This is a list of the 100 most common radicals among the 2000 most common characters, meaning that it's excellent for beginners who want to boost their understanding of Chinese characters. The list... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This article describes the basics of way to teach tones that is different from the traditional way mainly in that the third tone is no longer described as a falling-rising tone (since that is rarel... Read more.

sinosplice.com

The third tone is an essentially low tone. The only time it's pronounced with a high element is in front of another third tone (when it turns into a second tone) and when in complete isolation (whi... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

When it comes to learning to understand spoken Chinese, there are few shortcuts. The more you listen, the more you will understand. But how can we fit more listening into our lives without cutting ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is the second and final article about using phonetic components to hack Chinese characters and make it considerably easier to handle similarly looking characters. This article describes both t... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Writing Chinese characters for the first time can be very hard, mostly because it's so different from writing letters. It feels more like drawing a picture than writing! This article is aimed at be... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a basic video demonstration of the stroke order rules for writing Chinese characters. It's short and if you find something lacking, your question may have already been answered in the comme... Read more.

youtube.com

Audacity is a marvellous piece of software that allows you to record audio (yourself, other people or whatever is playing on your computer), mimic native speakers, edit and enhance the audio, as we... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

You don't have to go abroad to learn Chinese. The main difference between staying at home and going abroad is that it requires less effort to learn once you're there (although it still requires qui... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Many people regard chengyu as the golden key to the Chinese language and believe that learning chengyu will impress native speakers and take their Chinese to the next level. However, learning cheng... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

There are many ways of practising writing Chinese characters and they all have their pros and cons. In this article, I discuss seven different ways of practising and what advantages and disadvantag... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

80% of all Chinese characters are made up of one semantic component (meaning) and one phonetic component (pronunciation). The sheer number of characters formed this way means that these characters ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is Hugh Grigg's site about his East Asia studies (as the title implies). Even though the site is about all East Asia, I think most posts are still about Chinese in some way, including a large ... Read more.

eastasiastudent.net

Television is a valuable asset in the modern language learners toolkit. The medium provides a convenient way to enjoy large volumes of passive listening practice in a stress free environment. The c... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a guide to handwriting Chinese characters. It's not about writing beautifully, but writing correctly, including things like stroke placement, length and direction. There are numerous exampl... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Is it easy to learn to read Chinese? ShaoLan, among others, claims that it is. I don't agree, and in this article I discuss some common trends among people who try to portray Chinese as being easy.... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This resource presents something fairly unique: handwriting samples from a famous calligrapher (田英章) for all characters in HSK, sorted by level. This includes both regular script (楷书) and semi-curs... Read more.

edsko.net

This is the best overview of spaced repetition research I have seen online or offline. It's thorough, well-argued and probably covers more than you were looking for. It's not specifically about Chi... Read more.

gwern.net

Just you try designing 13,000-plus intricate character shapes that all have to balance one another. Read more.

qz.com

Through video, text and audio, this course helps you become a better language learner. It also explains many Chinese-specific learning strategies necessary to avoid wasting lots of time or missing ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Written Chinese characters are regarded by some as the true essence of Chinese; without learning to write by hand, you're not learning Chinese. Others go to extremes in the other direction, claimin... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

A simple and easy to learn song to memorize China's major dynasties! Created for students of Chinese history at Harvard. Read more.

youtube.com

Outlier Linguistics hosts an excellent blog with a large number of insightful articles into Chinese characters. Some of them are directly useful because they talk about learning characters, others ... Read more.

outlier-linguistics.com

Tones are more important than most people think. Just because native speakers reduce tones and speak quickly, it doesn't mean that you can do the same and get away with it. Don't be fooled by peopl... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

My article about various common problems students have with Pinyin. These problems mostly exist because people read Pinyin as if it were a phonetic alphabet instead of a transcription system. Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This clip introduces all the initials and finals in Pinyin (using the first tone). It adds value to the rest of the resources here because the camera is pointed to the speaker’s mouth, showing clea... Read more.

youtube.com

This article is a guide to reading comics in Chinese, suitable for beginners as well as those who already have some experience. Reading comics is an excellent way of attacking the Great Wall of Chi... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Chinese Hacks is run by Dave Flynn and might look similar to Hacking Chinese at first glance, but actually isn't. Most of the articles on Chinese Hacks are about software, apps or other tools for l... Read more.

chinesehacks.com

Ideally, we would study Chinese just because we want to and in any manner we see fit, but this isn't how it works for most students. Instead, we need to care about tests and grades, an extra layer ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a neat video that introduces Chinese characters to complete beginners. It's not a substitute for a real lecture on how characters work, but this is still the best introduction I have seen s... Read more.

youtube.com

Language Log is an excellent blog where ~20 authors share their thoughts about languages and related topics. While the other authors also post interesting articles, I have chosen to link directly t... Read more.

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Explode Chinese characters into their building blocks; visualize and remember how they are formed. Read more.

characterpop.com

If you're going to watch the world cup, do it in Chinese! Watching sports is an awesome way of learning a language, almost regardless of which level you're at. As a beginner, you can follow what's ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Laowai Chinese doesn't update often, but when it does, it's usually worth reading. The blog is about anything related to Chinese and China, but I find posts about vocabulary, grammar and culture th... Read more.

laowaichinese.net

This is a basic but fairly comprehensive overview of the phonology of Standard Chinese (or Mandarin, as it might be better known as). This site covers consonants, vowels, syllables, tones, word str... Read more.

en.wikipedia.org

This YouTube channel offers some 70+ videos (March, 2022) with slowly and clearly spoken Mandarin with a standard accent. Each video is a story told entirely in Chinese, but with plenty of scaffold... Read more.

youtube.com

This website allows you to enter Chinese characters (simplified or traditional) to search for calligraphy references. A range of different examples of the character in question is shown (depending ... Read more.

9610.com

Around 6,000 simplified characters without definition or Pinyin, but with clickable links to more information about each character. Not specified what data this list is based on. This resource w... Read more.

hanzicraft.com

This list is based on Chinese movie subtitles and is thus as close to natural spoken language as you can get. 100,000 simplified words without definition or Pinyin, You will find some 这个 and 不能, bu... Read more.

crr.ugent.be

This is a blog about Chinese language and culture run by Lewis Tatt. It's been online for several years, but I only noticed it recently. It hosts a large number of interesting articles, often focus... Read more.

themandarincornerblog.com

DigMandarin offer several interesting resources for free. The blog is a mix of directly useful resources, such as vocabulary for certain situations, and information/inspiration on learning Mandarin... Read more.

digmandarin.com

We all experience slumps in our learning, but there are many thing we can do to reduce the negative effects of these slumps. The solution is three-fold: Preparing for the slump before it hits you, ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Every textbook should contain these (and some more) phrases. By learning some common sentences such as "how do I say this in Chinese", "can you please say that again" and so on, you can increase th... Read more.

blog.skritter.com

This guide contains some good suggestions for what to watch in Chinese, sorted by genre and with some introductory comments. It also contains a discussion of why to learn Chinese through movies. Read more.

fluentu.com

This is a story about looking Chinese but not knowing how to speak Chinese. It's an eye-opener for people who don't look Chinese and study Chinese, but it might also be painfully familiar for stude... Read more.

youtube.com

Mastering Chinese characters, whether you find them enchantingly beautiful or overwhelmingly complex, is essential for literacy in Chinese. Outlier Linguistics will help you understand how the Chin... Read more.

outlier-linguistics.com

A blog written and managed by an advanced Chinese featuring reviews of books, TV dramas and games. Additionally, the blog also features recommendations for utilising media in Chinese language learn... Read more.

thecozystudy.com

This website allows you to look up all sorts of things related to characters, including pronunciation in historical and regional varieties, components based on their pictographic origin, and much m... Read more.

zi.tools

This is a unique resource that shows how most common speech sounds are actually produced. Most other resources use animations and diagrams, but this is the frist I see which show actual MRI scans. ... Read more.

seeingspeech.ac.uk

This is an overview of how to learn Chinese characters, including understanding how they work, how to learn to read and write them, as well as how to remember the characters you have learnt. Tools ... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a presentation by Thomas S. Mullaney about Chinese typewriters through history. In the digital age, typing in Chinese is easier than it has ever been, but how did the Chinese typewrite evol... Read more.

youtu.be

This list contains syllable frequency, listing each syllable, with Pinyin and Zhuyin, as well as a sample character. It’s not sorted in order of frequency, but the frequency data is there. Also, pl... Read more.

technology.chtsai.org

This list contains phonetic components, sorted by how regular they are, i.e. characters that all sound exactly like their phonetic components are grouped together, and so on. Most students graduall... Read more.

hanzicraft.com

This list from 2005 is based on written Chinese (both fiction and non-fiction). It contains 10,000 simplified characters, with Pinyin and definition. The same data is also available as two separate... Read more.

lingua.mtsu.edu