Intro
It’s a common goal of mine to be able to understand Chinese mainland mandarin and navigate or sustain day to day talk in a roughly competent manner.
My interest in Chinese goes way back to my childhood. The symbols (ideograms), martial arts and overall cultural aspects instilled in me a fascination of it’s own kind. Now, heading into this journey.
Below some online resources to aid you, if you are interested in getting used to this language:
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Dictionaries
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Zhongwen (Google Chrome) One of my most used dictionaries. Definitely give it a try. Check the How-to’s here and start leveraging its power today!
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Dict.cn A very handy online dictionary to translate chinese words. I made a common use this way, for example:
http://dict.cn/老师Cool if you are using a sheet for “flashcarding” new learning words. It gets easier to automate a link for lookups doing this. -
Baidu Fanyi (翻译) Complete translation tool from many dialects of mandarin into other languages. More trustworthy than Google Translation in this regard, made for natives of asian speaking languages. Also has a very useful mobile app, check it out!
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Pleco One of the most famous world dictionaries for mobile devices. If you are investing into learning mandarin and don’t know where to start, give Pleco a try. With its paid features on, makes it a one-stop-shop for mandarin students.
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Grammar
- Chinese Grammar Wiki Tired of being stuck when facing an uncommon phrase variation or symbol used in an unsettling way? Check this complete online grammar that ranges from HSK-1 to HSK-3. Complete references and a very thorough list of sentence patterns.
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Vocabulary
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Skritter Skritter is a powerful aid for learning character writing both for Chinese mandarin or Japanese kanji.
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Mandarin Bean Despite all the other resources who will aid you in gaining vocabulary, sometimes you need a compreehensible list. It’s made for you! Very handy to print and put at your desk for offline reference. There’s also a whole lot of resources like tests etc. Enjoy!
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Chinese HSK Consolidated I’ve found this in 2021 without even grasping how mandarin worked out or how to tackle its study. Turns out it’s very handy for checking words and frequency order for all HSKs levels!
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- General resources
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Refold Mandarin (also this link) This was a very famous online sheet for hosting cultural resources in chinese mandarin, now turned into a Notion database. Check Refold. You can also check the above mentioned old sheet here.
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Chinese Cinema One of my best friends is addicted to Cinema and made this list of grand Chinese master’s movies! Even if you’re not that much in Chinese learning, check it out! Password is:
Kur0s@wa$Ak1R4. If you want to download it all, get this torrent. Movies included: -
Movies:
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Yonggang Wu - 1934 - 神女 (Goddess) | The Goddess
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Weibang Ma-Xu - 1937 - 夜半歌声 (Song at Midnight)
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Fei Mu - 1948 - 小城之春 (Spring in a small town)
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Xie Jin - 1961 - 红色娘子军 (The Red Detachment of Women) → also on Youtube
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Chen Kaige - 1984 - 黄土地 (Yellow earth), 1993 - 霸王别姬 (Farewell My Concubine), 2021 - 长津湖 (The Battle at Lake Changjin)
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Tian Zhuangzhuang - 1986 - 盗马贼 (Horse thief), 1993 - 蓝风筝 (Blue kite)
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Zhang Yimou - 1988 - 红高粱 (Red Sorghum), 1991 - 大红灯笼高高挂 (Red lanterns hang high), 1994 - 活着 (Tempo de Viver), 1999 - 一个都不能少 (Not one less), 2002 - 英雄 (Hero)
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Jiang Wen - 1994 - 阳光灿烂的日子 (In the Heat of the Sun), 2000 - 鬼子来了 (Devils are coming)
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Jia Zhangke - 2000 - 站台 (Platform), 2006 - 三峡好人 (Em Busca da Vida), 2013 - 天注定 (Destiny), 2015 - 山河故人 (Old friend), 2018 - 江湖儿女 (Rivers and lakes)
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Bi Gan - 2018 - 地球最后的夜晚 (Last night on earth)
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Guan Hu - 2020 - 八佰 (The Eight Hundred)
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Animations:
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Wan Laiming - 1941 - 铁扇公主 (Iron Fan Princess), 1961 - 大闹天宫 (The Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven), 1979 - 哪吒闹海 (Nezha Naohai) | Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 2016 - 大鱼海棠 (Big fish & Begônia) → (Netflix Only), 2018 - 肆式青春 (Unrestrained youth) → (Netflix only), 2019 - 罗小黑战记 (Heifei Legend) → (HBO Max only)
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Animated Series:
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Chinese Cinema History:
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Chinese Television IPTV from China mainland. Lot’s of channels for your delight. But it works only by means of a VPN, and after some research, the only feasible (not yet tested or endorsed by me) is earthVPN.
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CN folder on Cloud I hosted for many years a lot of resources for language learning on my cloud disk drive and you can still access it from the link above. It’s a couple of Gigabytes in size (~20GB) for the mandarin resources (
lang/cn/) and they came from a publicly available torrent at that time (2018) as well as many other languages there.
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Community resources
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My Study Sheet It’s my most used resource to study nowadays and I hope it’s also beneficial for your study endeavours! There’s also a lot of learning resources to master Bopomofo (Zhuyin Fuhao / 注音符號／ㄅㄆㄇㄈ)
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Kaohongshu guide for learning mandarin in 2022 I’m not the most experienced mandarin learner to give advice for newcomers. Check this blog for advice and resources on how to make your mandarin learning journey more effective and joyful
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Discord Chinese Language One of the best learning communities out there I’ve ever seen. Not because of it’s size, but because of its quality both from it’s members and guidance in general. There you’ll find broader knowledge channels and can practice and level up your mandarin skill set!
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Discord Xefjord’s Complete Language (also here) Interested in other asian countries or indian native languages? Say no more! Check Xefjord’s amazing resources and join the Discord channel for lots of resources like flashcards and advice!
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Telegram Xiao Mandarim Channel PT-BR If you’re coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, this is one of the most effervescent communities for mandarin learning in Brazil. 小老师 also holds a public playlist with +250 videos from 0-to-hero for mastering the mandarin language.
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