Tools and Gadgets

"Beijing Sounds" blog

Laurel — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:21:11 +0000

Beijing Sounds is an entertaining and useful blog on Chinese language and culture, written by a foreigner learning Chinese in Beijing. This post is a great discussion of the question "Is Chinese hard to learn?"

The blog features a great deal of interesting commentary, in English with Chinese and pinyin, on the particularities of the Beijing dialect (such as the ubiquitous "er") -- and many audio clips as well. If you too are hoping to one day speak Chinese in Beijing, this is definitely worth checking out.

Via Languagehat, another great blog on all things linguistic.

Astronomy Picture of the Day in Chinese and Japanese

Laurel — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:26:08 +0000

You might have heard of the Astronomy Picture of the Day -- every day, NASA shares a different fascinating photograph, along with an explanation written by a professional astronomer. But did you know that it's also available in Chinese?

There is an APOD mirror site in simplified characters run by the Beijing Planetarium: http://www.bjp.org.cn/apod/today.htm

and one in traditional characters from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan: http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod/apod.html

Some of the astronomy-related vocabulary might not come in handy every day for non-scientists, but this is a fun way to learn about the universe, admire beautiful images, and practice your Chinese all at the same time!

Look up Chinese characters by writing them

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:32:24 +0000

Ever want to look up a character but don't know the pinyin -- know how to write it but don't want to go through searching by radical? The online dictionary hosted on Chinese-Tools.com at http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/mouse.html lets you look up a character by drawing it with your mouse. This is a Java applet that loads fairly quickly, and is quite easy to use. Searches in simplified, traditional, or both, and allows you to adjust for number of results and "looseness" of search.

Learning Chinese Online: database of links

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:21:33 +0000

Hi, just wanted to share this website with everyone: http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm. It's a wonderful directory to all sorts of websites about Chinese language learning, from pronunciation to grammar to reading to conversational skills. It also includes links to online dictionaries, testing information, Chinese language programs, teaching tools, translation services and more. Each link has a short summary about the website, often including dates of when it was published or last updated. In such a large collection, dead or outdated links are bound to occur, but the wealth of information makes this site definitely worth exploring.

Supplementary readings and multimedia

Laurel — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:33:11 +0000

This website from the University of Maryland's National Foreign Language Center offers some pretty neat brief online supplementary readings and multimedia resources (my personal favorite: "a song to the tune of Turkey in the Straw that contains a number of commonly used exclamations indicating surprise and dismay.")

It is geared toward the high school level, but could also be used for college students or independent learners. All the resources are organized by topic and experience level, and each reading also includes online activities to practice comprehension, vocabulary, etc.

In simplified characters: http://www.nflc.org/projects/current_projects/used_chinese_los/simplified_list.html

In traditional characters: http://www.nflc.org/projects/current_projects/used_chinese_los/full_form_list.html

-Laurel, Cheng & Tsui Editorial Department

Useful tools for character practice

Eleise — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:42:04 +0000

I recently came across this neat online tool: a free grid generator.

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper

Scroll to the bottom of the web page to find different styles for Chinese and Japanese character guides. Click on your preferred style, then enter your specifications (such as line weight and color), and voilà! You have your very own character-writing paper to print out, and you can practice to your heart's content.

How about other tools for improving your character writing?

Asian-language radio online

Laurel — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:41:59 +0000

Omniglot (a very cool site about languages of the world) maintains a good list of online radio stations in many, many different languages. Listening to authentic radio broadcasts is a great way to practice real-life listening comprehension while learning about local news, music, and culture at the same time!

Chinese: http://www.omniglot.com/links/radio.htm#chinese

Japanese: http://www.omniglot.com/links/radio.htm#japanese

Korean: http://www.omniglot.com/links/radio.htm#korean

There are many more Asian language radio links on the site, as well!