#HelloChinese

[sybil-langblr]

Friendship ended with DuoLingo, now HelloChinese is my best friend.

The posts are right, the new update sucks.

[lingua-kindness]

Hello chinese and Lingodeer using different pinyin for same word tell me i am tripping😹

[tls123]

sorry I havent been replying to messages here and on discord, but this post is not about that this post is about me losing my 260+ days streak on hellochinese

[rilakkosmos]

Everywhere I go I see him

[ivoridd]

doing that thing where I learn Chinese again and honestly so charmed by the characters being little pictures that you combine with other little pictures to make new little pictures of words that are like those two things mixed together

[yokoyas]

still reeling from getting this story i’m just trying to learn chinese man

[unfavorableinstigation]

Today's pick-me-up is the HelloChinese video where a young woman with her shit-eating grin not quite well-hidden enough gestures to an extremely unimpressed coworker to inform us cheerfully that this coworker's family has five people in it.

[vriendenboekjes]

calculated that it will take me AT LEAST (if i keep up this level of commitment) 136 days to finish the duolingo chinese course but probably like 175 for the days i just want to do the sounds instead of having to think about translating sentences. Kind of crazy to think about since that means i will most likely finish the course in 2024

[ancientsuns]

im learning chinese with hellochinese and they make a japanese and korean app called yuspeak and if it's anything like hellochinese i really recommend checking it out!!!

[mandarinmoon]

how i'm studying mandarin (in 2024)

as a low-maintenance language learner working a 9-6 office job, i've been muddling around how to improve my mandarin in my free time and keep it fun! And I've found what works for me (thanks to a lot of lurking on here - appreciate all you mandarin langblrs <3), so wanted to share :)

Evening lessons (or italki) - Self studying is great but I do need a kick up the ass sometimes, so these really help. Plus my teacher is great at giving tips here and there which I probably wouldn't pick up on on my own.

ChinesePod - Their podcasts are really well made and accessible, I can't recommend them enough!

HelloChinese - This is my 'I'm bored waiting for my train/bus but I still want to learn Chinese' option that isn't Duolingo. It's not perfect but it has fairly good grammar explanations and native listening segments. You do have to pay a subscription if you're over HSK1 level FYI.

I am an anki hater first and foremost, so here's the vocab learning / dictionary tools I use instead:

TofuLearn - It's straightforward, uses spaced repetition learning AND teaches you stroke order - so ticks all my boxes. Picked it up due to @marilearnsmandarin's posts about it!

Pleco - Obviously, everyone has it downloaded for a reason.

Yabla Chinese Dictionary - Not seen this one talked about so much, but would recommend! It sometimes has video examples of the hanzi in use, which I find helpful.

A big goal for me this year is to consume mandarin content more regularly! It's all well and good watching Peppa Pig, but I need something that I actively want to engage with:

Bilibili Comics - Currently reading 肉店楼上的工作室 and able to understand a fair chunk, so would recommend as a "easier" option.

Mandopop - Not sure how much I'm picking up from listening, especially at my level, but it's fun to jam out to some good tunes. Faves include TIA RAY, Song Qian, Lexie Liu, No Party for Cao Dong & Shi Shi.

Dramas/Movies - Modern chinese dramas are a lot more hit-or-miss for me, especially compared to historical/fantasy. Recent faves include Accidentally in Love & Stay with Me (on Netflix/Viki). Currently watching Reset :) Any other recs, please send my way!

YouTube - I have a separate YT account just to follow Taiwanese/Chinese creators - it takes a bit of searching but you can find some great youtubers who talk about whatever hobby you're into (whether that's cute golden retriever vlogs, travel vlogs or reading vlogs!)

[marilearnsmandarin]

These are the apps and links I currently have on my phone to study Chinese:

SuperChinese: my main study resource. There are currently 7 levels, level 7 (still incomplete, they are still slowly adding lessons to it) being HSK 5 stuff. Each lesson has vocabulary, grammar and a short dialogue where those are used in context (I love context). It has a few free lessons in the lower levels but after that you have to buy a subscription. There are many sales though. When I was a beginner I used HelloChinese instead, which has more free content, and switched to SuperChinese when I finished all the free content there. It also has social network features and chat rooms I don't use.

TofuLearn is like a flashcard app with many pre-made decks (you can also create your own on their website and import decks from Anki) and the option to practice writing hanzi. Anki didn't work for me, but I find Tofu very helpful. Practicing writing helps me with character recognition, and it also helps me remember the tones thanks to the audio in the pre-made HSK decks.

Dot is a reading app with new texts being added every day. It used to be completely free, which actually seemed too good to be true, and then they put practically everything behind a paywall and very strict limits for free users. After a couple of months they made it a little less restricted though - we still can't choose the articles but we can read as many as we want as long as we do the vocabulary exercises after each article (plus, during the Spring Festival, they made all articles available for free for 3 days and we could save the ones we were interested in to read later). It follows the new, not-yet-implemented (and harder) HSK levels, so you should start one or two levels below yours and if the texts are too easy move up.

Google Translator: not the best but helpful when I need to translate whole sentences, plus I can point my camera or open an image and it translates writing.

Pleco: best Chinese to English dictionary.

Stroke Order: not an app but a website, does what it says in the tin: shows stroke order for a specific character.

YouGlish: also a website, you can put a word or phrase and it shows videos where people say that word/phrase. Very cool.

Todaii is a graded news app that has only two levels: easy and hard. I'm around level HSK4 and the "easy" level is quite hard though (but I admit reading is my nemesis).

I also use YouTube and Spotify a lot.

[taomubiji]

@d-genie I'll reply here so I can link the resources. I separated the resources by topic to make things easier. Hope this helps!

General Learning

HelloChinese: arguably the best app for learning Chinese. It covers grammar, pronunciation, vocab, and writing characters. It's free up to HSK2 and I used it all the time when I first learned Chinese.

Duolingo: similar to HelloChinese but it lacks a lot. I still use it because it's free and I can practice sentence structure.

Dictionaries

PurpleCulture: a website with a ton of learning tools. I use the dictionary here because it says which HSK level the word is, breaks down the character into different radicals, and also gives a way to memorize the character.

Baidu: I use Baidu's translation app when there's more than one word in a sentence I don't understand. I paste the whole sentence there, and it provides a list of words and their meanings. You can also highlight a word you don't know, and its meaning will pop up.

Pleco: an app dictionary. It's good but I'm usually on my computer and it's easier to look up words there. So, I only use Pleco as a backup.

Grammar and Reading Comprehension

AllSetLearning: website that breaks down grammar points and provides sample sentences. I use this one a lot!

Du Chinese: a graded reader app/website that guides users through short stories. It's a great tool but I find it boring and often struggle to finish the stories.

Weibo: once you become more advanced and if you can set up an account, weibo's a great way to build up character recognition and reading comprehension.

Miscellaneous

Youku TV Shows: A lot of their TV shows on youtube have both the Chinese and English embedded into the video (like above). It's a great way to improve listening comprehension as well as character recognition. When I became too busy to study, watching Chinese TV shows helped me retain a lot.

WriterChinese: an app that focuses on writing Chinese. It's free up to a certain level. This is one of the few things I spent money on because you pay a one time fee and it unlocks a lot.

Daomubiji.org: a website that has most of the online versions of dmbj novels. I've read some of the novels for practice.

[notionbytheocean]

updates:

only logging study sessions on notion now that aren't already recorded from an app like hellochinese's streak or anki (to remove redundancy)

updated goals and study plan to focus more on grammar (i forgot most of it already)

revisiting anki this end of the week (i'm scared there's a lot to review)

added cute moodboard covers from pinterest :)

[afro-elf]

omg that’s so cool that ur learning mandarin kendra !! i’ve always wanted to, but have been apprehensive of its difficulty level haha. would you say its particularly hard ?

i would say that it's definitely a language that would be best taught in a classroom setting but money is nonexistent so i'm just using the hellochinese app

[muzik-room]

was too tired to practice writing hanzi so I just did a lesson in hellochinese 😭

finding out chinese has no specific word for "yes" or "no" was really interesting to me

I wonder what other languages have something like that

[neixins]

i just called myself stupid for fucking up a few questions on hellochinese and the next question i got was to translate 笨.… just kill me next time