Resources for learning Mandarin Chinese

Here is the list of resources I use or have used when learning or maintaining Mandarin Chinese. I tried to list them all so if something is not on this list, it means I didn't use it or used it and didn't like it. When it comes to resources, I try to look for efficiency, i.e. why have 15 pretty good ones if a few very good resources will do the job? :)

Dictionaries:

1. Dianhua dictionary (for iOS only)
• https://goo.gl/ZA5sp5
• An electronic dictionary for offline smartphone usage.
• Very powerful in conjunction with character handwriting input.
• Allows you to search characters by pinyin and automatically looks up all characters or words with the pronunciation you are looking for. This is very convenient since frequently you only know the pronunciation and not the characters of the word you are looking for.
2. Google translate
• https://translate.google.com/
• Contrary to what many people say, it is the most powerful dictionary out there if you use it correctly.
• Good for online copy-paste translations.
• Offers the feature to scan characters with your phone’s camera.
• Very advanced speech recognition.
• Very good for contextual search (expressions and sentences), less preferable for non-contextual search (individual words).
3. Zhongwen pop-up dictionary plugin for your browser
• https://goo.gl/e5eRGV
• Move the cursor over a character on your screen and a translation will pop up.
• Very useful when reading texts online

New Youtube channel

Hello everyone, 

I have launched a new Youtube channel as a supplement to my blog, where I would like to share some ideas about langauge learning. I'm currently working on the How to write Chinese characters playlist in which you can find videos explanaining in detail how to write Chinese characters. In each video I explain how to write these characters, explain what writing rules apply to them and what details to look out for when writing them in order to write them correctly and give a little background about their structure and history. The characters for these videos were selected based on my character frequency research starting from the most frequent one. You can find more information about my character frequency study here.

In the future, I would like to do more videos like this on Mandarin Chinese pronunciation and other langauges as well. I would also like to record interviews with other fellow language learners and post them on my channel.

Hope you enjoy the channel and if you the videos useful, feel free to subscribe.

Vladimir

Language learning resources

Chinese (Cantonese):

Voice of America Cantonese service podcast. Two hour daily news service.:

http://www.voacantonese.com/podcast/?count=20&zoneId=2067

A nice podcast to learn Cantonese:
http://www.cantoneseclass101.com/wp/wp-feed-audio-video.php

Chinese (Mandarin):

NHK Japan Mandarin News service podcast, updated several times per day. Very professional: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/chinese.xml

Chinesepod.com podcast:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/chinesepod/TfVV

Radio Taiwan international. News podcast, uptated 2-3 times a week:
http://mediafile.rti.org.tw:8080/podcast/PodCasting/rti_taiwanview.aspx

Australian SBS radio Mandarin service podcast:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/radiomandarin

United nations radio Mandarin Chinese news podcast.:
http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/chinese/index.php?feed=itunes

Voice of America Chinese service podcast. Two hour daily news service.:
http://www.voachinese.com/podcast/?count=20&zoneId=2966

Thesaurus linguae sericae
A huge on-line archive of Classical Chinese texts, Classical Chinese text analyses, translations, Classical Chinese dictionary, thesaurus ect.

Chinese text project
Another huge database of Classical Chinese texts with a possibility to search in multiple Chinese dictionaries (說文解字, 康熙字典, 爾雅, 廣韻 ect.)

Chinese etymology
Oracle bone script, Bronze inscriptions, Seal script database.

Czech:

Czech national radio podcast:

Website:

http://hledani.rozhlas.cz/iradio/?defaultNavigation=+generic2:^%22%C4%8CRo+1+-+Radio%C5%BEurn%C3%A1l%22$

Podcast link:

http://www2.rozhlas.cz/podcast/cro1.rss

Dutch:

Dutch news podcast. Daily news in Dutch.:
http://download.omroep.nl/rnw/smac/podcast/xml/nl_nieuwslijn.xml

 

French:

Radio l'Europe 1 News podcast, updated daily:
http://www.europe1.fr/podcasts/actu.xml

Very nice interviews on a vast variety of topics. Radio l'Europe podcast:
http://www.europe1.fr/podcasts/interview-8h20.xml

Farsi:

News in Persian from NHK Japan, updated several times per day. NHK Japan Persian news service podcast:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/persian.xml

Australian SBS radio Persian service podcast:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/persianfarsi

BBC Persian, one hour long newscast updated daily:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/jjn/rss.xml

German:

ZDF news podcast, updated daily:
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/podcast/222736?view=podcast

WDR podcast. Interviews usually concerning German, European and World politics:
http://podcast.wdr.de/radio/redezeit.xml

WDR podcast. A wonderful podcast about popular science:
http://podcast.wdr.de/radio/leonardo.xml

WDR podcast. Round table political talk shows:
http://podcast.wdr.de/radio/presseclubwdr5.xml

Hungarian:

Hungarian political talk show podcast, updated daily:
http://inforadio.hu/podcasting/arena/

SBS radio Australia Hungarian podcast, updated weekly:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hungarian

Hungarian digital library
A large collection of free audiobooks.

Italian:

Podcast of La Repubblica, updated daily. Very good debates on a variety of topics:
http://tv.repubblica.it/xml/podcast.php

Il Sole 24 ore podcast. As much as I loved La Repubblica, this podcast beats it in terms or organization and quality. It is updated several times a day with shows that are up to 90 minutes long. Spoken word only, interviews on a large variety of topics - all in all a great podcast:
http://www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com/podcast/radio24.xml

Polish:

Very good political debates. Polish Radio 3 podcast:
http://www.polskieradio.pl/Podcast/6e8788c0-1d6e-4cce-b04b-765a80ac52e0

Portuguese:

News in Portuguese, updated daily. NHK Japan Portuguese news service podcast:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/portuguese.xml

Romanian:

SBS radio Australia Romanian podcast, updated weekly:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/romanian

Russian:

Russian news podcast, updated daily:
http://www.svobodanews.ru/podcast/?count=50&zoneId=205 

Podcast of Радио Эхо Москвы:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/echomsk

Slovak:

Slovak national radio:
Website:

http://www.rozhlas.sk/radio-slovensko/web-archiv?rel=379

Podcast (unfortunately discontinued for the moment):

http://www.rozhlas.sk/inetportal/web/podcast/index.php?id=425

Spanish:

News in Spanish, updated daily. NHK Japan Spanish service podcast:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/spanish.xml

News in Spanish from the United nations. UN radio Spanish service podcast:
http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/spanish/rss/itunes.xml

For those who do not know what a podcast is or how to subscribe to them, here's a short video introduction.