be quite useless, while Pimsleur actually forces you to think in the language.

DEmeant0r · 20-09-2004 4:58pm

I have found a good site recently to buy Cantonese and Chinese reference books and workbooks. The site is www.abbeys.com.au

The shipping is a little dear but if you can find books you want there it's worth it.

learner · 28-12-2005 9:40pm

Here's some useful resources I've found

http://qi-journal.com/Culture.asp?-token.Referrer=Culture&-token.Category=Language

http://www.uvm.edu/~chinese/chinlan.htm

http://www.xuezhongwen.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict

http://dictionary.kaide.net/#index

http://www.mandarintools.com/

aierlanren · 04-01-2006 5:32pm

Hi All

Just came across this board while browsing and could not resist adding my tuppence.

http://zhongwen.com/

You will find a wealth of info on this site including PinYin chat.

http://e-asia.uoregon.edu/

This is the University of Oregon digital library. You will find many e-books historical and new about china, happy reading.

http://www.mandarintools.com/

This site was mentioned in a previous post. I have found the DimSum Chinese Reading Assistant and Dictionary quite helpful particularily when viewing websites in Chinese.

I have attended BLCU during 2004 and found it a great experience. A 4 week short course is an excellent way to start and it is NOT expensive. It is certainly a cheaper way of holidaying in China and there are many organised outings apart from your daily language classes. Including flights, accomodation and a little extra indulgence I spent just over EUR 2500. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone thinking of learning Chinese.

In BLCU the coursebook used is Conversational Chinese 301 ISBN 7-5619-0656-0 which I have found excellent. I have not found anything better to date but to get full value I would recommend purchasing the accompanying tapes. I did a quick check and you will find it listed on Amazon.

Hopefully this helps

再见 / Zaijian / Bye!

DEmeant0r · 28-01-2006 12:57am

Thanks learner and aierlanren for your input

although I haven't found time to look through them yet, but I'm sure they will be useful to learners of Chinese...

davros · 28-01-2006 1:39am

aierlanren wrote:

A 4 week short course is an excellent way to start and it is NOT expensive.

Agreed. I did a 4-week course in Peking University (for some reason they still call it that in English) some years ago. The campus was a very pleasant and interesting environment indeed. I also stayed as a guest at the People's University (Renmin Daxue) in Beijing. When you consider how difficult it is for a Chinese student to compete for a place in these top universities, it's a real privilege to rub shoulders with them for a few weeks. In years to come, these same students will be running the country.

Conversational Chinese 301 was the first textbook I used to study Chinese. It's certainly fine for the job but it's a little dry and dated now. A more recent and thoroughly excellent series of books is Elementary Spoken Chinese, by Dai Guifu, Liu Lixin and Li Haiyan, published by Peking University Press.

DEmeant0r · 18-03-2006 5:11am

another free chinese resource site: www.chinesebee.com

demoore · 12-01-2007 12:41pm

Another great website Chinese-Tools.com to learn chinese online :

audio mandarin courses, 40 lessons
Chinese English dictionary, 65 000 entries
Chinese songs, 65 with lyrics, pinyin pronunciation, and english annotation!

And many many more...
Zai jian!

karen3212 · 03-09-2007 12:10am

For Beginners, mandarin

http://www.loquella.com/learn-chinese
Drill on tones mostly, based on the Foreign service/defence forces material used by the US.

An amusing animation from sonic novel on basic characters and their etymology

http://www.sonicnovel.com/kanji.html

bournekaloyan · 10-12-2007 1:54pm

My Chinese teacher told me that I need to work on my Pinyin tones, it's pretty difficult. I was looking through internet for some exercise for this purpose.

I have a Mac. It turns out that there are many cool and free learning Pinyin tools out there. This is the one you should check out if you are bad with Chinese tones like me: pin yin

They have Chinese Pinyin quiz. They will play a sound and ask you what tone it is... really neat.
P.S.There is also a Pinyin table, the site claims containing all Chinese Pinyin sound(is it possible?).

davros · 10-12-2007 2:08pm

bournekaloyan wrote: »

P.S.There is also a Pinyin table, the site claims containing all Chinese Pinyin sound(is it possible?).

Yes, it's possible.

Thanks for the link too. I haven't seen that one before but it's nicely done and very useful for pronunciation and tone practice, as you say.

bournekaloyan · 10-12-2007 6:55pm

Thank you too DAVROS

DEmeant0r · 07-02-2008 8:54pm

http://www.chinesetranslationpro.com/ - Download the essential chinese guide for travellers, should be handy for those of you visiting there this year

tae · 02-06-2008 7:05am

another online dictionary!

www.nciku.com

i use it for the handwriting recognition tool!

someone please thank me for finding this!

Supercell · 23-08-2008 5:28pm

This one is really excellant - http://www.livemocha.com/

Its got free Mandarin courses aimed at different levels and also interactive forums designed to help people learning languages interact. Very surprised the whole thing is free to be honest.

Cully · 20-11-2008 1:43pm

This is very good because you can search pinyin, chinese, or english...

http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

Focalbhach · 30-10-2009 5:37am

FYI: the Chinesebee link doesn't work anymore.

Does anyone know of a link to any easy audio exercises (whether designed for students or real, like news reports read slowly)? I've been using the Michel Thomas course to learn the basics but I'd like to train my ear a bit before attempting to converse.

Thanks!