When learning to pronounce tones in Chinese, it makes sense to focus on words rather than single syllables. Most words in Chinese are disyllabic and since practising these will also include to tone... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a good introduction to tones in Chinese. I personally think that tone pairs is the right way to go, mostly because they incorporate all important tone changes in Chinese. Therefore, as soon... Read more.

sinosplice.com

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

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

This newsletter is THE best resource for keeping yourself updated about what's going on in China. The articles included are sometimes in English, sometimes in Chinese, so the recommendation for "ad... Read more.

sinocism.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

Learn Chinese Online with CLO - Go from absolute beginner to intermediate learner with our step by step, progressive audio lessons in Mandarin Chinese Read more.

ChineseLearnOnline.com

Reading a novel in Chinese is the goal for many learners, but perhaps it's easier to accomplish than you think. This article discusses various methods of making novel reading easier in Chinese, ma... 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

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 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 article on Wikipedia lists character simplifications and is extremely useful if you already know one character set and want to learn the other. I have written about learning both character set... Read more.

en.wikipedia.org

Wuxia can be used as a key to both Chinese language and culture. This article is meant to be a guide to second language learners. If you want to read wuxia in Chinese, where do you start? How do yo... 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

A bit like Phonemica. This website has recordings of different accents in Chinese language, including both by native speakers and non-native speakers. Read more.

hanyu123.weebly.com

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

qz.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

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

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 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

This is a simple and straightforward explanation of Chinese phonetics. I recommend it because it's not very complicated and (mostly) correct. I will try to write something myself later, but in the ... Read more.

zein.se

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

characterpop.com

Evaluating pronunciation needn't be hard, but many methods commonly used by teachers are deeply flawed, resulting in inaccurate error analysis. If we want to improve, we need to be clear about what... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

This is a VERY comprehensive list of computer related terms in Chinese which works well for translation or detailed look-ups rather than studying. The list is mainly in traditional characters (the ... Read more.

iicm.org.tw

John Pasden has over ten years of experience teaching Chinese language, and a particular awareness of phonetic difficulties. This page gathers a number of posts on his website sinosplice about pron... Read more.

sinosplice.com

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

My goal for 2013 was to read 25 books in Chinese. This article is about the 25 books I read and is meant to serve as encouragement and inspiration. You might also find a book or two you want to rea... Read more.

hackingchinese.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

This site (originally a book) explains the difference between commonly mixed up (traditional) characters, published by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. As it says in the introduction, the main purpo... Read more.

language.moe.gov.tw

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 very large list of traditional characters with multiple pronunciations in the form of an Excel file (the other two files are announcements about the list in Chinese). The first sheet just... Read more.

word.hlc.edu.tw

This newly launched site offers basic information about pronunciation, mostly things that should be in all beginner courses and textbooks but seldom are. Currently, the content is fairly limited, b... Read more.

resources.allsetlearning.com

Another web-based resource with recorded audio for all syllables with all tones. You can also get the “spelling” of the syllable read to you, ie. Initial, final and then the whole syllable. Read more.

lost-theory.org

Duanmu San's "The Phonology of Standard Chinese" is by far the best introduction to Mandarin phonology that I'm aware of. It's mostly useful for people who like phonology or are already at an advan... Read more.

hackingchinese.com

Serge Gorodish describes himself as "Mathematician, father, programmer, amateur linguist, cynic/idealist, and all-around nice guy" and has found a way to split pinyin syllables in components, which... Read more.

countryoftheblind.blogspot.de

This blog-post offers an introduction to the concept of coloured tones in Chinese learning software. Where do the colours come from? Why were they chosen? And what colours should you choose for you... Read more.

laowaichinese.net

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 is a (native-level, authentic) podcast about TV, film and culture. Episodes are long, usually 1-2 hours, focusing on a specific topic, such as a TV series or film, or more general. The discus... Read more.

podcasts.apple.com

This site collects calligraphy references for HSK vocabulary. Most other resources for writing cursive script uses much less frequent characters and aren't suitable for second-language learners. If... Read more.

edsko.net

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 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 is a frequency list that also lists the number of strokes for each character. Not sure why this would be useful, but there are probably some applications. [The same data is also available in a... 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

Character frequencies for Classical Chinese (i.e. not based on texts). This resource was discussed in this article: [The most common Chinese words, characters and components for language learner... Read more.

lingua.mtsu.edu

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

This frequency list is based on the Leeds corpus of internet Chinese (90 million tokens from 2005). Simplified characters with no frills. You can [search the corpus directly online](http://corpus.l... Read more.

corpus.leeds.ac.uk