Learn Chinese Online -- for free!

South Park: Butters looks soooo funny ahaha

When I was younger: I hated Chinese Saturday school. I hated Ming Yuan summer school (well, at least the learning part. and the humiliating daily trek to the local park to get the free lunch-- so Asian!). I slacked my way through Mandarin in high school.

When I was... less... younger: I really want to improve my Chinese!! I have hit a plateau, so sad. But I do try to keep it up. I have developed a good group of learning tools, the latest of which I found only recently. And now I want to share them with... whoever it is that might read this ^_^

My favorite resources for learning Chinese online [for free]:

1. Chinese Pod: http://chinesepod.com/
This is a popular web broadcast program out of Shanghai. It's free to download their iPod lessons, which they put out daily. There are varying levels, from beginner to advanced. It's a great format as they have one native speaker and one non-native speaker basically just conversing about the day's lesson. The approx. 12 minute lessons are easy to listen to during your commute, work out, etc. For more serious learners, they offer vocabulary sheets, lessons, and other guidance for a fee.

2. Chinese Reading World: http://chinesereadingworld.org/
This is an awesome free website put on by the University of Iowa. They have a TON of lessons at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. It's hard to find so many free decent-quality lessons online. They provide the lesson, vocabularly list, pre-test questions, and post-test questions. They even "time" you to give you a score of how your reading speed compares to a native speaker. It requires an email sign-up, but it's quick, easy, and spam-free. It gets even better when used with...

3. NJStar: http://www.download.com/NJStar-Communicator/3000-2279_4-10038407.html
I don't remember where I got my program from but here is a link to a free download. NJStar is a Chinese writing program. Chinese Reading World has their lessons in this format. They also have it in HTML, but when you use NJStar you can hover over words and it will define them for you. Also, it's cool to have a Chinese writing program. I do pin yin entry but I think they have the other methods too.

4. Chinese Pera-kun: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349
Okay this is my latest find. It's an awesome Firefox add-on that basically does for websites what NJStar does for files. You just turn on the program through right-click, then when you hover over Chinese words, it defines it for you in a pop-up. For people like me who can read maybe half of any given sentence, this puts reading Chinese online within reach. I think it's the easiest and quickest way to learn Chinese for me, actually. I use it with...

5. China Daily Newspaper Online: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hqzx/
I only made a superficial search, but this is the best designed major Chinese newspaper website I found. Which is not saying much. Reading news is the best use of time for me, as I can learn the most often used vocabulary. I will look for new websites sooner or later.

Chinese Pera-kun in action on China Daily

6. To be added: A good website that streams K dramas with Chinese subtitles hahah


6/3/2009 UPDATE:

Having purchased an iPhone earlier this year, I wanted to add to this post my two favorite Chinese dictionaries:
1) iCED Chinese Dictionary- Free
2) Qing Wen- $4.99

I tried all the free Chinese-English dictionaries and these two are the best, in my opinion. The reason I still have both on my iPhone is because iCED provides definitions of each word in a phrase, which I like, while Qing Wen has a better search layout and the ability to make vocab lists. Qing Wen was free when I downloaded it, but it is certainly worth the $4.99-- it even has audio pronounciations for each word! Imagine when those Chinese-English translators used to cost $100...

What I love most about these apps is that through the iPhone, you can use the Chinese language keyboard to actually write in the character you are looking for-- the recognition is very good as long as you know your key stroke order. These are amazing apps, especially considering the price. They're very helpful with studying but also while out and about reading restaurant menus, signs, etc.

I will update with screenshots when I get the chance. In the meantime, search "chinese dictionary" on your iTunes app store and check out these apps!


And an extra link for those with fobby parents: http://mymomisafob.tumblr.com/
Super funny! ^_^