Reader apps provide graded Chinese texts and tools to help you decipher a text quickly. Today we’re reviewing Du Chinese, one of the most popular Graded Chinese readers.

What is Du Chinese?

Du Chinese is an online and mobile text reader.

Available on iOS and Android, it helps you read Chinese texts with a few well-done tools.

Du Chinese is excellent for improving your reading skills and understanding Chinese stories. It’s purfect for Chinese learners who want to be able to read Chinese texts and reinforce what they already know.

读 Du means to read in Chinese, so even the name shows you how much it wants to help you read in Chinese.

Content of Du Chinese app

What kind of content does Du Chinese offer? You have lots to choose from! You can browse over 1,900 texts on the app, which is impressive.

There’s plenty of text categorized into New Lessons and Top Stories. There are also a few Series of Novels in Chinese, which are stories in multiple chapters. In addition, you have some categories like Business in China, Everyday Life, Language, and Funny Stories. You can extend each type of category with the see more button.

The Du Chinese team or other Chinese schools like Go East Mandarin, LTL, or Excel Mandarin write these stories, which says a lot about the quality of the content.

Stories, organized by level

Any Chinese learner that’s attempted to read in Chinese knows that it can be hard to find a text that suits them well.

Du Chinese thought of that and made it easy for you.

With their graded system, there’s content available at every level, whether you’re a newbie or an advanced Chinese learner.

Moreover, all their texts, from the single-page stories to the multi-chapter longer ones, are carefully tagged by level, so you always know what you’re diving into.

Some story recommendations to start with Du Chinese

Wondering where to start? There are quite a few recommendations when you open the app and have indicated your reading level, and I recommend trying one that looks interesting.

Here are also a few series that I like to get you going. “Ben’s life in China” is a fantastic series to read, full of helpful content to know at the intermediate level. It’s perfect if you are living in the country. You could consider it a great addition to our course “the Chinese Phrasebook” on Ninchanese.

If you’re a beginner, you can read the “story of a cat” (obviously, considering you’re learning with cats on Ninchanese!). The series is elementary and goes slow, with quite a lot of repetition of accessible characters. It’s maybe even a little too easy, but it’s an excellent start for beginners looking to ease into reading Chinese texts.

You can also try the “funny story” section with a very Chinese humor style. I’ll let you explore that one; I’m sure you’ll find one story amusing.

How do you use Du Chinese?

A pleasant reading experience

If you just want to get reading, it’s pretty straightforward. Select a story, and you are presented with the text to read.

The text itself is well presented, without any fuss. There are three parts to the screen on the mobile app:

• first, a translation tool part, where the translation of a word or sentence is,
• then, the middle, the most prominent part, is the Chinese text you are reading,
• and finally, the last part at the bottom is the menu. You access different customization options from there.

Easy tools to help you understand what you’re reading

Imagine you start reading the text and find a sentence you don’t understand. You can touch it and be presented with its complete translation at the top, above the text.

Or there’s a word you don’t understand. Touch it longer or hover over it; you can see a brief definition. Overall, it’s pretty easy to look up words you don’t know, thanks to a well-done text segmentation.

It’s also nice to have the translation available with your reading, all in one place.

Generally, the translation is good but sometimes a little short. Don’t worry; you can also long press on a word to get more info, which will take you to another page to see more definitions.

The definitions are from a free dictionary called CEDict, which is pretty good. We also used it in Ninchanese as a basis and then improved. So that’s an excellent point for them.

Sometimes, words are missing sentence examples, but you can always go to an external dictionary to see more info on that word.

Listen to the story as you read along, or turn it into a Chinese podcast

When reading, you can also press the play button at the sentence and hear the whole text read to you, with a nice little cursor, karaoke-style, to help you follow along. That makes it simple to follow while the voice reads it.

You can also easily pause the reading whenever you want or go back to a specific part of the text by simply touching the word or sentence you want to hear again.

Want to take a break from reading? You can also listen to the story being read with no text. I can imagine that being handy while on the go, jogging, for instance.

Customization options galore

Once you’re familiar with the app and know how you want your reading experience, you can customize how you want to read the text, to how you like it.

Change the reading speed

By default, the speed is set at 1x, which, in my experience, is actually quite slowed down. But it’s a good starting speed.

You can slow it down even more or go up to 1.5x speed, which sounds more like a normal speaker’s speed. So, at higher levels, that feels like a more natural speed.

Also, from what I have experienced, some texts are faster, so maybe they change the average speed depending on the difficulty of the text.

Show the pinyin (or don’t)

There’s a button directly on the text screen you can toggle on or off to choose whether you want the pinyin shown above the Chinese characters. That’s helpful because sometimes you know what it means but not the pinyin.

Turn off full translations

You can decide whether you want the app to show sentence translations or not. This is nice if you only want to see the translation of a word and not the whole sentence.

Plenty of visual options

If you go further into the submenu, you’ll find the rest of the customization options. Visually, your options are:

• You can choose simplified or traditional characters.
• You can select the font size for Chinese characters and pinyin.
• You can choose different types of fonts, which is helpful to get used to reading Chinese in various fonts, or if you prefer a different font to see the strokes more.
• You can underline the HSK level on each character. It’s cool, but I don’t recommend using it since it makes the text harder to read. But, you do as you like.
• You can customize how you want your character readings. Here, Du Chinese goes further than other reading apps. You can decideif you wisht to show pinyin for every character or only for some problematic words, such as words from higher HSK levels or names.
• Lastly, you can choose the transliteration model: the app can show you pinyin, tone marks only, or the Bopomofo system used in Taiwan instead.

The one thing I would have liked to see is an option to preset the sound speed I wanted. By default, as mentioned, the sound is at 1x, which I found too slow. I have to manually set it back to 1,5x at the beginning of each text. No biggie, but it definitely could be an option.

Simple navigation

Once you start reading a text and returning to the app later, the last story you read will be waiting for you on your homepage. You’ll find a shortcut to continue reading and studying the text, which is pretty nice. You can jump to the text from the homepage, and it is pretty straightforward to return to the lessons.

I would have liked to have more than one story in my home if I had started two or three texts simultaneously. For example, I expected that my favorite story would be there, but it wasn’t. Why can you star a story (presumably to favorite it), if you can’t find it again on the app’s home?

If you want to read something else, you need to use the nav bar and hit the discover button. There you’ll find all the content of Du Chinese.

Different approaches based on your level

All those ways to tailor your reading experience can be a little dizzying at first. But, not to worry, Du Chinese also adapts what it shows you based on the level of the text you’re reading.

Suppose you’re reading a newbie text. The sound is slowed down to make it easy for you when you’re starting. Then, gradually, as you go up in levels, the speed of the sound increases.

At higher levels, you also might not get translations automatically shown to you, and the app will only display pinyin for new or challenging words.

If you like how it’s presented, keep it that way. Or dive into the settings to make your reading time just the way you want it.

Does Du Chinese include flashcards?

Yes, Du Chinese has a built-in flashcard system. Admittedly, it’s a simple flashcard system, but it does the job.

What I like about it is when you’ve added a character to your learning stack, it shows you as an example the sentence where you first encountered that word. Sure, it’s not necessarily the most straightforward sentence that explains the word, but you understand the sentence better after a while. And finally, you can cram your words if you want to practice your Chinese a little more.

Can I learn Chinese with Du Chinese?

To answer this question fast, no, you won’t learn Chinese with Du Chinese. But you’ll improve your Chinese reading and listening skills if you use the option.

You won’t have clear Chinese grammar lessons or train yourself to make sentences or speak Chinese as Ninchanese does. There is no explicit curriculum on this graded reader; you are free to wander.

That’s what is great about it. It’s a great reader and will help significantly train your understanding of Chinese passively. So, in sum, it’s a great app in addition to your favorite learning app Ninchanese.

Is the Du Chinese web app or the mobile app better?

The web app is pretty pleasant; the interface is quite the same as the mobile app. It’s fast and easy to use. It’s easier to navigate between lessons on the web app, but reading a text on your mobile on the go is a plus for this kind of app.

Is Du Chinese free? The premium of the Du Chinese app

Some of the stories on Du Chinese are free so you can try Du Chinese out first.
But you’ll quickly realize that the more exciting stories are premium-only, which is entirely understandable.

Du Chinese uses a subscription-based model. Plans are priced at $15 per month.

On Du Chinese, they have three different types of “lessons.” First are stand-alone articles, there are also courses (articles connected within a single theme), and, lastly, multi-chapter stories, which all add up to thousands of lessons within Du Chinese. In addition, while I don’t have the exact number for you, they release about 5-7 free weekly lessons.

Is Du Chinese worth it? Is Du Chinese good?

Yes. It has a lot of content, and it is easy to use. You can use the web or mobile app, and you’ll improve your Chinese reading.

Du Chinese Discount

We discussed with the Du Chinese team to see if we could get you a nice discount on your subscription.
Peter, the cofounder of Du Chinese, was very kind and shared a great discount code that you can use on the app.

You’ll get a 20% discount with the code: NINCHANESE20.

The post Du Chinese Review of a great graded Reader appeared first on Ninchanese.

LTL Mandarin School, on-site and online live mandarin courses

Based in several locations in China, Singapore, and Taiwan, LTL Mandarin offers students Chinese language classes and other programs. With Flexi-classes, they expanded to offering also online Chinese classes. Using the same platform, they offer classes in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Shanghainese, and Cantonese. I tried their Mandarin Chinese classes. And so can you! Read on for a meowsome discount.

Flexi Classes: Online live Chinese classes

FlexiClasses are online classes LTL Mandarin started to offer in October 2020. The idea behind these is to provide students with an online platform where they can book live Mandarin classes whenever they want.

You can choose to have either a group class or a 1:1 private, tailored class. I tried out both.
Note that starting at level HSK 5+ (presumably that’s part II of HSK 5), only 1:1 classes are available.

Private classes: you decide what they’re like

When booking one-to-one private classes, you choose to work on one of LTL’s fixed topics or choose yourself what your lesson will focus on. For my 1:1 class, I decided to have a session dedicated to free speaking.

While the class was unstructured, I chatted for 1 hour with my teacher about random everyday topics, which was excellent speaking practice. And I had fun.

Group classes: small enough to feel cozy

Group classes are designed for small groups, usually 3 to 5.

Good to know: At the moment, possibly because the platform is relatively new, many group classes aren’t full. So, for example, I booked a group class for three, and there were only 2 of us.  It was fun to have someone else in the class, to ask questions I didn’t necessarily think of.

You can see who else has already registered for the same class.

I took a second group class, expecting other students. This time, it was just me. Pretty neat. That was probably a good call, given how hard that class was for me. Ahem.
So it was like a private class for fewer credits, where we followed the topic set for the lesson.

Group classes follow a fixed topic set by LTL Mandarin. They offer lessons on lots of current topics, like riding a shared bike or slang. That’s definitely a plus.

When you book, you choose what topic you want to cover and at what level. [Classes are organized by HSK levels, then by chapters, with each chapter containing several sub-topics.]

Word of advice: Be careful you choose a class that’s your speed and not too advanced. Classes that are too hard are not necessarily worth it for you. During a lesson, you see a lot of new vocabulary, and the teacher expects you to be comfortable using it immediately. So, do check carefully before booking.

Learning material provided ahead of time

Each group lesson gets its own page, from which you can view:

• a description of the class,
• its study goals.

You also can see what you’ll be studying thanks to the different learning materials provided. This material, which is available even before you book the class, is then used in the class. It includes:

• A pdf of the content you’ll be studying;
• An audio file of the content you’ll be learning (this is to use at home, as in class, your teacher will read out the different sentences and words);
• A list of additional resources, such as videos or blog articles to read.

You get a pdf of what you’ll be seeing in class.

Having all that learning material readily available for download is great. It allows you to get a good idea of what you’ll be learning and prepare for the class ahead of time.

Our recommendation: Create a Nincha Deck of the vocabulary you’ll be seeing in your lesson, to prepare! Plus, it’ll help you memorize what you saw in class.

How a Mandarin live group class went

The live Mandarin group class I followed was an HSK 4 class about online shopping. It focused on the popular expressions used in Chinese to talk about addiction to online shopping. Such as “吃土,” which means “eating dirt”, and 剁手, another slang term used by shopaholics.

Funnily enough, the term 吃土 was initially used to talk about people who ran out of money before the end of the month. It then got “reallotted” specifically to those who overbuy online and can’t resist sales.

My teacher was very attentive and patient with our questions during the group class. The whole lesson flowed easily. We followed the learning material pdf provided before the class, except for quick intros before we jumped in.

To warm-up, you reorganize sentences, like on Ninchanese. With all the sentence-building we do on the app, this felt easy.
Then, you learn new words and try to make up sentences using those new words. Once that’s done, you take turns reading sentences using those new words.

There’s also time dedicated to practicing a grammar structure in Chinese. In the lesson, the focus was on 不管.

Then you make up your own sentences using the given prompts, and finally, read a dialogue using the new words you’ve learned.

The material still uses pinyin everywhere, and at the HSK 4 level, I would have liked less pinyin. [This changes at the HSK 4+ level.]

The class provided plenty of occasions for speaking practice. Most of it was about the lesson material, of course, but the teacher was flexible enough to allow some free-form discussion in Chinese. It was a fun and enjoyable hour. An hour goes fast, so it’s nice to also have the speaking stages on Ninchanese to practice speaking and improve my pronunciation.

Related: Read our Review of Go East’s Online Mandarin Classes

Teachers

Since the group class follows the learning material provided by LTL, it’s genuinely your teacher that makes the class. As can be expected on a platform that offers classes 24/7,  there are several different teachers on the platform.
You won’t get the same teacher from one class to another unless you go hunting for classes with that specific teacher.

Different teachers mean different teaching styles. I loved 2 of the three teachers I got.

In one of my group classes, for instance, my teacher made me repeat many things. I didn’t get as many occasions to talk as in my previous group class. Perhaps that was because the class I’d booked was too hard for me. Maybe that was her style. All I know is she made me repeat after her a lot and didn’t adjust the class to make it easier for me, despite being the only one in the class.

Once you’re done with the class, LTL Mandarin does ask you to rate each class and teacher anonymously.

How does booking a Live Chinese class on the platform work?

Let’s talk about the FlexiClass platform.

A wide range of live Chinese classes and topics

The platform’s offer is flexible and customizable to your schedule. There are many classes offered at any time of day each day of the week.

There are many different topics offered to study; you can easily filter classes by level, by type: speaking, grammar, vocabulary, review… So much so, in fact, that there’s a lot to choose from at first.

There are many ways to book classes, and it’s easy to get lost on the platform when starting. I found myself confused at first. Did I want to filter by topic? By category? By city version? What’s a city version? Should I book a class? A course?

These are all the classes I can book today at the HSK 4 level.

Once you get over the initial “wow, there are a lot of classes and lots of options to choose from” impression, you notice that every class is organized by level.

There’s a level 0 for introductions to everything in Chinese. Then, everything is organized by HSK levels. There are classes at all levels, from HSK 1 to HSK 6.

You can choose to start with chapter 1 of the level you selected. Or you can pick a class that’s at a time that suits you and on a topic you like. It’s up to you.

Click on a class and get talking!

Once you’ve figured out your way around the platform, have purchased credits (see pricing below), and picked your class, it’s easy to book the class itself.

Click on a class, confirm, done! You’re booked. That class can be as soon or as far away as you want. You could be taking a lesson in the next hour if you wanted!

You get a reminder by email before the course and can add your class appointment to your calendar. Simple and convenient. If you change your mind within 30 minutes and cancel, you get all your credits back. Same if you cancel your class at least 72 hours before the class.

A tip:
Check the date of what you’re looking carefully, to avoid booking something too in the future. The recommendation feature first showed me lessons that were several months away. [You can book up to December of this year, and maybe even further even].

Pricing

Instead of paying for a certain number of hours or classes, for LTL Flexiclasses, you purchase credits through a monthly subscription. To give you an idea of the cost, one credit (= one group class) ranges from 7,5 € to 12 €, depending on the size of your subscription. A 1:1 private class (= three credits) runs from 20 € to 28 € per class.

For a real-live class with a teacher, that’s a pretty reasonable cost.

How to get the most out of your live Flexi Classes

Prepare for your Mandarin live class ahead of time

You can definitely show up to your class and discover everything with your teacher. Since the class material is provided before the class, nothing keeps you from preparing for the class and getting familiar with the new words you’ll be seeing in class.

Create a Nincha Deck of the words you’ll be seeing in class

Get a head start on learning those new words! Creating a Nincha Deck of the Mandarin Chinese words you’ll be seeing in that class is a great way to get the most out of your class. By reviewing your deck after the class, you will memorize that Chinese vocabulary long-term.

You spend most of the class discovering new words and practicing using them in context. So by combining Ninchanese and the live classes, you can get comfortable with the new terms you see and memorize them for good.

Summary: do we recommend LTL Mandarin’s online Flexi classes?

If you’re looking for online Mandarin live classes, want to focus on the HSK, and like the idea of being able to book your classes easily, whenever you want, then yes, we recommend you check out LTL Mandarin.

Their Flexiclasses are certainly flexible to use. You just need to figure out what to choose from because you are given many choices. Once you’re logged in and have credits, you could be just hours away from doing a class! That’s fast.

A possible drawback to that flexibility is that if you pick and choose your classes as you wish, you probably don’t get a sense of continuity. You change teachers, so they don’t know you from one class to the next, and you learn new material in each live lesson. I get the feeling LTL wants you to follow their order; it just doesn’t make you. Just something to keep in mind.

Use Ninchanese and FlexiClasses together

We think FlexiClasses and Ninchanese can work great together to learn Mandarin Chinese.

To successfully learn Chinese, you need a lot of input, which Ninchanese provides you with, and you need output, i.e., occasions to use what you’re learning! Live classes with LTL Mandarin can fit that bill.

Progress on Ninchanese and LTL at the same time

Both Ninchanese and LTL cover all major HSK points. Ninchanese offers courses from HSK 1 to HSK 6, and so does LTL. So, you can practice sentence-building about a specific grammar pattern on Ninchanese. Then, you can do a live class on that pattern (or vice-versa). That’s a meowsome way to get the best of both systems.

Purrfect to hone your Grammar and Speaking skills

Use the live speaking practice to complement the HSK-based courses on Ninchanese.
I suggest you take your time getting familiar with a topic and vocabulary on Ninchanese, and then reinforce your learning, with a live class with LTL Mandarin.

Nincha x LTL Flexi Discount: Get 20% OFF

Guess what? Because we love you, we reached out to LTL and got you this special offer for their Flexi classes:
Enter NINCHANESE when you sign up on LTL and get 20% off any of their Flexi Programs. Purrfect to see what you think of the Flexi Class experience yourself! 

Have fun learning Chinese, little dragons!

Sarah, from the Nincha Team

Sarah Aberman is one of Ninchanese’s co-founders. She loves learning languages, mainly Chinese, writing, and traveling. She’s passionate about furthering her understanding of Chinese culture. She’s also fascinated by Japanese and Korean and enjoys discovering and exploring those cultures. When she’s not writing up Chinese grammar lessons or blog posts for the Nincha blog, Sarah can be found holed up at home with a good book or a Cdrama/Kdrama/Anime.

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The post LTL Mandarin’s Live Flexi Classes: A review appeared first on Ninchanese.

The benefits of learning Chinese are multiple!

More and more students are taking classes to learn Mandarin Chinese, one of the most practiced languages in the world! As you know, China is on the rise, so it’s an understandable trend. Not only because of its booming economy but also because the Chinese language has particularities that make it interesting to learn. Learning a language benefits everyone, you, the individual, the family if you have Chinese relatives and communities in a larger sense.

Now, let’s discover why you should start Mandarin Chinese lessons already!

The multiple and unexpected benefits of Learning Chinese:

Significant advantages for the brain

As you start to learn a new language, especially Chinese, it will benefit your brain in many ways. According to a survey by the Journal of Neuroscience in 2015, bilinguals have better cognitive flexibility. It’s easier for them to do a task than others who speak only their native language.

Specifically, the mandarin Chinese language is a miracle tool to make the brain do its work. The Chinese language helps to activate a specific zone in your brain that other languages do not. That is because characters are graphical in nature, so we need to use that zone in our brain more to recognize them. Need another medical reason? Scientists have discovered that Chinese speakers tend to be less affected by Alzheimer’s or are affected by it later in their life than those who don’t speak Chinese. You know, Chinese is composed of thousands of characters to learn. Practice those, and your memory won’t have a rest! You’ll train your muscle memory more than with other languages. 

Because Chinese characters develop imagination

As you learn to write Chinese, you’ll discover the beauty that hides in the traditional art of calligraphy. You’ll develop your art skills by drawing characters, and so you’ll end up both developing your creative mind and your mental faculty. The fine art of calligraphy helps to build your subtle artistic movement in a good sense! As you discover new characters, you’ll find many ancient cultural meanings hidden in them. It’s almost as appreciating prose poems. also, when you understand the Chinese components, it’s easy to make a story to understand how characters fuze to make new characters and meaning, up to you to make a little story about it.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

Discover a completely new language

The Chinese characters

Interestingly, when learning Chinese, you’re learning a diametrical opposite language compared to our familiar Germanic/Latin language. Contrary to French, Spanish, or Italian, where we can guess the meaning of an unknown word, it is almost impossible to guess a character’s definition at a glance.

You must study Mandarin Chinese characters and review them one by one, Ninchanese SRS is made especially to learn better the Chinese characters. Chinese characters are numerous, and even one character can have multiple meanings: these are called polyphonic characters. But no worry, there’s a way to learn them faster by knowing Chinese character components. You’ll find an excellent course on Ninchanese about radicals and components, that we recommend doing when you are learning Chinese. 

A tonal language

Contrary to English, Mandarin Chinese use tones in pronunciation. Tones are pretty powerful stuff that changes the meaning of a word. So you’ll have to know a Chinese word’s form in characters and also their tones. It’s an entirely different way to speak than what we are used to in English. Yes, it’s sometimes frustrating, but it’s also sometimes amusing!

So, take great care of how you pronounce your characters. Depending on your intonation, the meaning will change! Thankfully, pinyin facilitates the learning process and helps you know which pronunciation to use. Also, the ninchanese app has a speech recognition system that understands your tone and analyzes them for you.

Speak Chinese to Visit China

Who doesn’t want to walk on the great wall of China?

China is the 4th most visited country in the world. So, naturally, China has an essential role in tourism, and many people, from all over the world, come to see its beautiful ancient constructions like the Great Wall and temples. More modern constructions also attract a lot, like, high buildings. If you’re going to visit China, then you should absolutely download our Chinese phrasebook app made for Chinese, it will be really handy.

How about immersing yourself in Chinese society to learn their language?

Whether it is for a holiday, staying with a Chinese family, or only for studying Chinese, being in the country is a great way to learn Chinese. Chinese society’s manners matter and they are handy to know when dealing with Chinese people.

It’s not convenient to use a dictionary or a translating app when you’re speaking directly with someone, so speaking the Chinese language will allow you to make direct communication with natives. That way, you’ll make real connections with the people.

There are multiple benefits to understanding Chinese when you are in China. First, you’ll recognize the signs on the road since they are all in Chinese. And so, you’ll be able to visit Chinese cities without the need to ask and bother people to find your road. Then you’ll have access to hidden experiences that other tourists can’t have. A good thing to know is Chinese likes to bargain, and as you buy souvenirs, speaking Chinese will give you a real advantage by getting you the best price possible! 

China’s billion-strong population will likely shape the coming days of the world, and it is indeed a good move to learn to speak Chinese. It’s becoming more and more important to understand the Chinese people and their society.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

Knowing Chinese to work in China

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely-spoken spoken language globally and one of the largest marketplaces in one nation with 1.28 billion people. So, knowing Mandarin Chinese opens a learner to many career opportunities. The Chinese language is a bridge between an emerging China and the rest of the world.

More people speak Mandarin Chinese than they speak English! One out of seven people speaks Chinese on earth. Chinese speakers are everywhere nowadays, like China, Taiwan, Singapore, and other Asiatic countries. But Chinese speakers are also present in North America, Europe, and, more recently, Africa.

As you can see from the facts above, it’s no wonder that speaking and learning mandarin Chinese are necessary skills today. By learning Mandarin Chinese, you will be able to communicate with more and more people.

Learn Chinese & Discover an Ancient Culture

China is one of the universe’s oldest and richest continuous cultures, over 5000 months old.

Being skillful in mandarin Chinese allows you to know their society better. Old or recent, you’ll discover many other exciting tales, very different from what you’ve previously learned. You’ll also see films in Mandarin Chinese and play a mandarin Chinese video game. China is opening up and creating a lot of cultural content. Knowing how to speak Chinese is the best way to make sure you’re there to enjoy it.

PS: And on the side, learning Chinese characters will help understand their neighbors, the Japanese. As the Japanese language uses many Chinese characters, even if there are differences, it’s close enough to get some insight.

So all in all, China has a richer culture and a rich language that will benefit you in multiple ways. Have fun learning Chinese with Nincha!

The post Why learn Mandarin Chinese, the language of Confucius? appeared first on Ninchanese.

• Do I need to learn to write Chinese characters?
• When is the best time to begin with them?
• Where do you start?
• How do you write Chinese characters? Are there any rules?

With this article, I want to share a bit of my experience in writing characters and maybe a helpful additional way of learning Chinese. To be clear, I’m not talking about the art of Chinese Calligraphy but just casual hand-writing. Handwritten Chinese with a pen a piece of paper.

Do I need to learn to write Chinese characters?

Learning a language, in general, is split into 4 parts. Each with different importance:  Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. I think everyone would agree that Listening and Speaking are the most important. After that comes reading, and at the end is writing as the least important part. Also, if the language is similar to your mother-tongue, then writing and reading becomes just a byproduct, because you already can read and write the words, even if you don’t know the meaning.  

The question if you need to learn to write Chinese characters is the most common one, and honestly, it’s not necessary to learn handwritten Chinese. But learning how to write Chinese characters can help and provide another supporting method to learn them if you are into writing. 

Before jumping into the subject, let’s take a look at the reasons why you may not need to learn to write Chinese characters. 

 When is the best time to start learning to write Chinese characters? 

Since I started learning Chinese, I also started writing Chinese characters every day as an additional way to learn words, after the switch from pinyin only to Chinese characters. For me, all of the above points go very well together. Learning to write Chinese character reinforce my understanding of characters.

So, I would say this is also the best time to start writing Chinese characters: right from the beginning. Everyone has to go through the elementary pronunciation- and pinyin-only classes before entering the tough world of Chinese characters, so the best way is when everything goes hand-in-hand. But it’s also not too late to start with it if you are already on a higher level. You just need some patience, persistence, and a good learning strategy. 

But since everyone learns differently, has their methods and is not necessarily that interested in the world of Chinese characters, this totally depends on your preferences.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

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How do I start learning writing Chinese characters?

The material

When I started with hand-writing Chinese, I tried different methods to find what worked best for me.  

So, first things first: Basically, what you need is just a pen, something to write on, some words you want to practice and a dictionary/app which can show you the stroke-orders and directions. 

The plan

Sounds simple and easy but there are some factors you have to ask yourself: 

• How often do you want to practice (daily, every 2 days, weekly, bi-weekly?) 
• When you practice, how much time do you want to spend? 
• How many characters do you want to write, and how to choose what to write? 
• Why do you want to practice these characters? 
• When do you know that you practiced enough and need to drill new characters? 

And as mentioned above, it’s not about Calligraphy, but casual handwriting. So, don’t spend too much time and money in searching for the best pen and paper. In my opinion, that doesn’t matter that much; you just need to feel comfortable when writing. The only thing which has at least a small impact is the paper.  

My own routine

For me, the paper affects a lot of those questions above. You’ll get that later, first I’ll show you my personal answers on the questions:  

• I want to write characters daily as part of my learning-routine (this needs persistence), but I also don’t want to spend too much time (<20 min daily).   
• I’m learning with different materials: Chinese classes, books, Apps (mostly Ninchanese), etc. I usually pick the words I write from those materials. E.g., I’m learning a new unit in a book or started to learn some new words on Ninchanese; then, I’ll also use these words to practice writing Chinese characters. This way, everything is learned together and can be connected.  

The role of the paper 

To answer the other questions, at this point, the paper comes in:   

I’m using those small vocabulary-notebooks, which are exactly what I need: 

Both of them are pretty much the same. It’s just different manufacturers, and the 田格本 had one row less than the 田字簿。 

So, based on these notebooks, I decided to write one page every day, which answers the questions of how much time to spent and how many characters to write:

• One page is one day 
• One line is one word (can be 1 to 4 characters), which currently is 12 words/phrases 
• On the left side, I write the pinyin, so I know what to write. To keep track of how long I have to practice a word until I know it, I write a point on the right side, and if I had this word right for at least 3 days, I’ll exchange it with a new character. 

Does stroke order matter in chinese? The list of Strokenames of Chinese character

All types of strokes have names by themselves, but you don’t have to remember all of those. Even in casual Chinese language, these are rarely known. There are some which are also very rarely used, only in a few characters.

I picked this sheet up in the past for a class once and translated the names, so you can imagine where their names come from: 

Writing Right-/Lefthanded: 

You may have heard that the majority of Chinese people are right-handed. It’s a tradition to train left-handed people to use their right hand. So, why do I mention it? I am lefthanded, which leads to a minor problem when writing these characters.  

When you look at the stroke orders and directions, these are defined rules and these essential when you write with an ink-pen or brush, because you have to press down and lift the pen at the end, so it leaves a specific line-thickness at the end or beginning.   

When casually writing Chinese characters, a right-handed person would drag the pen in the direction he writes and leaves the words, but a left-handed person has to push the pen and would always smear his left-hand over the just written words. So, using a lot of ink will always result in a big mess, but it also feels very uncomfortable when you have to push a pen to create horizontal strokes (try to push a pen over paper, you’ll see). And here again, I have to mention it’s just about casual handwriting, so to feel comfortable writing Chinese characters, I write horizontal lines from right to left instead of the other direction.  

A short personal story about that: One time in school, I had to write characters on the whiteboard in front of the teacher, and it was the first time I had to do that. So, I just wrote like I was comfortable with dragging horizontal lines from right to left. In the end, my teacher smiled and said that the written characters are 100% correct, but the way I wrote was not that accurate, and I explained that I knew but did so because I use my left hand, and it feels more comfortable that way. This was hard to understand for him, and it still is for a lot of (righthanded) people when I explain it. 

Final words 

Since that episode with the teacher, I’m still doing my writing-practice how I feel comfortable, but I also know the proper way, and whenever I have to write in front of a teacher, I’ll write how it is intended, even if it’s not comfortable for me. 

So, saying that, I hope this article provides some useful tips and answers to some questions which prevented you from writing Chinese characters. It doesn’t take much, so why not just give it a try? Who knows, you may get the hang of it and it becomes a routine in your daily life.

 Stefan and 

The Nincha Team

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The post Writing Chinese characters: The purpose appeared first on Ninchanese.

One of the first things you learn about the Chinese language is that it’s a very melodic language. That’s because the Chinese language is a tonal language. A tone is a way to pronounce a syllable with intonation. Yeah, I know. It’s much easier to write it than to say it.

Tone trick: first, let’s go through a real quick reminder of what tones are.

There are four tones in Chinese, and we often say there is also a 5th tone, which is silent. Each tone should be used every time it’s needed to be understood. Even Chinese speakers on TV have courses about pronouncing the tones right. Just for you to see how important it is.

But don’t worry, it’s ok to make mistakes sometimes. Even the Chinese make tone mistakes from time to time. Doesn’t that put the pressure off a little? Having most of your tones right and a few off will be excused and you’ll still be understood if you’re speaking with someone that understands the context. Context over tones, but tones still matter.

Let’s see all 4 tones, because that’s the key to this tone trick. Understanding the tones and how they work.

• The first tone is a flat tone. You just stay on the same tune a little bit longer.
• The second tone is a rising tone. You just tune up the syllable.
• The third tone is a waving tone. Really funny to do, you go down and up when you’re saying that tone on its own, and a little down and mostly up, when it’s in a sentence. (note: the third note behaves differently when combined with other tones, but let’s explore that later on)
• The fourth tone is a drop tone. Like his name tells you, your tune goes down.

Are you starting to understand where I’m taking you with that? The secret about tones is that we already use these 4 tones in our language! When? When we want to put an emphasis on a word.

Isn’t that a meowsome tone trick to realize? Tones in Chinese aren’t so foreign after all.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

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Wait, I’ll show you with examples:

• The first tone, a flat tone is actually the same intonation you use when you agree with something. Or when you say ahhhh, when you’re realized something and so you keep the same intonation for a little while.
• Second tone, rising tone. I’m sure you can imagine already: it’s like asking the question what?
• Third tone, waving tone. Easy, you know when you want the other to continue speaking and you’re like humhum? The same.
• Fourth tone, the drop. It’s like when you’re on the verge of winning a Ninchallenge, one more card to go… and your opponent just got a 6 points card correct. And you’re like. No! Oh No! Sharp no. 🙂

  Here’s the tone trick with our cute Nincha and Lupishu as stars.

Okay, now, you’re all set to start speaking Chinese with the right tones. Just imitate how you speak in a certain situation to get you started. It’s a lot less daunting that way!

It’s a good way to start. Granted, it won’t feel natural until after a few tries but your tones will be alright!
Okay, now that you know this meowsome tone trick, you’re all set. Now, you can train your tones on the Ninchanese app. Start a new speaking stage, you’ll have to say words and sentence with the right tones! It’s a great tool to train yourself to use the right tones and pronounce Chinese perfectly.

Did this secret method help you? What’s your favorite way to practice saying tones? Let us know in the comments!

The Nincha Team

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The post The super hidden (and insanely useful) tone trick no one tells you about appeared first on Ninchanese.

With Western languages, even though you don’t know what a “flitterWochen” is (it’s an English word), you can easily read it out loud. Unlike English or Spanish, or any roman alphabet based language, in Chinese, however, it’s not that easy to read characters aloud you don’t know. The Chinese language is not a phonetic language, and with over 80,000 characters in the Chinese language, it’s quite normal to run into a character you’ve never seen before and to be at a loss as to how to pronounce it. So, how do the Chinese know how to read characters they’ve never seen before?

The secret trick

At first glance, the many strokes that compose a Chinese character don’t look like they give out many hints as to how they are to be pronounced. In fact, for a long time, you were expected to connect the strokes of characters to the sounds they refer to by sheer rote memorization. But, this is no longer the case. The Chinese know something you don’t and we’re going to let you in on their big secret: Chinese characters do represent sound, thanks to phonetic components. Phonetic components are indications the character contains on its pronunciation. 

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

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How to deal with an unknown character

When you run into an unknown character, the first thing you want to do is analyze it and break it down to see what it’s made of.

That way, rather than seeing and trying to remember a jumble of strokes, when you break down a character, you easily spot the different meaningful elements that make it up.

You can break down the characters yourself, or look at a Chinese dictionary, like Ninchanese’s.  The dictionary will show you how the character can be decomposed, and allow you to look up the different elements in the character.

What can you expect to see?

Most of the time (over 80% of the time), the character you’ll be looking at will be a picto-phonetic character.

This is the most common way of forming characters. In fact, more than 80% of all Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters. That’s great news for us Chinese learners, and you’re soon going to understand why.

Picto-phonetic characters are made of two pieces, called components. These two components are usually a meaning (also known as semantic) component and a phonetic component. One piece gives you a clue to the word’s meaning, another to the word’s pronunciation. Isn’t that great? Meaning components and phonetic components really are the building blocks of the Chinese written language.

As today we’re exploring how to read out loud a character you’ve never seen before, our focus is on phonetic components. Let’s see what a phonetic component is precisely and how you can easily use it to know how a character sounds!

What are phonetic components?

Phonetic components are elements in a Chinese character that give you clues on a character’s pronunciation. They can be used to deduce the intonation of an unknown Chinese character. Curious to know how?

Let’s take the character 妈 mā mother. If you break it down, you’ll see it’s made of two parts:
女 which is a meaning component, symbolizing femininity, and 马, which is pronounced mǎ (and when used as a standalone character, means horse). As you can see, 妈’s sound matches the component 马’s pronunciation, aside from the tone. Here, 马 is a phonetic component.

Now that you know 马 is a phonetic component, can you pronounce: 吗, 骂, and 码?

That’s right, they’re all pronounced “ma”. Well done! You can expect Chinese characters that contain this phonetic component to sound the same.

In most of the cases, when you identify a phonetic component in a character, the character will be pronounced either exactly like the component or have a sound pretty close to it.

How to spot a phonetic component in a Chinese character

So you have your Chinese character in front of you. You may be wondering: is there an easy way to spot which part of the character is the phonetic component

The Chinese like to say:

有边念边，没边念中间吗，没有中间，自己编.

However, this method doesn’t always work. The phonetic component can indeed often be found on the right side of a character.
But, it’s also common for the phonetic component to be below the meaning component.

In other character structures, you’ll find the phonetic information inside another element; and, even more rarely, in other combinations.

When in doubt, go to your favorite online Chinese dictionary, and look up the character. Its character decomposition will help you research which element is the phonetic component, and what the other element(s) that compose the character are.

How do you master phonetic complements?

Phonetic components have traditionally less been studied than meaning components, which is a shame, as they are tremendously useful to knowing how to read and write a Chinese character. Before teachers used to expect the students to learn how to pronounce all the characters by rote, at least, now, we know we can rely on phonetic components to read an unknown character’s pronunciation.

One thing we don’t know for sure,however, is how many phonetic components there are.

Early research on the subject, by Soothill in the 1880s for instance, listed up to 1000 phonetic components. Other researchers have suggested other numbers, ranging from less to more. It may seem like a lot, but, we have lots of good news.

First, you can start by learning the most common phonetic complements first.

Excited by the idea of mastering the essential phonetic components? Then join us every Monday in our community.

Your Monday meeting with a component

Meet the phonetic component 包! Learn how to use it, by clicking here >> https://t.co/IJ5B4a3eZ6 #chinese #learn pic.twitter.com/M7sfpI6EF9

— Ninchanese (@Ninchanese) June 27, 2016

Every Monday, on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, get to know the key phonetic components and meaning components! You are introduced to a new component each week. You learn to use it all week in all sorts of fun activities, from silly dialogues to cool word building. Each component has a whole page dedicated to it, so you can also study in detail about it.

Head to this page to see all the Chinese character components you need to know. More are added each week! Don’t miss this weekly rendezvous.

Second, phonetic components are, more often than not, also standalone characters

This means: you’ll learn them as words, and then happily be able to spot them in words.

In addition, and that’s the second piece of good news: phonetic components tend to retain the same shape in the character they’re in. They don’t change shapes like a meaning component might do, which makes it even easier to spot them right?

Two key takeaways from this:

When you run into a new character, look for familiar elements. See if it looks anything alike the characters you already know and if it has anything in common with them. When you go to a place you’ve never been before, you look for something familiar, whether it’s a friend or an object, right?! By making an association between the characters you’ve learned before and the familiar features of the unknown character, you’ll possibly find clues on its pronunciation. For example, if you know the word 马 mǎ horse, there’s a big chance you’ll be able to pronounce words such as 吗 ma question particle or 妈 mā mother.

At Ninchanese, we know that phonetic components matter, so we help you help you learn all the components at your own pace. As you learn new words, you’ll learn and master new components so you can identify them better in unknown words. In addition to the learning stages, we also have many tricks to help you catch them all -yup, still talking about the phonetic components.

See, phonetic components come in particularly handy when you play a Ninchallenge.

Ninchallenge your knowledge!

In Ninchanese, you can engage your friends in fun battles called the Ninchallenges. Ninchallenges are the opportunity to review the Chinese words and characters you’ve learned before and learn new words while playing with your friends. They test your knowledge of Chinese. In the Ninchallenges, you mostly pick words you know but sometimes you pick unknown characters and words.

What happens, then? It’s up to you to guess their pronunciation! What are you going to need? That’s right: a phonetic component. If you know the phonetic component that is in the character you need to guess, you’ll be able to easily read them out loud and write down their pinyin.

For example, it’s your turn to play and you’re supposed to guess how to read the character 踉. You’ve never seen this character before, but that doesn’t mean all is lost. You now have your secret weapon: phonetic components!

Do you recognize a component you know in this in this character 踉? Yes, in the right-hand corner, there’s the phonetic component 良 liáng good, well-spotted! So how about taking a gamble and saying this character 踉 sounds about the same? Well done! You’re right, 踉 liáng jump sounds precisely the same, plus it’s an exact match!

Phonetic components are powerful in a Ninchallenge… and in real life

This happens in a Ninchallenge, but it will also happen to you in real life. You’ll run into all sorts of unknown character you’ll need to decipher and guess how they’re pronounced.

As you see, learning the components is essential if you want to expand your understanding of the Chinese language, and your resourcefulness when facing unknown characters.

There’s also many resources you can use to improve your knowledge of phonetic complements. For example, if you want to see all the perfect matches of the phonetic sets, Hanzicraft has an amazing database to explore.

Now you’ve got all the resources to master the phonetic components, you’re ready to pronounce an unknown Chinese character thanks to the phonetic sets. How can you use them to guess how to pronounce a character in Chinese?

What phonetic components will tell you about how to write and read Chinese characters

Great, so now you know where to look for a phonetic component in a Chinese character. Let’s move on to the indications these phonetic complements can give you on a character’s intonation.

As said before, Ninchallenges mirror the experience you’ll get in real life in a Chinese speaking country. Restaurant menus are the best example, but street signs and newspapers are also good ones to train yourself to read out loud unknown Chinese character. You’ll be often faced with unfamiliar and unknown words, but still, you have to deal with them if you want to win. So how do you overcome that obstacle? You look for clues.

Here’s an example that can happen to you in real life.

You meet the Chinese character 晴 when reading the weather forecast. The context may help understand the word, but how do you pronounce it? When you break down the character 晴 you get:

Here, 日 brings the meaning and 青, on the right side, is a phonetic component, which brings the sound. Then, you know the character 晴 will sound like “qing”. Indeed, 晴 is pronounced qíng and means clear (sky).

Phonetics can be essential on a daily basis. For example, if you want to order food but don’t know a character on the menu, you can try to pronounce it using your phonetic component knowledge and get an explanation from the waiter. Plus, you can practice your Chinese by speaking to the waiter. It makes you speak Chinese and practice your understanding skills. Neat!

The examples we’ve shown so far are perfect or near perfect matches for the phonetic component, but is that always the case?

Do characters always sound like the phonetic component they contain?

Yes and no. There are also several kinds of matches.

Perfect matches

If a character has the same sound, pinyin, and tone as the phonetic component it contains, it’s called an exact match. The character 洋 yáng ocean, for example, is an exact match with the phonetic component 羊 yáng sheep.

Near-perfect matches

Then you can find second-degree matches. These are characters that share the same sound as the phonetic component it is made of but not the same tone.

The character 样 yàng manner is a second-degree match with the phonetic component 羊 yáng sheep as they don’t have the original tone but share the same sound.

A little more distant matches

You can also find characters that share the same phonetic component and that have different, but very close sounds. Here, the phonetic component 可 kě to permit can be found in characters that sound like “ke”, “ge” or “he”. These three pronunciations share the finals “e”. A phonetic component can have two or more possible pronunciations that share the same initials, finals or tones.

Exceptions

As you can see, phonetic components aren’t an accurate science and there are some exceptions. The Chinese language has evolved a lot over the years, and therefore, sometimes, you have to look at character etymology, the traditional forms of characters or older sounds to understand why the character is pronounced the way it is.

Despite that, knowing phonetic components is a big piece of the Chinese puzzle, and your key to being able to be able to guesstimate the pronunciation of 80% of all characters. If that’s not meowsome then I don’t know what is.

So, learn to master the different phonetic components and you’ll be able to read any character.

Final words:

If you’ve always wondered how the Chinese managed to pronounce characters they’d never seen before, now you know they owe it to the phonetic compounds. Learning them is important to find unknown words’ pronunciation and also to understand the Chinese logic and memorize the characters better.

Here’s a quick summary of what you need to remember about the phonetic components that:

• Once you master a phonetic component, you master the pronunciation of the several characters that contains it.
• Most Chinese characters are either exact and second-degree matches for the phonetic component they contain.
• A same phonetic component can lead to various pronunciations that share the same initials, finals or tones
• In short: Dare to make guesses. If you don’t find the same intonation, you’ll end up close. And that’s a great start.
• Practice guessing the sounds of unknown Chinese characters and honing your deciphering skills in the Ninchallenges.

Don’t forget our one week one component to keep learning new components! You also continue your reading about Chinese characters and check out the following post about how many characters you need to know.

By the way, for your personal acknowledge, a “flitterwochen” is an old English expression to say “honeymoon”. Good to know when playing Scrabble!

Have you experienced an obstacle when meeting an unknown character? What’s your experience deciphering unknown characters? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Phonetic Components: The Secret Trick to Guessing the Pronunciation of Chinese Characters appeared first on Ninchanese.

Can you believe it’s already time for summer? How time flies! You’ll be soon on your long awaited holiday and doing all sorts of summer fun activities! Will you keep learning Chinese? Naw, no time for that, you think. Here’s a thought: what’s worse than having spent time learning so many Chinese characters to then forget them in less than 2 months? Nothing, right? You may be dreaming of sunshine, and being outside, rather than on your computer, using Ninchanese, but worry not! Ninchanese works great on your mobile devices. Summer is full of opportunities to speak and practice your Chinese, especially with this list of 10 fun things you can do right away to improve your Mandarin! So read on, and get ready to have lots of fun leveling up your Chinese this summer!

The first tip needs sand to be done! Let’s go to the beach, then! Well, only mentally for now…

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

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Write Chinese characters on the beach

You’ll probably spend your holidays on the beach. What are your plans? Swimming, tanning, building sand castles? No, forget sand castles, they are so overrated. Instead, how about drawing the Chinese characters you know in the sand? Take a picture of your beautiful creations and go Instagram them with the hashtag #myninchanesesummer! We’ll pick the best pictures of characters, and you’ll get a surprise!
The beach is the perfect place to practice your Chinese writing, now you know that. It can also be a very useful place to make new friends. Come on, have you ever played beach volley?

Make Chinese-speaking friends

Chinese learning requires practicing and daring to speak Mandarin from the beginning is a great way to set your Chinese pronunciation skills on the right track. Your holiday destination a perfect occasion to do so. Depending on where you’re going, odds are there’ll be Chinese tourists there too. Don’t miss your chance! This is a perfect time to meet new people and make Chinese-speaking friends! All you have to do is go and talk to them! I know it can be scary at first, but to practice and improve your Chinese, you need to leave your comfort zone.

The first time I went to China, I was alone and felt very nervous on the plane. Traveling alone is not an easy thing to do, especially when you’re young. It’s very scary. I knew, then, I had to make friends so they could comfort me. In the plane, my neighbors were an old Chinese couple. They looked very nice. They were the perfect target! I needed to talk to them! It all started with a 你好 and then she asked me questions in Chinese about my travel. It made me feel better. I was also very happy she could understand me. I really improved both my understanding and listening skills.

So don’t be shy, and make your holiday mission to connect with Chinese people. At least, dare to say “你好”! You’ll see they’ll be glad to hear someone speaking their mother tongue and most likely open to chatting with you. Plus, your family and friends will be very impressed to see you speaking Chinese with natives.

Another tip that will impress your friends for sure and prevent you from forgetting your Chinese over the summer, playing the DJ.

Create a Chinese playlist

Be a trendsetter, play the hottest 2016 Chinese pop songs on the beach! All your friends will be impressed by your DJ skills. Playing music in Chinese will also help you improve your listening skills. I just have the best 2016 Chinese playlist you need, that should help you.
Summer holidays are also the equivalent of Chinese learning loss, therefore, listening to someone speaking Mandarin will help you not become a total stranger towards Chinese.

If you want to stay discreet on the beach and keep your hottest songs for yourself, that’s totally fair. Listening to your fave Chinese songs on repeat is great to tune your ears to sounds in Chinese. At first, the lyrics might seem incomprehensible, but you’ll be happy to see after a few listens that you now understand each lyric a lot better! Read the lyrics to the songs online and look up all the words you don’t know in our Chinese dictionary. It’ll be a fun exploration!

Summer is the perfect occasion for outdoor activities during sunny days. But, the weather can surprise us, so here’s a list of indoor activities to keep you having fun practicing your Chinese on summer rainy days.

Sing in the rain!

OK, don’t sing literally in the rain, you might get sick from that. Sing in your shower. Come on, everyone does it. Learn to sing one of those Chinese songs you’ve listened to so much outside each day and perform while showering. This is your moment, so enjoy it! Learning Chinese can be fun and done everywhere, even in your bathroom! That way, you get a perfect combo of both having trained your listening skills with Chinese songs, and having o practiced your speaking skills! Tons of songs will use the vocabulary learned on Ninchanese, it’s a good way to review these words.

If you’d rather be entertained that entertain your neighbors with your amazing voice (I’m sure it is), here’s a great way to practice Chinese while playing!

The secret tip for gamers!

Not everyone has planned to go on vacation. Or maybe you’d like to stay home having fun and resting today. Be delighted dear gamers, I’ve got the perfect tip for you to keep practicing and learning Chinese without even knowing it –well kind of. Put your video games in Chinese! You can also play online with Chinese speakers, and use the chats to practice with them. We hear it’s particularly effective to learn swear words. to practice! Isn’t it amazing? In Ninchanese, we know that a fun learning is more efficient!

If you’re not a big fan of videos games, don’t worry, I have some other amazing tips for you! There are plenty of other fun activities you can do indoors to practice your Chinese this summer, like using your TV for example!

Watch movies. But in Chinese, please!

If you love watching movies, you’ve come to the right place. But this time, for a pleasant change, watch them in Chinese! Watching movies and shows in Chinese will help you improve your listening and comprehension skills! Here are the 10 best Chinese TV shows to watch. So, what do you say? Ready for a binge-watching kind of holiday?

Or maybe you don’t want to spend all your holidays in the dark, watching TV. If you want to be more active, here’s the solution: cook!

Cook Chinese dishes!

Channel your inner chef, and pick recipes that are in Chinese, or maybe in both Chinese and English. Challenge yourself, and cook awesome dishes to surprise your friends and family! There are so many easy recipes you can do. Plus, you’ll learn so many new words about food and cooking in Chinese along the way. Here’s a recipe to a cool and easy to make Chinese delicacy, that I like to cook myself, to get you started: the super-tasty 糯米糍 nuòmǐ cí (Sticky rice balls). You can also find cooking videos in Chinese on youtube that can help you to improve both your listening and cooking skills.

Just started The Best Chinese Food Board on @pinterest! Suggestions of good Chinese recipes? https://t.co/u7VHJHaI5W pic.twitter.com/IXEhtILzVn

— Ninchanese (@Ninchanese) 16 June 2016

Cooking in Mandarin is very useful for learning Chinese, you’ll see! And when you’re going to buy the ingredients, don’t forget to say “你好” to the sellers of the shop! Seize all the opportunities to speak Chinese with natives!

The next tip on your list is also one you can share with your family.

Teach Chinese to your family

If you’re lucky enough to have siblings that are willing to learn some Chinese, then go for it! Try teaching your family a few words and sharing with them your adventures learning Chinese. If someone else in your family is also learning Chinese, you can also play games in Chinese on the way to your holiday destination. You can play Chinese learning games about guessing characters or their meanings, or challenge them to a Ninchallenge, a duel over your knowledge of learning Chinese. You’ll have arrived before you know it!

This tip is also a good way to spend some family time bonding with your parents and siblings. You’ll remember these summer holidays forever, and your Chinese will be so much improved. Your friends can also be a good help when learning Chinese , especially on social networks when they notify you. Learn how to turn those pesky notifications into sneak Chinese learning sessions in our next tip. in the following method.

Learning Chinese with Facebook

Change the language input of your Facebook account and set it in Chinese is a great way to practice using a site completely in Chinese and learning the web and computer terms in Chinese. You’ll learn new words regarding social networks, but you’ll also review ones you’ve learned with Nincha. You’ll see, it’s an interesting experience turning a tool you’re so familiar with into something a little more challenging.
And whenever you post something on Facebook, like a picture of you during the holidays, you’ll be notified in Chinese of the likes, reactions and comments! Isn’t that super cool and super sneaky?

Whether it’s on the beach, in the countryside, in another country or at home, most of us will be spending our holidays with family and friends this summer. Don’t forget to give yourself some me-time too, it’s also a good way to enjoy holidays and rest before going back to work. So, how can you prevent summer Chinese learning loss if it’s just you and your cat?

Ninchanese your cat!

Talk to your cat in Chinese, it won’t judge you, I swear! Try to teach it a few words. For instance, order your cat to bring you a coffee but in Chinese! See? There are so many things you can do with it! Practice with your cat as if you were practicing with Nincha, except your cat won’t answer you, well, I guess so…
If your cat would rather hunt than listen to you speak, you can also try speaking to yourself or speaking in front of a mirror. If you do, watch your face, your match and your body language as you speak, and try to talk for 2, 3 minutes, just like you’d be talking to a friend. Or to your cat. If you don’t know how to say something, don’t stop to look it up. Just keep going, find a different way to express yourself or change your sentence. It’s great to see what areas in speaking you’re having trouble with and need to be worked on, and to identify words you don’t know but would like to look up.

And if you want to know if your Chinese pronunciation is good, use our voice-recognition feature to get instant feedback on your speaking skills.

Final words:

From outdoor to indoors, we hope this list of summer activities will keep your holiday fun-filled and full of Chinese! You may have noticed that all these activities have one thing in common: to have you practicing and learning Chinese as much as you can this summer. Take every opportunity to do a little Chinese, whether it’s on the beach with Chinese tourists, by drawing characters in the sand or at home by listening Chinese songs and reviewing word. And remember the key to making Chinese learning enjoyable is to find a fun way to do it! You also know you’ll have Ninchanese with you, on your mobile devices, so whenever you have a few minutes, keep improving your Chinese learning online with Ninchanese. We’ll be here all summer to guide you and take care of your Chinese language learning. You can also check Ninchanese secret tips to fully enjoy the platform!

Do you have any secret tips to keep learning Chinese during summer? Share them with us in the comments!

Pauline and

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

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The post Top 10 Fun Activities to Keep Learning Chinese This Summer appeared first on Ninchanese.

Let’s take a moment to see why we recommend adding a Chinese dictionary to your learning arsenal.

Of course,  Ninchanese is the best online Chinese dictionary, but others also have good qualities.

Why do you need a Chinese dictionary in your learning arsenal?

Imagine you’re reading a newspaper or a blog post online, and right there, in the middle of a sentence, there’s an unknown Chinese character. What are you going to do? Just leave it alone? Sometimes, unfamiliar words don’t keep you from understanding the whole sentence, but in many cases, especially in Chinese, those unknown words will be an obstacle to your understanding. So there’s only one solution: look up this evil word in a Chinese dictionary.

Chinese dictionaries are also a good help when looking up unknown words you come across when traveling. Maybe it’ll be an unfamiliar word on a street sign, in a shop, or perhaps you want to understand the menu in a restaurant.

In all those situations, you’ll be glad you have a dictionary to decipher the words that escape you, whether it’s a paper, online or offline Chinese dictionary.

Don’t you agree that it’s essential to include a dictionary in your Chinese learning arsenal?

When traveling in China or learning Chinese to understand the unknown words you run into, you’ll need one. But, of course, you can’t rely only on dictionaries to learn Chinese.  Ninchanese is here to help you learn new vocabulary in Chinese, master grammar rules, and hone your Chinese speaking and listening skills. So keep your favorite dictionary for those times you’re reading Chinese texts on the Internet, and use it wisely as a help!

Online Chinese dictionaries trump Chinese paper dictionaries

Now, maybe you’re wondering: which are the best, Chinese paper dictionaries or online Chinese dictionaries? We’ll be blunt: paper dictionaries are good, of course, but we’re 100% pro-online Chinese dictionaries. Let us tell you why.

Chinese dictionaries have evolved a lot since the invention of the first Chinese paper dictionaries. Technology has made Chinese dictionaries tremendously more accessible and has helped provide everyone with dictionaries for free.

Technology has made Chinese dictionaries tremendously more accessible and has helped a lot to provide everyone with dictionaries for free.

— Ninchanese (@Ninchanese) 26 May 2016

For those born with a computer/ phone/ tablet/ phablet in their hands, believe us, you can be grateful you don’t have to experience what it was like to look up a word or a Chinese character in a Chinese paper dictionary. Looking up a Chinese character or word the traditional way in a paper dictionary was a long process. Here’s how it works:

How to look up a Chinese character or word the traditional way

Half of the time, by the time you were done looking for the character you wanted to look up in the radical list, you’d pretty much forgotten what character you wanted to look up and why. But, of course, technology has changed that completely.

How to look up a Chinese character in a modern way

With the advent of technology, looking up a Chinese character or word has never been easier.

How? If you know the pinyin or the meaning of a word you’re looking up, you can easily find it and relieve your thirst for knowledge. And what if you don’t know anything about a character you’ve seen in a newspaper, for instance? How can you find its meaning or pinyin? Not to worry, that’s simple too: just draw it!  When you need to decipher an unknown Chinese character, you can draw it.

Some online dictionaries even offer a tool to draw the character directly with your mouse or touchpad. There’s no need to be an artist to find the character you want, and most handwriting tools aren’t too sensitive.

Some online dictionaries even offer a tool to draw the character directly with your mouse or touchpad. There’s no need to be an artist.

— Ninchanese (@Ninchanese) 26 May 2016

And if there’s no handwriting tool offered, there’s still an easy way to draw your character, thanks to your computer’s IME (Input Method Editor) or using your phone’s specific Chinese handwriting keyboard or IME.

See? Much simpler.

Many features beyond the simple translation system have also been added to English-Chinese and Chinese-English digital dictionaries to help learners improve their Chinese. For instance, in most digital dictionaries, you can also hear the word’s pronunciation, which is incredible!  Being able to listen to someone pronouncing the word correctly is excellent. Then you can repeat what you hear to get the right accent and tone instead of making up a pronunciation in your head.

Also, as you’ll see in our reviews below, in some of these online translators and dictionaries, you can find examples containing the word you’re looking for. Magic and terribly useful, right?!

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

Technology has helped all Chinese speakers save many hours we can spend watching brilliant cat videos instead. And because we love cats, we want you to save even more time by helping you figure out which are the best Chinese dictionaries to use.

Our review of the best free Chinese dictionaries available for Chinese learners

We’ve selected our favorite free Chinese dictionaries to help you improve in Mandarin, from online dictionaries to applications. We tested three categories of Chinese dictionaries: online Chinese dictionaries, pop-up dictionaries, and offline mobile dictionary applications. We know you’ll find one or several Chinese dictionaries for you in this selection, depending on your needs.

Fair warning: We’ve left the most complex task: picking the one that fits you best! Ready? Let’s explore these Chinese dictionaries!

Free Online Chinese Dictionaries

Online dictionaries might be for you if you like to spend time online and need to look up words. However, instead of thumbing through your paper dictionary, you have to open a new tab in your browser and look up the Chinese character’s meaning or pronunciation in pinyin!

Ninchanese Dictionary

Ninchanese dictionary has been made with Chinese learners in mind. The design is very clean and neat. It has everything you need to understand a Chinese character’s meaning and how to use it.

Pros:

• Very accurate words meanings
• The simplified and traditional form of Chinese characters
• Chinese character strokes
• Sentences examples
• Character decomposition with all key elements like Chinese components to understand the deep meaning of a character
• Compounds of character where you find other characters formed with the character
• Related words of the Chinese character to know when you’ll find the character in multiple characters

Cons:

Some words could have synonyms. But The Nincha Team update Chinese character every day. So don’t hesitate to contact us.

MDBG

MDBG is the first Chinese dictionary you come across when you google “Chinese dictionary.” MDBG focuses on being a good reference for Chinese learners by offering detailed information about characters such as pronunciation, meaning, strokes, examples, etc. They’ve become quickly popular among the Chinese learning community. Did you know MDBG is also maintaining CC-CEDICT? CC-CEDICT is an open-source database to which everyone can contribute to creating a complete Chinese to English dictionary with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters. CC-CEDICT is also used by many Chinese dictionaries such as Perapera, Zhongwen Chinese popup dictionary, Pleco, etc.

Pros:
Lots of data are provided about the characters, with:

• Stroke animations that show the characters stroke by stroke and character decomposition

• Handwriting input: you can draw characters with your mouse to look them up, and that’s pretty awesome! It’s handy when you encounter a character you neither know how to pronounce or what it means.

• Example sentences for a better understanding of how words are used in context.

• A clean interface helps you find the words you’re looking for easily.

• It has an advanced search function. You can search almost everything: single characters, words, pinyin, English, of course, and look up words by character components, Cangjie input method, and more. You can also ask for Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciation.

• A new feature is the “Lookup All Chinese Words in a Text” option, which shows the meaning of each Chinese word in a text you upload. The +: you can choose the mouse over the translation option to highlight definitions as you’re reading.

• HSK level: Next to each word, its corresponding HSK level is indicated. You can learn words that fit your HSK level, just like on Ninchanese!

Cons:

• Its basic interface. MDBG is not the most colorful and playful interface to use for sure. But, as they say, don’t judge a book by its cover, right?

• We’d love to have more extra features, but this is not the purpose of this online Chinese dictionary.

Many valuable and practical tools are brought to Chinese learners with this dictionary. MDBG is an excellent online dictionary to have by your side if you need a complete one with excellent tools.

Bab.la

Bab.la is a pretty good online dictionary and translator you can translate from English to Chinese and Chinese to English. As you may know, its translator offers many languages you can switch from to target your search. Moreover, this online dictionary provides the learners with all the main stuff you expect from a Chinese dictionary: translations, pronunciations, and synonyms, as well as special features, such as a phrasebook, quizzes, and more.

Pros:

• Lots of synonyms are provided whenever you look up words. That’s interesting to get to know the slight differences between the words.

• The straightforward interface makes you want to look up tons of words.

• The audio so you can hear the pronunciation of each word.

• Context sentences that show you how and when to use a particular word.

• A forum for linguistic doubts in case you need a grammar explanation. It can also be beneficial to share your Chinese learning journey with others, just like in the Ninchanese Discord community, and ask them their opinion about a topic.

• A phrasebook is divided into six sections, from travel to business. This phrasebook prepares you for every situation you’re going to face in China, depending on your profile.

• Quizzes. Playing small quizzes can be a good help when learning Chinese.

Cons:

• Lack of extra tools such as stroke order explanations.

• The lack of Chinese specialization. We’d love to have more specific features for Chinese learning.

To sum up, Bab.la is a good dictionary you can rely on, especially if you want to explore language learning background, with forums in many foreign languages.

Let’s move to the last online Chinese dictionary we reviewed: Ichacha, a dictionary available in a few languages such as Japanese, Korean, French, Russian, and English. Ichacha translates all those languages into Chinese and vice-versa.

Ichacha

Ichacha looks like a paper dictionary. You get all its uses when looking up a word: from nouns to verbs. An extensive broad of examples is also provided.

Pros:

• Data mining technology is Ichacha’s strength. The use of data mining data technology to collect new and trendy Chinese words is a great plus. It’s cool stuff to know all the vocabulary used by native speakers.

• Several versions: you can access the English version and the traditional Chinese version.

• Example sentences: putting the word you’ve just learned in a context is the best way to remember it.

Cons:

• The interface is not the prettiest.

• Not easy to handle the dictionary at first. When getting started with this dictionary, you may feel lost, but it’s okay once you know your way around.

• The ads. You can get easily disturbed by the many ads displayed on the website.

Ichacha is an unconventional Chinese dictionary that makes Mandarin learning more accessible. In addition, the translation of new words adds a fantastic feature to this dictionary.

We agree that online dictionaries are a great help since they’re complete, but what if you don’t want to open a new tab in your browser to look up words? Have you ever thought of installing a popup dictionary? Chinese popup dictionaries are great complements to online dictionaries and also work as standalone. Let’s see what the best Popup Chinese dictionaries are!

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

Free Popup Chinese Dictionaries

Popup dictionaries are handy when you’re reading a text online in Chinese and need to know the meaning of some words. Pop-up dictionaries instantly translate a word you don’t see as you hover over it. Instead, just hover over the word with your mouse, and the translation appears. Neat, huh?

Installing a pop-up dictionary

Chinese Pop-up dictionaries are usually plugins or extensions you add to your browser. Install them, activate them if needed and let the magic happen. Once activated, you’ll simply need to hover over a word in Chinese to see its pronunciation and meaning. Not all is wonderful about these plugins, but one thing’s for sure: they make reading Chinese online wonderfully easier. All you have to do is to hover a word with your mouse! Of course, we all wish we could use them on paper texts too. But, as they don’t exist (yet), here are two excellent pop-up Chinese dictionaries you can use online.

We all wish we could use them on paper texts too. But, as they don’t exist (yet), here are two excellent pop-up Chinese dictionaries you can use online.

Zhongwen Chinese popup dictionary

Zhongwen Chinese popup dictionary is available in Chrome. Once you’ve added it to your Chrome extensions, you can activate this popup dictionary extension by clicking on the little logo in the toolbar. You’ll then be ready to translate everything you want by hovering over words with your mouse!

Pros:

• The translation of expressions and loanwords.

• It identifies well whether you’re highlightings a group of words, an expression, or a single word.

• Its keyboard shortcuts: for instance, when you press the letter “g” button on your keyboard while hovering a word, you’re redirected to a wiki page explaining Chinese grammar rules related to that word. “T” takes you to Tatoeba, where you’ll see example sentences containing that word.

• The easy use of the plugin, once it’s installed, all you’ll need to do is to switch on and off the little icon to activate the pop-up dictionary or not. Easy!

Cons:

• Too useful. You can easily get addicted to this popup dictionary, which can keep you from improving your Chinese. Use it only when you need it.

• Only available on Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

• This popup dictionary doesn’t always recognize the new and trendy Chinese words because they’re not in the database.

If you hate complicated things, then this pop-up dictionary is for you! It is easy to install and use, and it’s advantageous daily.

The following pop-up dictionary we’ll talk about is PeraPera, which has different features. It’s going to be hard to choose!

Pera Pera

Perapera is available both in Firefox and Chrome. Whenever you meet a Chinese character or word you don’t know, hover your mouse over it, and Perapera will translate it for you.

Pros:

• Available in both Firefox and Chrome.

• You can save and export words to study them later. It’s a fantastic way to remember and learn the words you run into on Chinese websites.

• Multiple display options: should it display tone marks, pinyin, Zhuyin, simplified Chinese, or traditional Chinese? It’s all up to you.

Cons:

• Same as the Zhongwen Chinese popup dictionary. You can be tempted to rely on Perapera all the time and stop using your brain to read the characters you already know. That’s not the best way to learn Chinese.

• Not many keyboard shortcuts.

Pop-up dictionaries are helpful tools that will help you improve your Chinese reading skills, but make sure you also know how to manage without them! Also, don’t depend on them; it’s easy to get addicted to over-hovering!

Now that we’ve seen online Chinese dictionaries and pop-up dictionaries, you can guess what’s next: Mobile dictionary applications!

Free Mobile Chinese Dictionaries (Android and iOS)

Time to talk about mobile Chinese dictionaries. As you don’t always carry your computer with you, having a Chinese dictionary on your smartphone can be very practical, especially if you’re traveling or walking.

Another cool thing about dictionary applications is that you can usually use them offline. So when traveling, you won’t need to spend all your money on internet access to look up words. Instead, whenever you decide to go for a bit of adventure in the middle of nowhere with no Internet Connection or a foreign country, let’s say China, install one of these three dictionary apps, and you’ll be able to translate every word you need offline.

Lastly, dictionaries applications are also full of excellent extensions that can help you improve your Chinese. In this shortlist, these mobile Chinese dictionaries will become your go-to on the do Chinese resources!

Hanping (Android)

Hanping is an excellent Chinese dictionary app. The interface looks friendly with all the vivid colors. Hanping offers two versions: the Lite version, the free one, and the Pro version, which is the not-so-free one. As for the content, in addition to translations, word pronunciation, and Anki flashcards export options, you’ll find tools like handwriting recognition, multi-syllable audio recordings, search-by-radicals, home screen widgets, and vertical Zhuyin, and other valuable extensions in both the Lite and the Pro versions.

Pros:

• Dynamic search. This feature is pretty awesome, when you’re looking up words, the first result will be your target word, and the following results Hanping shows you are all started with your target word. And if you’re looking for a multi-syllable word, you will get all words that contain those characters in that order (even if other characters are in between).

• Idioms. Hanping contains many Chinese idioms useful for Mandarin learners thanks to predefined word lists containing popular expressions and words frequently used in China.

• Cantonese version: You can also download the Hanping Cantonese app using CantoDict data for those interested in Cantonese.

• It’s a popup dictionary add-on for your mobile device. A little pointer appears on your screen, and it translates words live. No matter which version you’ve downloaded (lite, pro, or Cantonese), you can use this add-on which comes separately (paid).

• Free full-screen handwriting recognition. Hanping offers handwriting recognition. This is a must-have tool for a Chinese dictionary.

Cons:

• Only available on Android.

• The paid add-ons. You have to pay for them, but some are worth it.

Hanping also has an OCR app called Hanping Camera that uses an innovative barcode scanner style design to read Chinese text in the wild without touching your screen.

If you’re interested in Hanping but can’t decide whether or not you should get the Pro version, it depends on the extensions you want to add. The Lite version can be sufficient for some as it’s pretty complete for a free Chinese dictionary. So give the Lite version a try and see if you want to upgrade to the Pro.

Pleco (iOS & Android)

Pleco is one of the most popular mobile Chinese dictionaries. How could we not mention it in our review? This app is available both on Android and iOS, making it more accessible to everyone. What about its features? Pleco offers a comprehensive database to search from, in which you can look up words, translations, synonyms, pronunciation, stroke order, example sentences, and more. This application also gives the users the option of adding licensed Chinese dictionaries (for a fee). Let’s explore Pleco’s features in our pro and con section below.

Pros:

• Handwriting recognition. You can look up words by drawing the characters in simplified or traditional Chinese. Plus, it’s okay to get the stroke order wrong; Pleco’s recognition deals with scribbles very well.

• A screen reader to make you more familiar with Chinese words you don’t know. You can look up Chinese words everywhere on your phone by tapping on a floating button. This tool is probably one of the best on Pleco as the word analysis is very accurate.

• Its clipboard reader: copy a text you want to look up words in, go to your clipboard reader in Pleco, and you’ll be able to look up all the words you want. Great for when you’re chatting in Chinese on WeChat

• The document reader, which works like the screen reader but for files (paid add-on on IOS and Android)

• The OCR system (Optical Character Recognition) is a recent update of Pleco that allows you to instantly translate words you don’t know by using your mobile device’s camera or tapping the word on a picture. Magic! Your phone is now a Chinese learning weapon capable of translating any sign in the streets!

• The examples show you how to use the word you’ve just looked up.

• Detailed information about the word: Pleco shows you the components in the characters, the characters in the word you’re looking for, and compound words that include the character you’re looking up.

• A wide choice of dictionaries to add. If you have specific needs or just want to compare dictionaries definitions, Pleco offers several free and paying dictionaries you can add. In addition, that allows you to see more various definitions, content, explanations, and definitions on sites that provide mono-dictionaries.

• For instance, a free Cantonese version that comes with four Cantonese dictionaries, like cantonese.org.

Cons:

• Paying IOS features. Most of these incredible tools, like the screen reader, are only available for free on Android. Sorry, Apple lovers, you’ll have to pony up.

• Many extra features. Too many, perhaps? Pleco provides lots of tools for their users, which is cool, but it can be hard to keep up with all the new extensions.

Try the screen reader tool if you’re hesitating between the add-ons you can install in Pleco. Very practical when you’re exploring the web! If you have an iPhone, then Pleco is made for you!

What about other good free online Chinese dictionaries?

You may use or find other online Chinese dictionaries or applications we haven’t reviewed here.

Here are some of them:

• Line Dict, which replaced the well-loved Nciku, a now-defunct Chinese dictionary, and learning tool.
• Youdao is a well-known online dictionary and Android app that beginners can find challenging since it’s all written in Chinese. But still, it’s a handy dictionary for advanced learners.
• YellowBridge is a free online Chinese dictionary where you can find examples, and synonyms, learn about each character’s history, etc.
• Arch Chinese is an online dictionary in which you can learn the meaning and symbol of each Chinese character according to their shape and history.

Final words

We hope you’ll find this review of these eight free Chinese dictionaries helpful! We’ve selected our favorite ones from online dictionaries to applications and added their pros and cons. All you have to do now is choose the method you prefer to decipher Chinese characters and words and bury your Mandarin paper dictionary for good! The uprising of the machine starts now! Do you already have a fave Chinese dictionary? Which of these do you use the most and why? Tell everyone in the comments!

Wondering what to read next? How about knowing how many Chinese characters and words exist in Chinese and how many you should learn? We just wrote a blog post about that!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

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The post The Best Free Chinese Dictionaries For Learners appeared first on Ninchanese.

It’s quite normal when you’re starting out in Mandarin to wonder how many characters and words are there exactly in Chinese? And then, to wonder immediately after that, just how many of those Chinese characters do I need to learn? The task may seem daunting, the number of Chinese characters that exist is enormous, but after you read this post, I can assure you that you’ll know exactly how many and how to find Chinese characters to learn. We’ll see first what the Chinese language is made of, then, how many Chinese characters you need to know and finally the amount of characters natives know.

How many characters exist in total in Chinese?

What is the Chinese language made of? Nowadays, the Chinese language is made of more than 80,000 characters, 85,568 characters to be more precise according to the Zhonghua Zihai dictionary. The 中华字海 Zhonghua Zihai dictionary contains all the Chinese characters that have ever existed, from old Buddhist texts to characters used by the Qing, Ming and Song dynasties. Such a very complete dictionary! It sounds very impressive, but you should know that a lot of the characters contained in this dictionary are actually no longer used.

So now you know that there are at least 80 000 characters in Mandarin. But it doesn’t stop there! These 80 000 characters equal many, many, more Chinese words. How does that work?
In the Chinese language, 字 zì characters also known as 汉字 hànzi (hanzi) meaning Chinese characters can be combined together to create 词 cí words. Yes, you heard right.
Single characters can be words on their own, for instance, you can use the character 手 shǒu hand if you want to talk about someone’s hand but most words in Chinese are composed of two or more characters. So if you take this character 手 for example, you can combine it with other characters to create new words like 手表 Shǒubiǎo wristwatch.

The Chinese language works in an interesting way, doesn’t it? It’s a little tricky.

This means if you “only” learned the 80,000 Chinese characters, you’d be able to understand a good number of the words you run across in a text, but not all of them. It’s often possible to guess the meaning of two characters combined together to form a new word, but often, it’s not possible, as you’ll see below.
Let’s take the characters 手 and 机 and their pinyin.

手 shǒu hand

+

机 jī machine

= 手机 shǒujī cellphone

You can easily guess the meaning of the word 手机 in simplified Chinese when you know the meaning of each individual character.

On the contrary, here’s a tougher word to crack, using the characters 上 and 手:

上 shàng above

+

手 shǒu hand

= 上手 shàngshǒu to master

See? The Chinese word 上手 made of the two characters 上 and 手 is harder to guess! And if you don’t know the characters you’ll hardly guess the word’s pronunciation.

Ninchanese is an incredible app for learning Chinese!

” I actually graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a MA in Chinese.
I’ve used Ninchanese daily, and it has helped me a lot!  “

 – Connor, Ninchanese User

Try Ninchanese, an award-winning method to learn Chinese today:

Start Learning Now

This is why you should master both Chinese characters and terms, to be able to understand the texts you run into in China.

So how many Chinese words are there in Chinese? That’s an even tougher question than how many Chinese characters are there. As Chinese is a living language, it’s hard to give a definite count. The Chinese language is still evolving and new terms and expressions are created every day. To give you an idea, The 汉语大词典 Hanyu Da Cidian (lit: Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary) is said to contain 370,000 words. Just like the 中华字海 Zhonghua Zihai dictionary for characters, a lot of the entries in the 汉语大词典 are no longer in use.

You know now how to identify Chinese characters (one syllable max) and words (one or more 字). But are you worried by the sheer quantity of words that exist in Chinese? We have some good news for you: there is no need to memorize all 80,000+ Chinese characters or 370 000 Chinese words. All you have to do is master the characters and terms which are commonly used today in the Chinese language. Conversational fluency in Chinese is within your reach and won’t take years and years of study. Relieved? I’m sure what you’re really itching to know now is: So, how many Chinese characters will I need to learn to be able to handle most texts in everyday circumstances?

How many Chinese characters do you really need to learn?

Many people are afraid of learning Chinese because of the 80,000 characters that make up the Chinese language. It seems like a lot to learn. The truth is you don’t need to know that many characters to speak Chinese. Did you really believe that Chinese natives all know 80,000 characters? Nope! Not at all. Native Chinese speakers themselves don’t know that many words and characters in Chinese! That’d be an incredible amount of terms to know. So before we move on to how many Chinese words and Chinese characters you would be required know to be considered fluent, let’s see first how many characters an average Chinese speaker knows.

In elementary school, Chinese pupils are expected to learn about 2,500 characters which are the most used. Then they assimilate about 1,000 more specific ones during middle school and high school. In the end, Chinese students that have finished high school know about 4,500 characters. For reference, the Chinese government puts literacy at 2000 characters. Well-educated Chinese people know anywhere from 8,000 characters and upwards. That’s really far away from the 80,000 Chinese characters! Only specialized linguists and scholars get closer to those 80,000.

4500 to 8000 characters to know doesn’t sound too bad, right? So how many Chinese characters do YOU need to know to be considered fluent? The number of Chinese characters and words you need to know depends on many things such as your learning goal, your current fluency level or even the frequency of use of these characters.

What’s your learning goal for Chinese?

First, ask yourself what’s your goal in speaking Chinese? What are you looking to do? If you want to live in China, and simply interact in your everyday life in Chinese, a working vocabulary of 1000 words might be enough to start with. You don’t need to learn many characters to travel to China. If you need to order food, read something that’s written on a menu, call a taxi or even asking for a direction, few survival words would be enough. If you want to understand what’s going on TV, on the radio or in the newspapers, you’ll basically need to learn about 3,000 to 4,000 characters. In newspapers you’ll find about 2.500 very common Chinese characters, so knowing 3,000 characters will allow you to understand about 99% of what’s written.

Now if your goal is to be able to read a Chinese dictionary, which is a pretty advanced Chinese goal, then you’ll need to know at least 9,000 to 15,000 characters to be able to comfortably read the definitions.
Having a Chinese learning goal is essential to progress, but knowing what level you are is also very important to know what Chinese characters and terms to learn.

What’s your level?

You’ve just started learning Chinese? Then you belong to the HSK 1 level which requires learning about 150 words. You’ve just entered the world 3 in Ninchanese? Then you’re the HSK 3 level and you’ll need to learn about 300 new terms. Check your level and see how many words you have to learn according to the HSK. As there has been a renewal of the HSK exams.

The numbers of words you need to learn for the new HSK:

HSK 1: 153    –     HSK 2: 150    –     HSK 3: 300    –     HSK 4: 598    –     HSK 5: 1300    –     HSK 6: 2513

The HSK levels are important if you want to prove your Chinese skills by taking the exam, it’s also good for you to know where you are and where you’re heading to. But don’t rely on them, as some terms in the lists are sometimes quite odd, and not that useful on a daily basis.

Pick the right characters to learn: Mind the characters’ frequency

Learning every single Chinese character would be a waste of time as you’ll rarely meet some of them. Why don’t you learn the characters that are the most used in everyday life? Here’s the list of the most frequent characters. See? Currently, the most used Chinese character is 的 de of; particle. If you master the most frequent Chinese characters, you’ll be in theory able to read a newspaper, have a conversation, watch TV and so on. It just depends on how many frequent characters you decide to learn. If you digest 100 of the most common characters, you statistically should have a 42% understanding of the characters you run into.

1000 of the most frequent Chinese characters should bring you an 89% understanding of what you read.The caveat to this method is that the 11%, for instance, you won’t understand will be the characters that bring you the meaning of the sentence. Imagine being able to read everything single word in a sentence that says “I bought an XXX for cheap”. If you don’t know what XXX means, then the sentence is rather pointless isn’t? The best way to counter that is to keep expanding your Chinese vocabulary, by learning new characters, and more specific terms you’re interested in, and more specific until you’ve learned the 3000 to 4000 most frequent Chinese characters. Then, you should be familiar with the vast majority of the characters you running into.

My advice : Do a little bit of everything

Pay attention to these three steps to know what and how many characters you should learn. My best advice would be to put as a goal: master 2,500 to 3,000 characters. Therefore, you’ll be able to understand many things. When you’re HSK 4 level (world 4 in Ninchanese), you should be able to understand about 2,000 characters and terms. But how and what should you learn? In Ninchanese, we help you learn the most common and frequently used Chinese characters. So, take the road to world 4 and you’ll be on the right path to speaking Chinese like a native!

Final words:

Now that you know how many terms and characters exist in Chinese, and how many characters you need to learn, aren’t you glad you asked? You see, there’s no need to be scared of some mischievous Chinese characters! You don’t need to assimilate an entire Chinese dictionary by heart to be fluent in Chinese, just follow our advice, and you’ll soon be learning the Chinese words and characters you need to reach your goal of fluency in Chinese!

Learning words and characters is the key to reading anything you see and fitting in China! The cool thing about Chinese characters is that they are the writing system common to all forms of spoken Chinese. See, you could be learning one of the many dialects of the Chinese language (check out this page to learn more about them), you’ll still be using Chinese characters.
Let’s say, for instance, that you want to learn Cantonese, as Olly Richards did in one year, can you guess what writing system you’ll be using? That’s right, Chinese characters. No matter what spoken form of Chinese you’re learning, you’ll be using them in writing.  So it’s pretty important to learn Chinese characters and really, there’s no need to be afraid of learning them.

Just pick your main learning goal, be realistic in the number of terms and Chinese characters you want to learn based on your actual level and select the characters that are the most frequent if you want to save time and efficiently study Mandarin. We’ve already selected the words you should know in Ninchanese so learn Chinese at your own speed without thinking about what you need to learn. After all, most of the Chinese only know about 5,000 characters and we know you soon will too!

Now tell us, how many words do you think you know in simplified Chinese? Or have you stopped counting?

The Nincha Team

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There are many situations in which you want to add something to what you already have. For instance, when ordering food or buying things. Here are 5 expressions to learn so you can always say “I’ll have a…with that” in Chinese. Remember these Chinese grammar rules and speak like a native!

#1 和 – hé – And: to order easily in Chinese

One of the most useful Chinese expressions to say “I’ll have a… with that!” is definitely 和 hé and. You can use this one for almost everything, for example:

我要一杯茶和一块蛋糕。 wǒ yào yībēi chá hé yīkuài dàngāo. I want a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

See? This Chinese word can be used almost for everything and every situation. But if you want to sound more like a native in Mandarin, take a look at these other Chinese expressions than 和 to say “I’ll have a… with that”.

#2 还有 – hái yǒu- In addition

You’ve probably heard of 还有 hái yǒu in addition, which is one of the most common Chinese expressions, for sure! But be careful with 还有 hái yǒu. You can only use this expression when you want to add at least two things to what you already have.
Therefore, if all you want is rice with some chicken, you can just use 和. What if you’re thirsty? To add a glass of fruit juice to what you’ve just ordered, this is what you must say:

我要米饭和鸡肉，还有一杯果汁。 wǒ yào mǐfàn hé jīròu, hái yǒu yībēi guǒzhī. I want rice with chicken as well as a glass of fruit juice.

Using 还有 is really practical when it comes to asking for two or more things to add.

Basic Chinese expressions like 和 and 还有 are easy to use on daily basis, but still, they’re very common. Want to go from laowai to native speaker? Let’s jump to the third expression to learn how to literally say “plus”.

#3 加 – jiā – To add

The Chinese character 加 jiā to add is a convenient little bugger to know. It literally means “plus” and kind looks like a plus sign, doesn’t it?
The real mnemonic for it are the meaning components it is made of:

+

if you have the strength to open your mouth to ask, then you’ll have more “plus”… No?
It’s important to note that in Chinese grammar, the character 加 is always used as a verb, as “to add”.

Imagine you’re in a coffeeshop and you want a little sugar with your coffee, you can say:

咖啡加糖。 kāfēi jiātáng. Coffee with sugar.

Easy, right? Basically 加 works for most things you’d want to add IN something.
So want an extra egg in your noodles? 加 it !

我要一碗面条，加个鸡蛋！ wǒ yào yī wǎn miàntiáo, jiā gè jīdàn! I want an extra egg in my noodles!

Now that you’ve mastered the 加 thing, let’s go deeper! Sometimes you’ll come across other Chinese expressions like that can be added to 加 to emphasize the “plus” concept.

#4 再 – zài – Another / Some more

You’ll often meet 再 zài another next to 加 to say “I’ll have a…with that” in Chinese. 再 is always used before a verb such as 加. It also indicates the repetition: “some more”, “another”.

服务员，再加一个鸡蛋！ fúwùyuán, zài jiā yīgè jīdàn! Waiter, another egg, please!

Mandarin is such an accurate language, there’s a specific expression for every situation in which you want to add something. The last expression we’re going to introduce you is to only add things that match with what you’ve picked in a first place.

#5 配 – pèi – To match

The last but not least of the essential Chinese expressions like 和 to say “I’ll have a…with that” is 配 pèi to match. You may be wondering why you should use 配 to add something, aren’t you? Well, it’s simple!
This Chinese character is really useful when it comes to add something that matches what you already have.
What matches french fries the best ? Ketchup of course! So if you want to order fries and ketchup you can say:

我要一个中包薯条配番茄酱。 wǒ yào yīgè zhōng bāo shǔ tiáo pèi fānqié jiàng. I want a medium fry with ketchup.

Bonus: Hold the!

And if you wanted to explicitly say you wanted a coffee without sugar (not always an easy feat in China, as you’re in already-sweet-instant-coffee land), you could say:

咖啡不加糖 kāfēi bù jiātáng. I want coffee without sugar.

or even more simply you could say:

不要。 bùyào. I don’t want some.

Final words:

Chinese expressions to say “I’ll have a…with that” are definitely one of the most useful ones to know. By using these expressions to order in Chinese, all the doors will be open to you! I mean, what’s best than being able to ask everything you desire?
To be sure you’ll remember these expressions in Chinese forever, here’s a recap:

#1 和 hé and (the most basic Chinese word to add something)
#2 还有 hái yǒu in addition (for two or more things to add)
#3 加 jiā to add (only as a verb, to add something)
#4 再 zài another (before a verb, to repeat the action)
#5 配 pèi to match (to add things that match your order)

Do you know other expressions to order all you want in Chinese or funny stories about things that happened to you when ordering in Chinese? Let us know in the comments.

The Nincha Team

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The post How to Use Practical Words Like 和 and 还有 to Order All You Want in Chinese appeared first on Ninchanese.