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forestsstudies · 10 months

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What are those apps you usually post in your productivity updates?

hi! here's a breakdown of apps i use, as well as websites and other resources i've used/use for my learning (mainly chinese, though some of these resources can be used for other languages as well).

apps i use every day:

dot languages: this is a chinese-specific app where you select your hsk level, and then read articles at that level. there's a pop-up dictionary, an option to show pinyin, post-article vocab practice (audio, matching, translation, and writing), and the option to have your articles either in simplified or traditional.

TOFU learn: a blend between flashcards and writing, you can find decks for various things, including hsk level-specific decks, and you learn new vocab with the stroke order and then write each new term three times—once with an overlay (so the term is visible), and then two times from memory. there's also a review function, which helps you practice terms you've already learnt, and each term has audio that goes with it. i use it for chinese, but there's decks for esperanto, french, german, italian, japanese, korean, norweigian, portuguese, russian, spanish, swedish, and turkish.

the pleco dictionary app: my favourite chinese dictionary app; allows you to translate from english to chinese or chinese to english, has options for writing, radical, vocal, and keyboard entry, and has both traditional and simplified characters.

ankiapp: this one's not particularly complicated; it's a flashcard app, where you can make your own decks or download decks other people have made. it uses a spaced repetition system to help you remember terms—you rate yourself from worst to best on how well you remembered the term, and that determines how many times it'll pop up afterwards. it also gives you an overall grade for each deck, which is a nice way to measure your progress.

duolingo: probably my least favourite of all of the apps i use; the chinese course isn't the best, and now that they've removed the notes/grammar information option, there's no way for people who aren't already fairly familiar with the language and its inner workings to learn them if they exclusively use duolingo. it's okay for maintenance practice, though, but i'm already almost finished with the entire course and i would say it barely reaches to lower hsk 4, so i wouldn't say it's a good tool if you're more advanced.

apps i have but use less often:

readibu: this is sort of like dot in that it's an app for reading in chinese with a pop-up dictionary. however, that's where the similarities end; readibu has novels, short stories, and articles aimed at children, and each of those are further split into genres. readibu also lets you add your own web-pages and read them on the app, so you can use its pop-up dictionary with them. it's aimed more to intermediate and upper intermediate learners, with hsk levels ranging from hsk 4 to hsk 6. the only reason i rate dot above readibu is because dot has a larger range of levels (hsk 1 through hsk 6 i believe? but it may go higher) and exercises built in to help you learn the vocab.

the chairman's bao: also a chinese reading app, though if you use the free version, you only get one sample article per hsk level (hsk 1 - hsk 6). i believe that every so often you get a new sample article for each level, but i'm not sure what the interval on that is. it also has a pop-up dictionary and a flashcard option for saved vocab.

du chinese: another chinese reading app; it has articles divided into newbie through master (six levels in total, though they don't line up perfectly with the hsk in my experience), and new articles are free for a certain period of time before becoming locked behind a paywall. there's a pop-up dictionary and a vocab review/test option for vocab you save.

memrise: flashcards with audio, depending on whether you're using an official course or a user-generated deck. decent, but it can get repetitive.

hellotalk: not exclusively chinese, but i believe it started off mainly aimed that way. you set your language, and then your target language, and then you can talk to native speakers who have your language as their target language. potentially incredibly useful, but if you're like me and extremely introverted you may have a hard time using this app, since it requires a lot of one-on-one interaction.

slowly: i haven't actually gotten around to using this, but it's sort of like a digital penpal app, as i understand it. you can learn more about it here.

websites and other miscellanea:

this massive mega drive by @salvadorbonaparte (languages, linguistics, translation studies, and more).

this masterpost by @loveletter2you (linguistics, languages, and language learning books/textbooks).

this masterpost on chinese minority literature by @zaobitouguang

the integrated chinese textbooks by cheng and tsui, which are the textbooks i use for self-study—there's textbooks and workbooks, as well as character workbooks (though these can easily be cut out without suffering from the loss).

mandarinbean: graded readers, hsk 1 - hsk 6, with a pop-up dictionary and the option to read in traditional or simplified

chinese reading practice: reading, beginner through advanced (three levels), with a pop-up dictionary and some additional notes included on vocab and language-specific things non-native speakers might struggle with or not know.

hsk reading: graded readers, hsk 1 - hsk 6, divided into three sections (beginner, intermediate, advanced). does not have a pop-up dictionary, but does have an option to translate the text, post-reading quizzes, and notes on important vocab with example sentences.

my chinese reading: reading from beginner to advanced (four levels); has a pop-up dictionary, the option to play an audio recording of the passage you're reading, notes on key words, things that are difficult to translate, grammar, and post-reading comprehension questions.

the heavenly path notion website, which i would say is one of the best resources i've ever found, with a massive number of guides, lists of chinese media in a variety of forms, and general resources.

chinese character stroke order dictionary: what it says on the tin; will show you the stroke order for a given character.

hanzigrids: allows you to generate your own character worksheets. i use this very frequently, and can recommend it. the only downside is if you want to create multiple pages at once, you have to pay; however this can easily be circumnavigated by creating only one sheet at a time. you can download the sheet as a pdf and print it out for personal use.

21st century chinese poety: a resource i only came across recently; has a massive collection of contemporary chinese poetry, including translations; much more approachable than classical poetry, which can often be incredibly dense and hard to parse due to the writing style.

zhongwen pop-up dictionary: if you're reading something in chinese on a website that doesn't have a pop-up dictionary, this is a must. i've never encountered any words that it doesn't have a translation for so far, including colloquialisms/slang. i use it to read webnovels, and it's been a fantastic tool. you can also save vocab by hitting the r key when you're hovering over a word/phrase, making it easy to go back and add terms to your flashcard deck(s).

chinese reading world: a website put together by the university of iowa; split into three levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced), with thirty units per level, and ten modules per unit, as well as multiple proficiency tests per level. each module is split into three parts: a pre-reading vocab quiz, the reading with a number of comprehension questions based on it, and a post-vocab reading quiz. it also rates you in relation to someone with a native proficiency based on how quickly you read and answer the comprehension questions, and how many vocab questions you get right.

jiaoyu baike: an extensive chinese-to-chinese dictionary, put out by the taiwanese ministry of education. you can find an extensive write-up on it here, by @linghxr.

social media etc: see this post by @rongzhi.

qianpian: another chinese-to-chinese dictionary; @ruhua-langblr has a write-up on it here.

this writeup on zero to hero by @meichenxi; initially aimed at chinese learning, but now has expanded greatly.

music rec's: this masterpost by @linghxr.

tv/film: youtube is a great place to find chinese tv shows and films, and they often have english subtitles. if you can't find something on there, though, you can probably find it either on iqiyi or asianvote, which have both chinese and other asian shows and films (though you'll want an adblock if you're going to use the latter). i use these a lot to watch things, and have discovered a lot of media through these, and then novels through those when i went searching to see what they were adapted from.

polylogger: a website for logging the amount of time/type of language study you do. has a wide variety of languages, and the option to follow other people. still, it's a fairly basic site.

#mandarin #langblr resources #saving for later

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forestsstudies · 1 year

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never in my life would I have thought I would say the words "Chinese is easy to read" with my very own mouth but here we are

#after studying japanese #i came to the conclusion learning to read chinese is quite simple #language studies #mandarin chinese

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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I've studied kanji and am now studying traditional chinese characters but I happened to read a document with simplified characters and I gotta say

they are so ugly compared to the former two

#i don't mean to be mean #but reading these is just ugh #i suddenly have a lot more motivation to learn the traditional characters #mandarin chinese #language studies #mandarin studyblr

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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If you start studying a language that has a different alphabet (russian, korean, chinese etc), consider starting to learn the alphabet as soon as possible

it will affect your pronounciation and the way you learn vocabulary

learning to read well also takes a lot of time so the sooner you start the better

#usually in study books etc #they start teaching to read a new alphabet super late #i personally like to learn it first #also in like japanese and chinese #start using the characters right away #yes it can feel overwhelming but it will get easier quite fast #language studies #studyblr #language study

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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I started learning bopomofo and I'm just

screaming, crying

#even learning traditional characters hasn't been so painful #i'm persisting only with the knowledge that i learned hiragana and katakana just fine #and i want to study thai some day so #this is nothing compared to that #but man i'm suffering #mandarin chinese #mandarin studyblr #language studies #studyblr #mandarin #bopomofo

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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about the tags on that japanese learning post...could you share the good mandarin website? please :)

[In reference to my tags on this post.]

I'm happy to, nonny! Thank you for asking. ^_^

The site I use is https://www.dong-chinese.com/. They also have a nifty app that makes writing the hanzi so much easier, because you can just draw on your phone screen with your finger.

There are reading, writing, and speaking exercises, so you're getting the whole package. The free version lets you do two lessons/quizzes per day (1 every 12 hours), which I honestly find is just the right pace for me. They usually introduce somewhere between 3 and 6 new hanzi per lesson combined with review of all the ones you learned before. They introduce hanzi in reading lessons first, then in the subsequent writing lesson you learn to write it. There is also a really good dictionary and a pronunciation guide that has SAVED MY ASS more than once. You also have a choice between simple and traditional characters. I think you can also flip back and forth and learn both. And if you choose to just do simple characters (I did), then they also at least provide you with the traditional character next to it, so you can see what it would look like.

(Gonna stick a readmore here because it's getting a bit long...)

There are also a lot of videos provided to watch. And for each video, they show you what percentage of it you should understand based on the hanzi you know, so you can pick one to watch that you'll understand completely or that may be a challenge. (Heads up, though, some of the kids' songs videos are VERY catchy and you WILL find yourself humming them under your breath at odds moments of the day. ...this HAS left me singing softly under my breath in public "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Where's my friend? Where? Where? There they are, There's my friend!" so if any of our faculty who speak Mandarin have caught me at it, they probably got a good chuckle out of it. ;D)

But yeah, it's been working really well for me, and I've not really felt the need to get the paid version, mostly because doing 1-2 lessons per day has felt like just about the right speed for me in terms of learning, and I don't want to tempt myself to cram. :P The ONLY thing that they don't have that I kind of wish they did is the ability to go back and practice older lessons. Or if they do, I haven't found it yet. Because even though you get review in every lesson you do, as the hanzi start to stack up, there's only so much review they can do without making each lesson ridiculously long.

But I've been working at it steadily and consistently for about a month and I have about 65 hanzi under my belt and at least 45-50 of those are pretty solid with the newest ones still a bit shaky but getting there. So, that's... not bad for a month? I"m already finding myself picking out a LOT more words and phrases in c-dramas and some even without the subtitles. ^_^ (Breakthrough moment was during an episode of Ultimate Note when someone was yelling 我的书!! (wǒ de shū!!/My book!!) over and over and I hadn't been looking up, but my head snapped up and I was all "I UNDERSTOOD THAT. I UNDERSTOOD IT WITHOUT A SUBTITLE. :D :D :D :D :D" It was a very proud moment. ;D) So, yeah, it's been working really well for me. ^_^ If you give it a try, you'll have to come back and let me know if it works for you!

#saving for later #mandarin studyblr

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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A beautiful song I found while studying!

#taiwanese pop #mandarin studyblr #music

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forestsstudies · 2 years

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Here's a list (with ramblings) of all the languages I've studied, in a chronological order:

English - started studying English around 13 years ago so I'm basicly fluent. I like English, I use it as much as I do my native tongue. One thing about English, it is the only language where I still have to google spellings all the time because it just makes zero sense...

Swedish - I've studied Swedish over 6 years, it's my third best language (not counting native language). I like it because it is familiar but it has one of the most difficult grammars I've studied. I can understand written text very well, even academic writing, but I struggle with speaking since I've had so little practise

German - I've studied it for around 5 years, German is one of my favorites since I really like how it sounds. The grammar is also very difficult and it is par with Swedish on how frustrating it is to learn. My German skills aren't very good despite how long I've studied it

French - I studied French for two courses in high school so I can't really say that I know French, though I do understand written French somewhat since I know so many other Europan languages. French has a special place in my heart because I absolutely love how damn sassy it sounds. Will definitely continue studying it later. Also, people make a lot of fun about French spelling/pronounciation but it makes a lot more sense than English spelling ever will

Latin - I studied Latin for one course and absolutely hated it. The only language I actively detest. It's the ugliest language I've had the displeasure of hearing, -100/10, do not recommend

Japanese - okey so I've only actively studied Japanese for 1,5 years but I had an exchange year there (2019-2020) so it is my second best language after English. I love Japanese, it is the language of my soul. I think the basics are the easiest among the languages I've studied but it does have it's difficult points as well. I'm not actively studying Japanese atm (tho I'm using it almost daily) but I will continue my studies at some point to reach fluency

Mandarin - I started studying Mandarin like, a week ago, because I was accepted into a university in Taiwan and will be moving there later this year! Mandarin is propably the biggest challenge for me, I don't think it's necessarily that difficult but it is very different to the other languages I've studied. The pronounciation is very difficult though, this is my first time studying a tonal language and damn it is hard. Also, because they use the traditional characters in Taiwan I am trying to learn those over the simplified once, which has caused me some struggle. But because I'm already used to studying Japanese characters it is not too overwhelming.

Right now I'm focusing solely on Mandarin so this blog will mostly be about my Mandarin studies for now!

#as a bonus #other languages i want to learn are #spanish thai korean italian #long post #ish?#language studies #studyblr #mandarin chinese #japanese #swedish #german #english #french #latin

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