Dialects, Music, and Memory

Rhythmic Mandarin isn't a free resource but I thought it was certainly an amusing one. There are several demo audio samples available to listen to. I noticed a number of differences between the words common in Mandarin used in the Hong Kong vs. what I am used to from mainland Nanjing, Beijing, and Shanghai. I think they have a good idea however using music to help them to learn the language and aid the memory. It was fun to listen to anyway.

More Good Stuff!

Seems that Chinesepod.com has got competition...or at least they will. PopUpChinese.com has taken much of the same format as Chinesepod but adds the functionality of being able to choose between reading simplified and traditional characters apparently. I don't use Chinesepod for reading or otherwise practicing characters anyway so this certainly doesn't matter to me. Anyway, I've completely switched over to simplified characters so life is good.

Also, check out these memory games for Integrated Chinese and Other Word Lists at Yellowbridge.com.

It's getting hard to keep up with all the new tools online for practicing Chinese but I'm not complaining! :-)

Best software to date for learning to write characters?

Check out Skritter.com. The program is still in beta testing but that's not a bad thing since it means that it's free to use for now. Made for learning to write characters, it is your personal online tutor for stroke order, character memorization, and learning tones too. It claims to keep track of how you are doing...how well you remember each character and it quizzes you based on both your previous progress and based on the statistics of how easily students generally remember certain characters. I am so excited about all the new software and other learning tools available for learning Chinese nowadays!

For Kids

Walker and Ping Ping
Kai-Lan
Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat



Mandarin Advantage - Learn the word for red.

Cool Tools for Learning Chinese

From ChineseExpat.com:

Chinese Pera-kun

Have you ever wished you could hover your mouse over a character or group of characters and see it’s pinyin and meaning instantly?

Well, a plugin for Firefox, Chinese Pera-kun, can help you do this. It’s not perfect but it comes close.

To get Chinese Pera-kun, just go to its plugin page, download then install it, and drag its icon onto your navigation bar through View -> Toolbars -> Customize.

Also, check out Remembering Simplified Hanzi which is also mentioned on the same Chineseexpat.com page.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I feel awful about missing so many meetings. I kept thinking that I would be able to find the time and in the end just had far too much to do at work and home...the end of the semester + holidays is such a busy time! Anyway, I had really been feeling Chinese Class withdrawal symptoms until yesterday when we had our final and I got to see my favorite professor and TA again (and classmates). I need to practice reading and writing Chinese at a faster pace so I don't take say almost 2 1/4 hrs to do a 2 hr test. If I had not felt so rushed, it would have been an easy test. :-)

So, I really logged on to the group today to let everyone know about this cool flashcard system that I use to practice characters.

Mnemosyne is a flashcard program where you can import cards on any subject and it will quiz you based on how well you rated your knowledge of each bit of information (in this case, each character or word). After you download the program itself, you can import flashcards for any of Integrated Chinese (or all of level one anyway) as well as a lot of other Chinese vocabulary sets, including the HSK exam vocabularies.

Also, this site has flashcards in several forms, including Mnemosyne and PDF (for printing on business cards or other paper) and other types of files too.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!
Wo xiwang xiage xueqi neng jian nimen!
Wow, I hope I got that word order right...

Soap Operas/Dramas

Before Crouching Tiger, there was this HK soap-opera starring Chow Yun-Fat. In Cantonese of course, but with subtitles.

And here is another very well-done drama in Mandarin, The Dance of Passion (cheesy name, good show).