This is a post for all those Germans out there. It contains a link to a chinese-german Dictionary. Therefore it is written in German as a part of the "München" Community Group.

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Wie lernt Ihr Vokabeln und Schriftzeichen?

Ich habe auf der Seite www.chdw.de eine ganz gute Lernhilfe gefunden. Dort findet man nicht nur ein chinesisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, sondern kann nach Anmeldung auch einen eigenen Vokabelschatz aufbauen. Dieser läßt sich dann als Karteikarten oder in Form von Schreibübungen mit Strichfolge ausdrucken.

Hi, I have a windows mobile cellphone with a stylus, and I would love to use it to practice writing chinese characters. Is anyone aware of software for this purpose? Thank you

For awhile now, I've been wanting to practice writing the characters that are in my ChinesePod vocabulary lists, and have wanted a practice writing grid which I can print out to practice these characters.

I've been working on developing a web tool that takes my ChinesePod exported vocabulary list (an XML file) and then creates a PDF file with a writing grid for those characters.  Here is a screenshot of what the final PDF looks like:

If you're interested in using this tool to create your own vocab writing PDFs, I've put the tool up at:

http://www.miryclay.com/chinesepod/vocab2grid.php

I hope that this tool will be helpful for you!  It has been for me.  If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to let me know.  Enjoy!

What do you recommend for a person living in the United States and learning Chinese for personal growth and does not expect to ever travel to China or do business with any Chinese companies. Most or all of the conversation would be for pleasure with Chinese Americans or other Chinese language students. Reading would be the local Chinese papers or restaurant menus and any opportunity to speak the language would probably be in Chinese restaurants or in the Chinese markets, culture centers or  China town. I took one semester of Mandarin Chinese and the instructor seemed adamant that we learn both simplified and traditional and at the time didn't seem so overwhelming in a classroom setting. However the class was cancelled after  the one semester and learning both styles on my own has become rather tedious. I am just wondering if I should buckle down and keep learning to read and write both or if it would be a better use of my time and energy to concentrate on one or the other, and if so which would be smartest given my current interest in learning. I noticed that the lessons give .pdf in both simplified and traditional so it is apparent that even after more than 50 years of simplified coming to be that traditional stills seems to have some place in Chinese language. Does anyone have any practical experience as if both are important or should one study just one or the other. And if I were to ever have an opportunity to visit some part of China would I be kicking my self for not studying both or find that I wasted my time studying both? What about school children in China, do they still learn both or is it just simplified? Are there other regions that do not recognize simplified besides Taiwan? 

This should be an interesting piece of news for anyone struggling with writing characters:

http://blog.skritter.com/2009/04/chinesepod-new-lists-users-guide-launch.html

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

Cut and paste the above link from the NYTimes about the on going debate about the future of Chinese written script.

Howdy

I want to learn how to write characters more efficiently.  I have tried the following:

1. Copying other people's work
2. Writing my own essays
3. Writing new words over three times (or so)
4. Memorizing radicals so it is simpler to assemble characters later

I can't figure out which is best.  Do any of you have an ideas?

Thanks.

http://blog.skritter.com/2009/08/teaming-up-with-chinesepod.html

!!!!

Hey, guys.

Just a quick note to let you know that the free Skritter integration (we call it "Skritter Lite") is now live.  Premium and above subscribers can see it by going to either (1) the Vocab Manager (click on "Me" at the top, then "Vocabulary"), where there is now a "Writing Practice" link, or (2) from individual Lesson pages, on the Vocabulary tabs (select words to practice, then click on the new "Writing Practice" button).

I will do a blog post about this soon.

Has anyone ever encountered a situation where a sentence pattern didn't unfold the way you thought, and it was due to the conflict between two or more sentence patterns?  I was thinking I understood "qilái" sort of, but what if you added "bǐ"? For example:

It's really hard to fly an airplane

fēijī fēi qìlái hén nán

It's hard to ride a bike

zìxíngchē zuò qìlái hén nán

It's hard to ride a bike, but even harder to fly an airplane.

zìxíngchē zuò qìlái hén nán bǐ fēijī fēi qìlái hén nán

No doubt there's plenty wrong with my example, but hopefully, the point is illustrated enough.

I guess i'm not quite clear when,  as a general set of grammar rules, when certain sentence patterns take precedent. 

Yes, the answer is the usual "it depends" and "it depends on the context of what you're trying to say", but I guess I was wondering about specific examples of when this occurs, or really more interestingly, what are the exceptions to the rules. Maybe there should be a series of Qing Wens to explain what happens when sentence patterns collide, and which sentence pattern takes precedent over another and when.

For those of you that are in Minnesota, The Ming Chiao chapter of the National Sumi-e society meets every other month. There are classes in calligraphy and brush technique and other aspects of oriental culture, both Chinese and Japanese. Lilly, the founder, is Chinese.

Meetings are usually around Rochestor or the Twin Cities.  The March meeting is tentatively scheduled for Elk River on the 20th. I will post more detail later.

I am a collogue student in Shanghai University. I was born in Shanghai, thus, my Chinese and Shanghai language is excellent. I am now looking for someone who came from English-language country and I really hope we can help each other to perfect the pronunciation and writing. Those who have work experience is prefered.

A friend just told me there is a character that if you learn how to write i, you can write any other charater. But she does not know what it is. Has anyone else heard this? More importantly, does anyone know what it is?

I just got this great book by Allison & Laurence Matthews, "Learning Chinese Characters."  It helps you learn/memorize the first 800 characters you need to get through HSK level A.  It uses mnemonic stories to help you remember the characters.  I'm through three chapters, about 40 characters, I am doing better remembering than I thought possible.  It is published by Tuttle and cost $20 from Amazon.

I wish I had it a year ago.

I just got this great book by Allison & Laurence Matthews, "Learning Chinese Characters."  It helps you learn/memorize the first 800 characters you need to get through HSK level A.  It uses mnemonic stories to help you remember the characters.  I'm through three chapters, about 40 characters, I am doing better remembering than I thought possible.  It is published by Tuttle and cost $20 from Amazon.

I wish I had it a year ago.