• Leiden Weibo Corpus – The Leiden Weibo Corpus, which consists of 5,103,566 messages posted on Sina Weibo in January 2012.
• AllSet Learning Pinyin for the iPad – The AllSet Learning Pinyin chart for the iPad makes pinyin study easy and enjoyable. The interface is simple, clean, and ad-free. Every pinyin syllable has audio (just tap on a syllable to hear a native speaker recording), and toggling between the four different tones of Mandarin Chinese is easy.
• Introducing HanziJS – Chinese characters consist of radicals, which are the fundamental building blocks of each character. However, until now there was no way to automatically dissect them without consulting dictionaries, random websites and other untrustworthy sources.
• ‘Beijing Beijing’ by Wang Feng – Music video with lyrics in Chinese, Pinyin and English
• Chinese Learner Interview Series: Kellen Parker – Kellen is a published linguist with a background in linguistics and philosophy. He spent time wrestling with languages like Albanian and Arabic before coming to China and re-focusing his efforts on Mandarin.

• Hot on Weibo: Use One Phrase To Prove You’ve Been to School – “用一句话证明你上过学” “yòng yī jù huà zhèng míng nǐ shàng guò xué” “Use One Phrase To Prove You’ve Been to School”
• Four Tips For Learning Mandarin (Chinese). – Corinne Dillon, founder of Discover Mandarin, an online Chinese language school offers some tips for those of us learning Mandarin.
• 8 bands to help you learn Mandarin Chinese – Improve your Mandarin and rock the karaoke with Chinese coworkers, starting with music from these Chinese bands and artists.
• Speaking a Foreign Language without Translating – When do you reach the point at which you don't need to translate into your native language? Sinosplice explains.
• 10 Chinese Dishes you should try (or at least know the name of) – Part 2 – So you’ve eaten your fill of 宫保鸡丁, indulged in 鱼香茄子 till its coming out of your ears and can’t stand the sight of another plate of 回锅肉. What next? Read on for four more reliably tasty dishes.

ChinesePod Video Lesson – Playing Mahjong (Upper Intermediate) from ChinesePod on Vimeo.

I’ve never played Mahjong, but at least now I’ll be able to understand what is going on should I ever get the oportunity. This lesson marks the start of ChinesePod’s latest foray into video lessons and, for now at least, the lesson is free for all to enjoy.

Have you ever played Mahjong? If so, would you recommend I learn? I’ve yet to meet someone who speaks positively of the game.

China-friendly link for this lesson: Tudou

小姐，睡觉一晚多少钱？
小姐，水饺一碗多少钱？

大象在车里

问题一：如何把一只大象放进冰箱？
答案：一，把冰箱门打开，二，把大象放进去，三，把门关上。

问题二：如何把一只老虎放进冰箱？
答案：一，把冰箱门打开，二，把大象拿出来，三把老虎放进去，四，把门关上。

你是谁

小王考生物试。他上次考不过了。这次他真要考过好了。但是有一道题特别难。最难的问题是看鸟的脚，回答鸟的名字。小王对一个鸟看一会儿，但是他真不知道那个名字是什么。小王快站起来说：“真麻烦”。他准备离开教室，但是他的老师问：“你是谁？叫什么名字？”。小王吧裤子脱掉了，说：“你猜啊，你猜啊！”

jī jī zhā zhā, jī jī zhā zhā

It is the sound of birds.

When asked how you’d translate 叽叽喳喳 (jī jī zhā zhā) into English I went with, “tweeting”. The response was instant, “Oh so that’s where tweeting comes from.”

I’ve always known Twitter in Chinese as 推特 (tuī tè). I think this is an entirely phonetic translation as the meaning of the two characters themselves is non-sensical.

推, tuī

to push / to cut / to refuse / to reject / to decline / to shirk (responsibility) / to put off / to delay / to push forward / to nominate / to elect

特, tè

special / unique / distinguished / especially / unusual / very

Dictionary definitions from MDBG

So, if tweeting is 叽叽喳喳 (jī jī zhā zhā), why was Twitter not called 叽喳 (jī zhā)? Well, it turns out that before it was blocked in China, Twitter was known as 叽喳网 (jī zhā wǎng). It doesn’t take a wild imagination to hear that it sounds a little like Twitter and it remains true to the idea behind the English name of the company, twittering.

But what do the individual characters actually mean. According to MDBG, the characters reveal a lot about what Twitter is actually used for:

叽, jī

grumble*

喳, zhā

onomatopoeic for chirp, twitter, etc

网, wǎng

net / network

Dictionary definitions from MDBG

Now imagine 500 million little birds all grumbling about something or other on The Internet, and you have a pretty good definition of Twitter.

Choosing a company name that is catchy, fun, and relates to the core product or service can’t be easy. Translating it to a different language with different cultural reference points is a true test of linguistic ability.

For me, Twitter will no longer be known as 推特 (tuī tè) as 叽喳 (jī zhā) is clearly far more appropriate.

* According to the 现代汉语词典 (Modern Chinese Dictionary), 叽 (jī) doesn’t mean grumble, but is simply an onomatopoeic for chirp, twitter, etc. I prefer grumble.

East Meets West ∙ 东西相遇

Networking: East Meets West ∙ 东西相遇 by Yang Liu ∙ 刘杨

• QQ Music: A Sweet Music Streaming Service with a Touch of Piracy – For all your Chinese music needs, QQ Music seems to be a great way to stream Chinese (and non-Chinese) music on the web. It even has a reasonable mobile client.
• ZhongwenMovies – ZhongwenMovies is an educational Chinese movie & language learning Web site. The videos shared are intended solely to help users learn Mandarin Chinese. We provide links to quality online programming, free study and cultural materials to advance your
  Chinese and just make Chinese learning fun.
• 10 Chinese Dishes you should try (or at least know the name of) – Part 1 – Upon stepping into our first authentic Chinese eatery we were confronted by pages of unreadable characters (thank heavens for the gaudy photos!). Where were the roads lined with crispy spring rolls? How could we find the ultimate roast duck experience? Would we ever be able to make sense of the menus?
• PeraPera Finally Released for Google Chrome – This is an absolute must-have Chinese Hack for browsing the Chinese web.
• Pleco: Chinese Character Recognition App Finally Comes to Android [REVIEW] – The Android iteration of Pleco dictionary is now available in the Android Market. It comes with OCR abilities so that it can scan and ‘read’ Chinese characters using your smartphone’s camera, handwriting support, voice recognition, and numerous dictionary options.

• My Chinese listening goal for 2012 – Majority of Chinese dramas are too fake, too dramatic or too cute for me, but I have manages to find one show I like. 裸婚时代 is about young Chinese adults who face lots of pressure from the society and from their parents to live a life that is expected from them.
• Embarrassing Moment: How Not to Impress Your Girlfriend’s Mom – As part of our Embrace the Embarrassing Moments series, FluentFix features a reader’s story about an embarrassing moment from when they were learning Chinese.
• AllSet Learning Launches Chinese Grammar Wiki – AllSet has entered the tech realm by launching a Chinese grammar wiki. The wiki, which contains explanations and examples of Chinese grammar points organized by level of difficulty, is licensed with a Creative Commons license.
• A Simple Way to Track Your Progress – How do you measure your Chinese progress? I have often wondered whether my Chinese was improving or not. Here is a simple method to track your progress.
• China Has 250 Million Microbloggers – China has more than 513 million internet users, and nearly half of them are using microblogs (collectively called weibo). Have you found a way to use weibo as part of your studies?

• Chinese Musical Genres: a bluffer’s guide – China’s musical genres have never solely been based on style. They usually describe geographical differences but can also extend to lifestyles, access to technology and the needs of state propaganda.
• The Question of Chinese Language Podcasts | Chinese Hacks – When compared to languages like English or Japanese, the selection and variation of Mandarin content, specifically targeted towards students of the language, or even native speakers, just doesn’t compare. Dave asks, @Are there any good Chinese language podcasts?"
• All Together Now: The Annual 春运 Craziness Begins! – As the largest human migration on the planet, 春运 is one of the most important and most interesting events of the year in China. Starting this week, Chunyun is a stressful, crazy, and altogether very unique event, so it's a perfect topic for this week's ChinesePod Weekly!
• Choosing a Chinese Teacher – Greg shares the process by which he chooses his Chinese teacher(s).
• Abandoning Simplified? – Apparently, some scholars from China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea got together recently to discuss the unification of all the character sets into one standard set.

But, there is some hope. I was recently given the chance to try out a new video based service from Yabla, which promises to be “the most affordable way to study Chinese.”

Based out of New York, Yabla actually has a number of language learning sites available; Spanish, French, Italian, German, English and, importantly for me, Chinese.

Yabla offers access to “Authentic Chinese” content through a specially designed video player. The player combines a number of features to aid non-native speakers whilst watching TV shows in the language they are trying to learn.

The Yabla Player

Features include:

• Slow Play
• Dictionary
• Chinese, Pinyin, and English subtitles
• Keyboard shortcuts for easy access to stop, skip and repeat phrases
• Games to test your listening and writing

At a first glance, these features may not sound particularly innovative, but I found myself using them more than I expected. After watching a couple of shows using the Yabla player, I started to find the online audio player used by ChinesePod (my current language learning site of choice) to be frustratingly limiting. Being able to pause and repeat phrases with a single keystroke is an absolute godsend whilst my brain tries to catch up with the native speaker.

Yabla is heading in the right direction, but there are a couple of things that I think need addressing before it really begins to take off.

The Player

The Yabla player is what sets the site apart. It is clean, un-cluttered and nicely laid out. However, despite being HTML5 (a Flash player is also available) I wasn’t able to get it to work reliably on my iPad.

The dictionary lookup is fast but I found myself unable to concentrate on the video whilst looking up a word. Perhaps the player needs to pause as soon as you lookup a word in the dictionary to allow students to focus on one thing at a time.

I’ve never been a fan of slow playback on any audio player. One of the main reasons being that everyone tends to assume that slow has to mean really, really slow. When you slow speech down significantly it becomes distorted and hard to hear. This is even worse if the speaker is speaking in another language. That said, I do feel that there is a place for a “slow” feature. I suspect you could reduce the speed by a much smaller fraction, say 10%, and still make things significantly easier for the language student without distorting the speaker’s voice. Far more useful for me though, would be an entirely different implementation of the “slow” feature. I would like the slow button to continue playing the video at normal speed, but to pause at the end of each phrase to allow me to catch up. Don’t slow the audio down, just give me time to process what I’ve heard. I haven’t tried this out yet, but suspect it would feel more natural than someone speaking at 50% of their normal speed.

The Content

Yabla sells itself as a Video Immersion tool and its success will undoubtedly depend on the ability to keep adding new content. However, it is content where I feel Yabla has the most room for growth. There is no doubt that the volume of content will increase with time, but it would be really useful to be given more details about each of the shows that are available.

Some of the things that would make great additions to the Yabla content library include:
- a weekly news summary
- top new singles (music) in China
- top online videos (and why they are popular)
- links to original videos (for sharing and discussion)
- a brief introduction to the shows in English/Chinese

One of the things I struggle with as a language student is finding new, entertaining and accessible content. It is easy to search for things on Youku or Tudou, but knowing what to search for is probably the hardest part of the challenge. Yabla has a great opportunity to help on two counts here: First, their innovative player can increase the accessibility of content, but second, they have the opportunity to help language students identify appropriate content. It is the latter where I feel Yabla needs to focus their efforts next.

Yabla Chinese currently has 134 videos totalling 8 hrs and 18 minutes of content available in their archives, with the promise of regular new content available to all subscribers.

A Top Tool?

You can head on over to Yabla Chinese yourself and try it out with some of their sample videos. Yabla costs £6.50 ($9.95) per month for an individual subscription, but this reduces to £5.44 ($8.33) with an annual payment. For you subscription you gain access to the full catalogue of Yabla content.

But one question remains, Is Yabla ready to be included on my Top Tools for studying Mandarin Chinese? In short, I think the answer is, not yet. But, Yabla is definitely one to watch. As it continues to develop, I expect that a few tweaks to the player and continued additions to the content archive will see Yabla grow. There is definitely an opportunity here to disrupt the Chinese language learning market.