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The Chinese language (/ Hny; / Huy;

Zhngwn) is a languageor language family consisting of
varietieswhich are mutually intelligible to varying degrees.
[4 Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han
]

Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan

family of languages. About one-fifth of the world's population, or
over one billion people, speaks some variety of Chinese as
their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually
perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single
Chinese language, rather than separate languages, although
this identification is considered inappropriate by some linguists
andsinologists.[5]
Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity,
although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There
are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese
(depending on classification scheme), of which the most
spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu
(90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million).
Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although
some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may
share common terms and some degree of intelligibility.
Standard Chinese (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a
standardized form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing
dialect of Mandarin Chinese, referred to as /Gunhu
or /Bifnghu in Chinese. Mandarin Chinese
history can be dated back to the 19th century, particularly by
the upper classes and ministers in Beijing.[6] Standard Chinese
is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC)
and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan), as
well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of
the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other
varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is influential in Guangdong
Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and
remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together
with English) and ofMacau (together with Portuguese). Min
Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in
southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as
Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (known as Hokkien
in Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia). There are also
sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diaspora, for example in
Taiwan, where most Hakka communities maintain diglossia by
being conversant in Taiwanese and Standard Chinese.

Contents[show]

/Int/ QQ Group Edit

/Int/ now has its very own Chinese Learning Group on QQ.

The group number is62033003.

Everyone's welcome, so if you're studying Chinese or are a
native speaker feel free to join!

Resources Edit
Rosetta Stone Edit
3 levels available.
Recommended as a beginning tool
Strongly not recommended to be used as the only
tool.
Covers pronounciation, reading, listening, vocabulary,
writing.
Very poor for grammar.
Easy to use. Shouldn't take more than an hour to set up
and begin using.
More expensive than it's worth. Thank you based internet!
Pimsleur Edit

A lot of lessons.
Recommended as a learning tool.
Strongly not recomended to be used as the only tool.
Covers mainly speaking and being able to hold a
conversation.
Easy to use, just open the audio file and repeat.
http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Chinese-Mandarin Try a
free lesson!
Apps Edit
Best online Mandarin dictionary; it even includes a
 "conversation of the day", Android and iPhone apps AND
a tool to write out a character.
Duolingo - Still waiting for Mandarin to come out
Chinese Skill- This can be considered as the Duolingo for
Chinese. It's free, teaches you writing(optional), pinyin,
and gradually builds up grammar and vocabulary.
Essential for all Mandarin beginners
Chinese Grammar ()- In depth guide on multiple
Chinese grammar topics and completely free.
Pinyin Trainer- Free/Paid available. Does what it says on
the tin. This is an excellent way to practise tones without
a native on-call.
RightNow Chinese Conversation - A phrase book that has
a very wide range of topics that works oine, this is very
useful for finding useful sentences quickly, and could
probably help you in China if you don't know any
Mandarin. This also comes with a widget that displays a
word of the day.
Number Trainer - Free/Paid - This covers all of the
numbers you will use, with tests, the characters+pinyin,
and a number keyboard for quick referencing.
Skritter - Awesome tool for learning how to write the
Characters
Download Pleco , it's the handiest and best dictionary for
your phone, no contest.
If you're using something like Pleco, which has a
 flashcard support, in conjunction with NPCR check out
HSK Flashcards. It has downloadable flashcards (you
open the links then save the page as a .txt file, and
there's an option to 'Import Flashcards' on Pleco),
primarily for HSK (the standard Chinese Proficiency
exam), but also for every NPCR book. Very very handy, as
flashcards are possibly the quickest and best way to learn
characters.
Websites Edit

Hanbridge Mandarin- Learn Chinese online at Hanbridge

Mandarin School. They oer Mandarin Online Course by
live teachers from China and face-to-face mandarin
courses in Shenzhen. FREE TRIAL lesson provided.
ChinesePod - From beginner to advance, this is a
podcast that is very helpful to learn from alongside
normal study
SexyMandarin - Learn some basic phrases in the hottest
way possible. This also has a few apps alongside it
ChineseTools - This is where students can learn some
straight forward grammar and vocabulary, free of charge.
Books Edit

Assimil - Chinese with ease, Vol1, Vol 2 - Great for

beginners as there isn't a lot of grammar to go through,
but does teach some very useful vocabulary and phrases
without being a phrase book. This helps complete
beginners to build a solid foundation within six months,
 and to be comfortable with the language in 3 months.
Here is a review of it on Youtube if you want to see how it
works. Although on the more expensive side, they are
very popular for learning Mandarin and are worth having
as a tool for learning.
New Practical Chinese Reader. We use this series of
books in university. They're not perfect, but they give you
a pretty nice and gentle introduction to the language,
have plenty of English and pinyin early on to help you
along, and some good vocab. There's a Workbook as well
that I'd advise getting. Get the DVD if you want, but the
videos are mostly on Youtube (e.g.here. Haven't watched
them myself, so I'm not 100% sure if they're the right
ones, but it should be obvious pretty quickly).
Sinosplicehas some reviews on various Mandarin-
Learning books, so have a hunt around for ones that
seem useful (he reviews some on learning Shanghainese
too, for more advanced students who feel like learning it.
Bear in mind his info about where to get them in Shanghai
might be a little outdated, but when I was there in
2011-2012, the foreign bookshop on Fuzhou Lu still had
, which is fine except for the lack of tones.
Not all that sure about the others, but check it out
anyway).
Common Chinese Patterns 330- Insanely useful book.
you can pick it up online, or in the aforementioned Fuzhou
Lu shop in Shanghai. It has an absolute ton of Chinese
 grammar structures in alphabetical order with uber-simple
examples to help you learn them quickly. This is a must-
buy if you're trying to learn grammar (NPCR, in my
experience, isn't quite as clear on grammar points, so it
helps to have this)
News Edit
Xinhuanet The ocial Chinese state news agency. Lots
of dense, dull news articles, but great for learning dicult
vocabulary and the Chinese names of non-Chinese
people/places. If you're not able to understand the
articles completely, go to theBilingual Zone.
Epoch Times An interesting, opposing view to Xinhua.
Founded by the Falun Gong, uses traditional characters.
It also has probably the widest global circulation of any
Chinese newpaper, so check your local Asian shops to
see if they have copies available.
BBC Chinese service Simplified character version.
ZaobaoThis is a popular Singaporean Mandarin-
language newspaper. Handy for those who want
Simplified characters without the CCP spin.
Movies and TV Edit
TV

Phoenix CNEChinese-language channel, primarily

showing news and current aairs shows. Not incredibly
interesting, but excellent for aural practise. They tend to
use Traditional characters, though. If you have Sky Digital,
 I think it's channel 785 (it's in the International section)
A great guide to watching Chinese TV for practice . I
agree with his assessment that Romance shows are the
best to start with, he gives some good suggestions, but
bear in mind everything he suggests is either Taiwanese
(and thus has subtitles in Traditional characters) or from
Hong Kong (and thus in Cantonese), so beginners may
want to find some shows with Simplified characters (from
the Mainland or Singapore) to start o.
TudouA very popular Chinese streaming site, you can
watch most shows here
YoukuSimilar to Tudou. It also has loads of shows on it.
Youtube has a surprising amount of full episodes of
Chinese shows, so check there too
Make sure to watch TV shows with the subtitles in
Chinese, not English. It's a little tricky early on, but it will
benefit your listening and reading ability infinitely more
than watching with English subtitles. Most Chinese shows
have subtitles for the deaf anyway.
Subtitles Edit
Subscene
Findsubtitles
Shooter.cn
Movies Edit
Street Angel (1937) [available on TPB]
 Spring in a Small Town/ (1954)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Farewell, My Concubine (1993)
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
To Live (1994)
Shanghai Triad [](1995)
Happy Times (2000)
Hero (2002)
Roots and Branches/ (2003)
House of Flying Daggers (2005)
Lust, Caution (2007)
Mulan (2009)
Monga [] (2010)
Video Games Edit
Half-Life 2 (select 'simplified chinese' in it's options in
steam)
Music Edit
Jay Chou
The Flowers
Jordan Chen
Nicholas Tse
Tanya Chua

MC Hotdog

Queen Sea Big Shark

 Hedgehog

Streets Kill Strange Animals

Duck Fight Goose

Rebuilding the Rights of Statues

Gar

PK14
Brotips Edit
Sometimes, not always but isn't rare, a character
composed of two dierent parts (radicals) will give a hint
in both the meaning and the pronounciation. For example,
the character for mom is and is pronounced Ma1. The
first radical, , means woman. The second one, ,
means horse, but it's pronounced Ma3.
The more you know Mandarin, the less you have to rely
on dictionaries to continue with your studies; exactly the
opposite of English. The most dicult part of it are the
four tones, which can be mastered with perseverance and
practice. After that, everything is easier. Mandarin
practically has no grammar. Most words are
monosyllable, and those that aren't are mostly compound
words, so they are very easy to remember. Once you
know 300 characters plus the radicals, learning the rest is
like playing a game.
I disagree with the brotip above. It is a common
misconception that Mandarin "has no grammar;" as
mentioned above in the link, Mandarin is a highly analytic
 language, meaning syntax (word order) is extremely,
EXTREMELY important! You can get by with crappy
syntax in the beginning, but once you move past topics
like ordering food and introducing yourself and need to
use sentences that would have long clauses in English,
it's essential. While English and Mandarin both have a
set of little rules (like -ed for making past tense, or -ly for
adverbs), Mandarin also has grammar patterns, such as
-structure, ..., and vb., that are used often in
daily conversation. tl;dr Mandarin actually does have
grammar, it's important, but it's easily memorized.
If you progress far in Mandarin, you will encounter three
basic sets of grammar rules. First and most common is
spoken grammar, which is the least formal and nearly
always learned first. Second is "literary" or written (
) grammar; think of the dierence between daily
conversation and an academic paper in English. Third, is
ancient Chinese ( grammar , which, despite what
you may hear, you WILL run into frequently if you read any
serious Chinese literature or talk to college educated
folks. The old jokes about "Confucius say..." are based
on reality after all.)
Learn tone sandhi, a fancy term for how tones change
when in sequence.
Tones are very, very subtle in ordinary speech between
natives. If you did not grow up hearing them, you'll likely
never quite develop the same senstivity a native speaker
 has for them. This guy says that "only some tones are
pronounced" and that you don't really need to pronounce
them all, but this is untrue. OVEREMPHASIZE IN THE
BEGINNING!! I can't stress this enough. Yes, you will
sound silly. Yes, you will be laughed at a bit. Are you
worried about looking cool, or do you want to fucking
learn Chinese? If you can't speak fast because the tones
are too hard, then you shouldn't be speaking that fast
yet. Chinese is really hard, so remember that patience is
key! Your tones will become subtler and more relaxed as
you get more comfortable with them.
I know tones have been harped on here, but keep in mind
a dierence in tone in Chinese is like a dierence in
consonants in English (e.g. bat vs. cat, or cat vs. cab), so
you can't ignore them if you want to be understood.
Get a language partner. I really cannot emphasise this
enough. You can only learn so much out of a book, you
need to actually interact with and speak with Chinese
people. Chinese men have a habit of being shy and not
very open, i.e. not great for oral practise, so if at all
possible try and get a female language partner. The idea
is that you meet up for coee or whatever- she helps you
with Chinese, and you help her with English.
Remember Flashman's advice: The best way to learn any
language is in bed with a woman. Get a Chinese
girlfriend. From what I've seen, Flashman was right- the
guys in my class who managed to get Chinese gfs were
 the guys who progressed the quickest, not least because
they actually had a practical reason to learn the language
well.
The most eective way for most people to learn
characters is by using flashcards. Write the character on
one side, and the English and pinyin on the other.
Remember to study them forwards and backwards!
Alternatively, just download Pleco and use the built-in
flashcard software (its included in the Android version, but
for Iphone I think you have to buy it). Then, any time you
have a few minutes spare, quickly test yourself on cards.
Do it regularly (it takes like 2-5 mins tops) and the
characters will begin to stick in your mind
Other Edit
PlecoAbsolutely essential kit for a Mandarin student. It's
an incredibly handy (not to mention free) dictionary for
your phone, and even includes flashcard software and
OCR (optical recognition softare, i.e. you point your
camera at some characters and it tells you what they
mean), not mention example sentences for most words,
phrases and idioms. This will save you buying a pocket
translator in China, or trawling through a massive
"pocket" dictionary the whole time. GET THIS BEFORE
YOU DO ANYTHING!
Chinese Grammar Wiki- speaks for itself. An exceptionally
useful site
 Uz-translations (a very useful website that you should
definitely check out)
Nciku I can't believe nobody's added this, wow. This is
the best Chinese dictionary ever made. It's pretty
comprehensive and includes thousands (millions?) of
example sentences. You can also use your mouse to
write a character and search for it.
Zhongwen Mostly superseded by Nciku, but still has a
cool feature where you can see trees of Chinese
characters based on radical.
Chinese HacksEssential viewing- this site has loads of
info on idioms, technology resources (e.g. using OCR with
Pleco), vocab etc. Bookmark this.
Danwei Model Workers 2013A roundup of the best
China-related blogs and websites out there atm. Again,
bookmark this.
Danwei's Model Workers 2012Last years roundup of the
best China-related sites on the web according to Danwei.
Perapera: Tooltip translation addon similar to Rikaichan
(Japanese) for Mozilla Firefox, that supports Chinese.
Hover over Chinese text to display Hanyu Pinyin, English
translations, and Simplified/Traditional variants.
China SmackTranslations of stu trending on Chinese
internet, with the original text as well. Handy for swear
words, Chinese memes etc.
China HushSame sort of thing as China Smack, includes
 lots of stu that doesn't get into the Chinese media
Mop One of the largest Chinese internet forums, good for
learning netspeak and learning how younger people talk.
PhonemicaA really interesting project started by some
westerners where they recorded (and generally attempted
to transcribe) examples of various Chinese dialects, as
spoken by locals. Definitely worth a look to see the variety
of languages that we tend to refer to as 'Chinese'.
Ctext An online collection of ancient Chinese texts with a
(mediocre) translation helper. Uber-sinophiles only.
Gaoxiaoo.com A website like 9fag, but with Chinese
memes and jokes. Mildly amusing, fun to figure out.
Tudou The Chinese Youtube. Has lots of Chinese TV
shows, Chinese movies, and dubbed Western movies
availble for free, though the website quality isn't great and
the site is sometimes slow.
HorseDragonFishA website of short comics related to
Mandarin learning. Absolutely superb for vocab, and fun
to read as well. Make sure you don't miss the Chinese
Superman section as well, he's hiding somewhere on the
page...
Hacking ChineseNot to be confused with Chinese Hacks,
this is a really great site with tons of articles on aspects of
Chinese learning.
Sexy MandarinMandarin learning videos with added porn
to keep you interested
 Memrise.com A great, free website for learning characters
with the aid of user submitted mnemonics. Most of the
courses teach characters in stages (such as teaching you
" - Earth" and " - Field" before teaching you " -
Inside", which is made up of "" and ""), so a lot of the
vocabulary that you learn might not be particularly useful,
but it's a nice, thorough system.
FluentU Concise and easy-to-understand videos shown
along with lines of both characters and pinyin with tones.