Peanut Buttering

Tools for learning Chinese

Learning characters:

  1. Anki - the classic Spaced Repetition flashcard software. It has the fanciest algorithm, and tons of high quality shared decks , including audio.
  2. HanziHero - wacky but effective visual mnemonic system for remembering the meanings and sounds of characters
    1. For context on how to use this system, read about the Marilyn Method
  3. rtega.be and Hanzi Yuan -- for an alternate source of character mnemonic / etymology

Dictionary:

  1. On iOS, you just need Pleco
  2. Pleco is coming soon to Mac at time of writing. But until then, install CC-EDICT into Dictionary.app and use the native Mac dictionary
  3. Yabla - it's a dictionary, but more importantly it gives a bunch of real-life example sentences, which you can even click into to watch them spoken on video

Textbook:

  1. For simplified characters, the HSK textbooks and workbooks ($) are great
  2. For traditional characters and Taiwan-specific vocabulary, A Course in Contemporary Chinese ($) is pretty good

Grammar:

  1. Allset Learning Chinese Grammar Wiki

Listening:

  1. You can download accompanying audios for the textbook and workbook for either the HSK series or A Course in Contemporary Chinese

Speaking:

  1. iTalki ($) this is a great source of native speakers and language teachers to have conversations with, at relatively affordable prices

Reading:

  1. Duchinese ($) - an extensive library of graded readers for different levels, where each text also has accompanying audio from a native speaker

Other tools:

  1. Enable Trackpad handwriting for characters on Mac. Useful for looking up characters you have only seen visually, or for occasional handwriting practice
  2. Use Alfred on Mac (or comparable software) to set up quick- search shortcuts to easily pull up the one of the many web tools listed above for a given character
  3. Claude or another AI - great for getting quick feedback like "Is this an appropriate way to say 'If he is cooking dinner then I will leave early' in Chinese? <insert your attempted phrasing>"
  4. Google Translate - check if your attempted Chinese phrasing is accurate by seeing if if it translates to English the way you expect

I tried but stopped using:

  1. Remembering the Hanzi book by James Heisig - the mnemonics are top-notch, but it's a waste of time to learn character meaning without learning their sounds too. Use HanziHero instead
  2. Learning Chinese Characters book - I thought the Giant/Fairy/Teddy/Dwarf system for tone mnemonics was weird
  3. [Mandarin Companion]([Remembering the Hanzi]) - these are fine graded readers, but you get much more bang for your buck with Duchinese
  4. Reading random internet comment threads or watching videos - this is time you can spend learning instead