Learning Mandarin
Out of context: Reply #4
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- BuddhaHat0
If you are using iPhone, then imo the hands down best app for practicing writing, reading, tones and definitions is Skritter. It's a monthly subscription service for the full version, but completely worth it. Their developers haven't polished the Android version of it off yet, so I still use my iPhone 4S just for practicing with this app. They have shitloads of textbooks in their database with the vocabulary loaded so you can practice exactly the vocabulary you need, and also vocab lists that other people have curated related to specific topics.
Pleco operates better as a dictionary, and the full version with training packages is over US$100 right now. I haven't tried the extra packages, but I'm not sure it could be as good as Skritter on iOS. It is probably the best smartphone dictionary out there right now for the free version though, so get a copy.
The absolute best book I have found for understanding the weird grammatical structure of Chinese is:
and the Workbook for it:
Another really good one for explaining the minutiae of grammar is this one:
There are funny rules with Chinese that westerners aren't used to, like tonal changes in specific character patterns, different measure words used for different types of objects, etc and you just have to learn them by heart, along with the characters and pronunciation. These books provide some of the most succinct explanations, and the exercises in the workbook are straightforward.
As you practice with Skritter you get an audio playback of the character you are practicing, so you can learn how to pronounce them more accurately. After that, apply the knowledge of grammatical structure to whatever vocabulary you have built up, and off you go.
Mandarinposter.com also has some cool 1000 most commonly used character posters:
我祝你学习好运！
- yes 5 difrent tones that drastically change the meaning of a word. they are represented as one of these (im forgetting one i think) - / \ V above a vowel.gilgamush
- take for instance the word 'ma'. it can mean 3 difrent things depending on the intonation. woman, horse, or a participle used to signify a questiongilgamush
- check out this link. very helpfull site
http://www.chinese-t…gilgamush