Comments on: Top 5 Tools for Studying Chinese

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:38:08 +0000

One of the primary reasons both my wife and I opted for the iPhone is not one you’ll hear many people shout about; the ease with which it handles multiple languages. I tried for a long time to get my Nokia flashed with Chinese support but with no joy, even in China Town.

Unfortunately I’ve never owned a blackberry so I can’t comment. Anyone else aware of anything?

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:32:40 +0000

You mentioned SMS. Do you know of anything that is supported by Blackberry’s for this?

By: Tan

Tan — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:49:30 +0000

Most of the stuff I have used or use is on here but here’s my top 5:

First, nciku (www.nciku.com): loads of great stuff her but I love the ability to handwrite characters.

Second, CC-CEDICT (www.mdbg.net): yeah it’s just a dictionary but I love it (even more now that they have introduced Mandarin pinyin tone colours – why isn’t there a standardised tone colour system?). Also has a nice simple quiz (http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=charquiz)

Third, Qing Wen app for iPhone/iPod (http://short.to/2s52): uses CC-CEDICT (like a lot of iPhone apps) but you can look create word lists, look up characters within words and find others words that contain or start with a particular character.

Fourth, StudyArcade app for iPhone/iPod (http://short.to/264u): it has ANKI import feature as well as ChinesePod vocab import. Not perfect but definitely a keeper.

Fifth, LiveMocha (http://www.livemocha.com/): havent used it in a while but you can connect with Chinese people, yeah, a language exchange site but I like it.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:37:50 +0000

I’ve never heard of Arch Chinese but am heading straight on over to find out what they offer. Thanks for sharing.

By: Rich R.

Rich R. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:15:12 +0000

I recently added “Arch Chinese” to my toolset. I like the stroke order animations, Pinyin table and the powerful search capability. The link is http://www.archchinese.com

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:37:56 +0000

@Georgina: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The general conclusion seems to be that the ChinesePod style works for some people but not for others.

You are 100% right about going for coffee with your teacher. Can’t say I’ve done that myself, but putting yourself in situations where you are able to practice your Chinese outside the normal learning environment is key, especially when studying outside China.

By: georgina

georgina — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:36:52 +0000

I wasn’t impressed with ChinesePod either but I must say the best “tool” is to go for a coffee with your teacher! that applies to all languages

I’ll give a go to Skritter, I started with characters this year and it’s been a bit painful….

thanks for the tips

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:03:34 +0000

Tim, I haven’t tried Loqu8 iCE. It appears to be Windows only so am unable to test it. If anyone else has any experience of using it I would love to hear from them. It looks like it could be useful if easily disabled.

By: tim

tim — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:04:00 +0000

Have you tried Loqu8 iCE? See http://www.screencast.com/t/P7PatNCtb for a demo. We are looking into licensing the dataset behind Wenlin…

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:28:38 +0000

Mark,

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences. I confess that I have never really given Wenlin a fair chance. For some reason I just didn’t take to it. I may have to have another look as it seems to have a good number of recomendations.

URL: http://www.wenlin.com/

With regards the Chinese:Chinese dictionary, I’m not really able to help out here as my Chinese isn’t good enough (yet). Anyone else able to offer any suggestions?