- Mandarin Chinese phrasebook & dictionary (pocket book from Berlitz)
- Reading & Writing Chinese, Simplified Character edition (William McNaughton, Tuttle Language Library
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Recommend Books to learn Mandarin
I've got a pile of books, but only two have been useful so far:
Recommend websites to learn Mandarin
Trying to learn Mandarin without knowing Pinyin is like trying to learn English without knowing the alphabet. Start here to get the basics.
The word dictionary "Look up all chinese words in a text" is particularly powerful and produces beautiful results. It also has facilities to create your own quiz.
This works great to annotate entire article as you can provide a URL.
Really great and well made videos... Check out "Lesson #1: Vegetables" and go from there. I thought I would go crazy with the same music track over and over but I didn't so you should be safe!
Good article to read before embarking on the adventure... From it:
I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on.
It really is true; I've tested those words on my Taiwanese born wife and she wasn't able to write down a single one...
One point to think about however before giving up: I think with the advent of various supporting software and portable computing devices such as Android mobile phones with on board translation software it is becoming increasingly feasible to learn Mandarin in a "reasonable" amount of time.
Writing Chinese characters with pinyin, auto-translating text and the ability to look up instantly every word in a text removes some of the barriers of learning Chinese. This means you should "cheat" your way to learning Chinese at every opportunity.
Otherwise, yeah, learning Chinese is definitely one of the crazier adventure someone can embark in!
Recommended PC software to learn Mandarin
Flashcards on steroids with pictures and audio. It keeps track of "stale items" and makes you review them based on how much trouble you had remembering them in the first place.
What I don't like is that it won't take inputs from the Microsoft IME as-is right now in my copy of Windows 7 but apart from that it's great.
The 13 free flashcards decks will take about 25 hours to master so I would recommend starting with those before buying the full version.
MDBG Chinese Reader is a PC client version of the very useful MDBG website (or is it the other way around?). When it hovers over Chinese characters it shows up you instant definitions and romanization. Another trial software, but very well made and I'm tempted to buy the full license as I'm relying it more and more.
Rosetta Stone
If you can afford it, I think it's an environment that works very well and is very complete. I love the fact that it's web based! I've had access to a license at work for a while and I'm looking forward to find an affordable license again...
Recommended Android Software to learn Mandarin
I personally use these everyday as I'm learning Mandarin/Chinese on my Motorola Droid.
Search for these on Android Market:
Google Pinyin
This is an IME, so once installed you need to enable it in Language & keyboard. Long press a text field to select it. Use ctrl-space to switch between Chinese and English, which makes the Android default keyboard unnecessary (except if you need to input a third language...).
Very smooth, easy pinyin input with good suggestions and clear, readable fonts.
Google Translate
Although complex sentences translation is generally poor, the interface is quick and fun to use with a tons of little features (such as copy to clipboard on tap, voice recognition, suggested translations, romanization, pronunciation, etc)
Hanping Ch-En
Great to look up individual words and star them offline (example: if you're travelling to Taiwan or China...). Much more reliable definitions than Google Translate since it is based on the well-known CE-DICT dictionary. Buy the Pro version, worth the (small) price of admission.
MortPlayer
Great to play audio books (such as the Pimsleur audio books). It also helps keeping your audio books apart from your music player.
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