Is there a free resource for learning Chinese? 

In China, more than 70 million people from 55 distinct national minorities live, and although each minority has its own spoken language, many minority groups lack a distinguishable written medium for their languages. Standard Chinese is the most widely spoken language in China. China is one of the world’s most linguistically rich nations. Despite the fact that many officials and commoners spoke different Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became prevalent at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of Chinese in southern China did not speak Mandarin. Since the 17th century, several efforts and attempts have been made to make pronunciation adhere to the Beijing style. To accomplish this, the Empire established Orthoepy Academies. These efforts, however, were largely unsuccessful. The Nanjing Mandarin standard was eventually replaced in the imperial court during the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty in the late nineteenth century.

Learning through apps

Duolingo is one of the most popular free online language learning resources. The website teaches a variety of languages, including Chinese. It offers extensive written lessons and dictation, as well as gamification to make learning more enjoyable. There is also a paid version available.

Structured Classes

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institution for the United States Federal Government’s employees in the foreign affairs community. They have online public domain versions of their language courses.

The BBC Chinese offers a number of free resources to help you get started with your Chinese language studies. You have the option of using the mini-guide, Chinese for children, primary mandarin, or streaming TV and radio shows. These lessons, which include slideshows, tips, cultural notes, challenges, and videos, allow you to become acquainted with the language and gradually incorporate it into your daily speech and communication.

Alison Chinese

Begin with a brief overview of the language and its dialects, and then work on pronunciation using a modern and important alphabet known as Pinyin. Following that, you will learn how to greet and introduce yourself to others. There is a strong emphasis on practical skills, and each lesson makes use of audio and scripts to make the experience as simple and enjoyable as possible. In addition, important cultural and grammatical points are highlighted and explained.

Loecsen offers a beginner’s course of some twenty languages, completely free. You’ll study real, everyday, travel-friendly expressions, nuances of each language, memorize expressions more easily through illustrations, and be able to practice with the “Express QUIZ “. This course is designed for people who want to be self-sufficient without having to go through a lengthy learning process. The method proposed is very simple: within each theme, you must first understand the expressions or vocabulary and then memorise them.

Learn With Oliver is an online learning tool centred around a spaced repetition flashcard system. Learning with Oliver would mean that you would receive an email from LearnWithOliver every day. It’s free, and it lets me learn a few new words and see how they’re used in context. (They also offer a premium service, but that is not free.)

DigMandarin.com is a site that helps people discover how to learn Mandarin Chinese best. It helps you find something that will encourage, inspire, and perhaps challenge you in your Mandarin Chinese learning.

China Dialogue is a bilingual blog about news and social issues in China. Every article is available in both English and Chinese, making it an excellent study tool.

Omy Bilingual Lifestyle Blog

Omy is a bilingual Chinese-English blog based in Singapore. It’s a lifestyle publication with many shareable articles for your timeline. It includes light reading on topics such as news, entertainment, food, and lifestyle advice.

Beyond Chopsticks is a bilingual Chinese-English food and cooking blog run by Canadian foodies Stephanie and Henry Yuen.

It includes restaurant reviews for the Vancouver, BC area, as well as wine reviews and food travel articles from Japan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere.

Children’s Books Forever

Reading is a great way to learn a new language, as you’ve probably heard. And, when you’re just starting out, reading children’s books is the best thing you can do. Children’s Books Forever offers free Chinese children’s books.

1000 Most Common Chinese Words. Start learning Chinese by learning the 1000 most common Chinese words if you want to get the most bang for your buck. A list of those words can be found here.

Slow Chinese This website is a mirror of the old www.slow-chinese.com website, which hosted the Slow Chinese podcast.

Chinese Pod 101 is a cutting-edge learning platform that includes audio and video lessons. The free account allows you to view the ten most recent lessons.

Mandarinhouse.com

It is critical to practise your Chinese listening skills, just as it is with any other language. At the lower levels, you can practise listening with the MP3 files that come with your textbook, as well as some HSK practise tests. It can be difficult to make progress if you only know 10% of the vocabulary in a news report, but by using HSK practise tests, you can adjust the vocabulary difficulty according to your level.

YouTube

Listening to Chinese music is an excellent way to learn the language. TWD Music Channel is a channel that offers top Chinese songs of 2021.

Spotify playlist

Spotify offers Top 100 Chinese Songs throughout all genres with continued updates. Mostly modern songs.

Pleco is a dictionary that will help introduce and improve Chinese writing, in particular.

Skritter is also great for memorizing and practising writing characters. Although speaking/listening is more important in the beginning, you may find the characters offer an interesting glimpse into the Chinese culture and way of thinking.

Google Translate is a free online translation service. Google Translate allows you to enter text in one language and have it translated into another language of your choice. Collins Free Online Translator is another option.

Collins Online Dictionary is a free online dictionary. You can look up words in Chinese and translate them into English using the online dictionary, or vice versa. To assist with pronunciation, the dictionary provides audio and the word for each entry, and is spelt in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Forvo. If there is a word in your target language that you are unsure how to pronounce, simply go to the Forvo website. Forvo is the Internet’s largest pronunciation guide website, and it was named one of Time Magazine’s 50 best websites of 2013.

To practise 

Lang-8 is a social network for language exchange that is completely free. Submit text in any language you’re learning, and a native speaker will correct it as well as leave helpful comments and feedback.

Using Flashcards

Anki is an excellent SRS app that will assist you in memorising vocabulary words faster than traditional memorization techniques. Quizlet is another online flashcard programme that allows you to play games while learning and take tests to track your progress.

The connection between Chinese and the other Sino-Tibetan languages is still unknown and under investigation, as is the effort to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Most linguists identify all of the varieties of spoken Chinese that comprise the Sinitic branch as the Sino-Tibetan language family (spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China) and claim that there was an initial language, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended, close to Proto-Indo-European. 

There’s an amazing new way to learn Mandarin! Want to see what everyone’s talking about! Click here.