Ask HN: Any good resources for learning Chinese? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any good resources for learning Chinese?

12 pointsgtirloni7 comments

I have some CJK tools, but honestly think Pleco (https://www.pleco.com/, as a sibling commenter pointed out) is the best tool available by far. You can add-on as many dictionaries as you like.

I re-launched a website today Chinese Flashcards: https://www.hskflashcards.com/ - navigate cards with swipes on mobile, hjkl and arrow keys. It's in a very early state at the moment, though

- CLI tool for looking on hanzi characters here: https://cihai-cli.git-pull.com/

I split it into library components so you can use the stuff under the hood piecemeal if you do Python:

- https://cihai.git-pull.com/: python library for accessing cjk data

- https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com/ extract data from the Unicode’s Han Unification (UNIHAN) database (https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com/unihan.html)

HelloTalk app gives you immersion by constantly texting or voice calling Chinese users to practice language. I highly recommend. It's very easy to use it on a daily basis to keep seeing Chinese characters and also practice speaking.

I'm a Chinese and I'd recommend you to browse those Chinese specific websites/use Chinese apps. Following are some of them.

zhihu.com alternative to quara.com

weibo.com => twitter.com

baidu.com => google.com

douban.com => imdb.com (Why not watching some funny Chinese TV shows :))

douyin => tiktok

You may not retrieve correct information/opinion there, but it's a good way to learn Chinese language.

https://www.skritter.com for writing

Pleco for dictionary

HelloTalk for connecting with natives

Do you intend to learn writing Chinese or speaking Chinese? They are different.

Not OP but what are some good resources for learning to read and write Chinese?

Just grab any introduction to Chinese textbook, they are basically all the same. Get a pencil and paper and practice words. Once you get better make some small sentences. Repeat.

This is how I learned Japanese (including the around 1.5k Chinese characters they use). This was pre-internet, but I don't think the internet really brings much, you can't beat a textbook, pencil and paper.

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