Developing The Discipline To Consistently Study Mandarin

Learning any language can be hard. Learning Chinese is especially hard. But, you can make progress every day. In order to learn Mandarin, you must develop the discipline to consistently study Mandarin, and this article will discuss many ways that you can do that. Continue reading “Developing The Discipline To Consistently Study Mandarin”

A Great Tool To Download Tudou And Youku Videos

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*** Note, it is becoming much more difficult to access sites within Mainland China from outside of Mainland China. The one tool, which I have personally used, and like, is the the software called youtube-dl which is 100% open source and available for Windows and Linux.

Tudou.com and Youku.com are great video sites for learning Chinese. If you like a particular video, you might want to download it so you don’t have to constantly have to go back to one of the sites to re-watch it. Continue reading “A Great Tool To Download Tudou And Youku Videos”

A Script To Easily Search Simplified Chinese Words With CC-CEDICT In Linux

This article is a follow up to my article called A Script To Easily Search Traditional Chinese Words With CC-CEDICT In Linux here. This article is about how to search the CC-CEDICT Chinese-English dictionary using Simplified Characters in Linux. Continue reading “A Script To Easily Search Simplified Chinese Words With CC-CEDICT In Linux”

A Great Free Chinese Intermediate Grammar Course

I am a huge fan of edx.org, a site that offers hundreds of courses from some of the best universities in the world. I recently discovered that there is a Chinese Intermediate Course there. The course is free to audit, but if you want to get a certificate as proof of completing the course, you can pay $49 USD. The name of the course is Intermediate Chinese Grammar 中级汉语语法 and the link for it is here. It is from Peking University (北京大学). The more modern romanization of the name of the university would be Beijing University. Beijing University is often considered the best and/or most prestigious university in Mainland China. If you don’t already have an edx account, sign up for a free account with edx.org, and then you can sign up for the class.

Below is a link to the first lesson:

https://youtu.be/savdk1bWb_8

Here you can download the subtitle file which contains double subtitles with Chinese and English right next to each other. You can download that video with tools such as keepvid.com or youtube-dl. I recommend using VLC or some other good video player. Make sure your subtitle encoding is in utf-8. If VLC has problems viewing the subtitles, then use another good video player.

I don’t recommend this class for beginners, though you can build it to it with lots of practice if you aren’t already at that level. This instructor teaches only in Mandarin, though there are Chinese-English subtitles with videos. I find this instructor to be quite good, and believe that you will definitely improve your grammar if you take this course.

Will you take this course now? Have you already taken it? Let’s discuss this in the comments below.

Clash of Clans Chinese Vocab

Are you addicted to the super popular game called “Clash of Clans”? If so, you can learn a lot of Chinese playing the game in Chinese while still having a ton of fun. And you can make many friends doing so. Clash of Clans is very popular in Greater China, and I actually learned about the game and got started playing the game 2 or 3 years ago in Mainland China with Chinese friends.

Continue reading “Clash of Clans Chinese Vocab”

A Script To Easily Search Traditional Chinese Words With CC-CEDICT In Linux

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The CC-CEDICT Chinese-English Dictionary is incredibly useful but a little difficult to search effectively and efficiently initially. As a text file, you could use a text editor and simply search using CTRL+F, but it might be quite an inefficient way to search. As of the time of this writing, December 2016, there are 114886 entries, so searching it with CTRL+F it may give you many hits. You need to use simple regular expressions to get what you really want. This article gives you a free script you can use to easily, efficiently, and effectively search the CC-CEDICT. Continue reading “A Script To Easily Search Traditional Chinese Words With CC-CEDICT In Linux”

Growing Up With Chinese: A Great Video Series To Get Started Learning Mandarin

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One fantastic and free Chinese video series to watch to get started learning Mandarin is called Growing Up With Chinese (成长汉语). It is a series officially made by CCTV (China Central Television) and is quite professionally made. It starts out at the very beginning level, assuming no prior knowledge of Mandarin, and builds up all the way up to advanced levels. Continue reading “Growing Up With Chinese: A Great Video Series To Get Started Learning Mandarin”