Show HN: Learn Chinese Through Novels

I studied Chinese for 2 years, and I've been searching for something like this for a while. However I think that this novel (Ah Q) is too difficult for a beginner.

I installed the "Zhongwen Chinese Popup Dictionary" extension for Chrome. It kind of works -- as you hover over characters it shows the definition. But I don't have any good content! I can't find any good beginner level Chinese stories online!

For people with intermediate proficiency in Chinese, I want to point out that Project Syndicate (http://www.project-syndicate.org/), a website which is basically a bunch of Op-eds from a host of famous individuals, has its articles translated into Chinese.

For example:

English: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ruble-collapse-c...

Chinese: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ruble-collapse-c...

Not a bad way to pick up extra vocabulary, if you read them side-by-side!

If anyone is looking for a similar tool that works with any Chinese content you like, and is performant even for long texts, you might be interested in my Chinese Text Analyser: http://www.chinesetextanalyser.com/

It also remembers words you know and don't know and can give you an approximation of how well you'll know a given piece of text before you start reading it (once it has a fair idea of your vocabulary).

Currently Windows only, but it runs under Wine on Linux and an OSX version will be ready soon.

I've spent a huge portion of my life learning how humans learn languages and how to teach them better. I spent my early adulthood in Taiwan where I became fluent speaker and pretty comfortable reader, too. The approach this site uses is far superior to the flashcard vocab word-driven approach taken by duolingo, memrise and so many others.

In my experience, at the beginner level the most important thing is getting a good grasp on phonics and learning some vocabulary. But once a student is even lower intermediate it's a way better to spend time doing Extensive Reading instead of vocab drills. Extensive Reading—reading that is easy enough no dictionary is needed—is still great for building vocabulary, and it teaches colocations, grammar and the target language's culture, too. As ER builds up vocabulary, more and more radio and podcasts become comprehensible. In the long run, lots and lots of input (both reading and listening) and opportunities to use the language extemporaneously in real life is pretty much assured to lead to full bilingual proficiency.

The interesting thing about this app, is it just might allow students to transition from more formal study and into Extensive Reading at an earlier point than they otherwise would. The risk is that students would continue choosing books with a lot of words they don't understand and rob themselves of actually "reading" in its natural sense.

I've done my own manual version of this kind of service to learn Chinese. Would definitely pay for something like this!

The biggest problem for me is the availability of Chinese audio books (specifically, non-abridged versions - anyone have recommended sources?) When your reading level is high enough to read novels, the English translation is no longer that important - if I could just get the Chinese audio and text I would be really happy. It looks like this is targeted at beginners. Not sure how helpful it will be for them, but I see a lot of potential for more intermediate/advanced learners. There's always that gap in language learning between text books and real texts that has to be overcome. I think this kind of service could be great for that.

Right now I'm reading Tian Long Ba Bu (天龍八部), and have gone through the first 200 pages like this (simultaneous reading/listening), and it's been really helpful.

Also, a feature request: give an option to display the text in Traditional or Simplified Chinese. There are browser extension to use this, but it'd me more convenient to not have to use it on every page.

Chinese is not only about written language. Actually there are two grammar system, written and spoken language. One can learn how to read through novels but not how to speak.

I'm really interested in learning chinese, and the interface here is fantastic, well done. But a project like this really lives and dies on the quality of the content, I think - it needs a good set of interesting novels to really get people engaged, and I don't think "The True Story of Ah Q" quite cuts it. Having some popular novels would be amazing. If the framework allows that to be done easily, I'm sure it'll just be a matter of time.

Nice work!

I agree with other commenters, this is genius idea but all depends on the available content. Looking at the story, it's not interesting to me, so it'll not keep me occupied and willing to learn.

I'm searching for something like this but frankly there's nothing as far as I know. The best so far is Chinese Breeze series - example book

http://www.amazon.com/Whom-Chinese-Breeze-300-word-Level/dp/...

with stories a little, little better than usual. They, though, require that you know at least ~100 basic hanzis to be able to comfortably read. I have 3 or 4 books, I don't remember, and they are fine (just please, a little better story!) Each is around 20-40 pages so not much but kindle versions are also really cheap.

The way I worked with it, was to convert mobi to html and put on local server. That way I could use Zhongwen (mentioned by alexgolive) plugin to help me with words I didn't know.

If anyone knows something similar, please share! I love to read Hanzi, it's super fun when all the spiders :) suddenly start making sense

About a month ago I posted about a great science fiction book that was recently translated from Mandarin to English (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8607914). It would be amazing if this tool could incorporate content like "The Three-Body Problem." I realize that international publishing rights is a complex subject to tackle, which is probably why "the True Story of Ah Q" was chosen for this initial release (it's in the public domain, or at least it looks like the english version is: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lu-xun/1921/12/ah-q/). However, as many others have commented, this great tool will probably not be used much without great content.

I've been using Pleco with the text reader plugin on my mobile with great success. You can load any text file and read and bookmark like a regular book reading app. You can tap on any word to see the meaning and pronunciation, and add an unknown word to a flashcard deck.

With regard to content, I think the Hacker News crowd would most appreciate the San Ti (三体) trilogy (Three Body Problem trilogy). It's the first highly successful Chinese hard SciFi, and every self respecting Chinese nerd has read it. It's a fascinating story, and has a lot of Chinese culture and history mixed in as well.

Worth mentioning that Popup Chinese has an extensive archive of short stories, with full contextualized (i.e. not dictionary) definitions and accompanying audio recordings:

http://popupchinese.com/lessons/short-stories

Selections cover a range of material including classical texts like Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as more contemporary and foreign fiction in translation. Materials can be access without signing up, but creating a free account enables click-to-add vocab lists, SRS study tools, and more.

The novel used in the sample is a very bad choice. The author has his special style, hopelessly outdated.

Chinese novels are not easy for beginners, my suggestion is to go with novels that're translated into Chinese from English, like Sherlock Holmes. The translator uses good Chinese, and the stories are familiar, therefore you will have an easy time understanding the texts. After all, it's the language you are interested.

To be able to appreciate Chinese novels like a native, especially classic ones, you'll need years of study, starting from Chinese history, classic literature, ...

This is amazing, although it looks too advanced without at least intermediate proficiency in Chinese. Would love a few different difficulty levels.

Does anyone know a Spanish learning tool similar to this?

Ha! Coincidentally, I was watching a great TED talk the other day on learning the building blocks of Chinese letters! The talk is short but great and inspired me to look into the language: http://www.ted.com/talks/shaolan_learn_to_read_chinese_with_...

Here is the link for the website: http://chineasy.org

Nice app. I would also suggest http://lingq.com, it is similar but with a huge amount of content for every level. It has text for something like 10 languages, chinese included.

Other similar sites (but not so much content like lingq.com): http://readlang.com/ http://lingocracy.com/

Super interesting. I'd love to learn Chinese and be able to do this one day: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/22/mark-zuckerber...

Though, I'm not sure reading novels like the website suggests is the right approach when starting from nothing.

"Ah Q"? It's by Lu Xun, you know what? Even native Chinese high school students fear writings by Lu Xun, mostly due to the difficulty level.

Just curious, but why is the symbol for this a Japanese katakana チ (chi)? I assume it goes with "chicory," but it's Japanese...

This is a really great concept. I hope you'll be adding a whole range of other books in the future for learners of all level.

Seems to be like: http://www.lingq.com/

看起来不错。有一个小问题：favicon不是一个正式的汉字，只是一个偏旁部首。

Is there anything like this for Japanese? Just Googled but didn't find anything interesting.

Nice work! I'm thinking about buying the novel but I would like to be able to use Paypal.

Come on, where is the option to choose traditional chinese? :P

I think you need a Chinese friend. Haha...