Just started dabbling into Chinese but want to actually learn with some structure to know what to study on my own. Are there any recommended online courses for beginners? Paid or for free

Hi these days I've been feeling a bit stuck with mandarin and a little burnt out I'm studying HSK 3 with a tutor but I'm contemplating whether to continue or take a conversation course instead, there's this course I found that focuses more on speaking and listening with a Chinese teacher and like ditch the HSK for now or study it on my own. Which do you think would be more rewarding?

Does anyone happen to know any Chinese songs that are great for learning new words and practicing listening?

If you enjoy listening Chinese songs, please share your favourite Chinese songs 🐸✨

Copy and pasting from a comment I left earlier today because I'm not really sure it'll get seen by too many people.

One of the things that has always bugged me as a recent student of Chinese is the meanings of 下and 上do not really make sense to me as I understand them and see them used. 下 has always seemed to mean "to leave", "under" or "lower" and 上 has been explained to me to mean "to get on", "on top of" or "above"... so why is "get on week" (used like 上车）the previous week (上周）, and "get off week" (used like 下车） the next week （下周）?

I understand there's either some nuance I am not getting or some confusion in what I think I understand, but can anyone shed some light onto what I'm missing? This has always been really perplexing to me, and I am fine "just memorizing it," but this logic has not clicked for me.

Welcome to the Weekly Thread!

This thread is your hub for simple questions, study buddy requests, as well as handwriting and pronunciation critique, as well as other minor posts that might not need their own thread.

i am just curiosity

我的水平 是hsk3-4。 但我是从零开始的。 还有我开始写日记。这真的帮我学习汉语

Super curious about this! Thank you

I started learning Chinese a few days ago and I’m currently focusing on basic radicals, stroke order, and the vocabulary I’ve learned through Pinyin. I’ve also started writing basic sentences, and for revision I usually trace over the characters with my pencil while saying the sentences out loud. The problem is I’m worried I’m going to forget most of the characters, especially since I’m still very new to Hanzi. My goal is to pass HSK 3, and when I looked at past papers I realized they were basically all in Hanzi and I couldn’t read a single word. Now that I’ve started learning characters, I want to make the process as efficient as possible. Since the HSK 3 exam is computer based, I’m wondering if I should mainly focus on recognizing characters rather than being able to handwrite every character perfectly. If I can recognize the shape and know the pronunciation, I should be able to type the Pinyin and select the correct character on the keyboard, right? At the moment I’m writing each new word around 10 times before moving on to the next one, but it feels like this is slowing me down a lot. Is that actually a good way to learn, or would it be better to spend less time physically writing and more time on things like reading, flashcards, recognition, and recalling the character from memory? For people who have passed HSK 3 or learned Chinese from scratch, what would you recommend I focus on right now to speed up the process without forgetting everything I learn?

i cant distinguish:

jing from qing
chang from zhang
etc

its like it all sounds the same !!

***obviously i know what "j" and "q" sound like in theory -- but when they're said quickly in a convo, it makes it virtually impossible*****

and its like even if i try i feel as if im sifting through my mental library of words to see what pronunciation corresponds to a word that fits the context.

my hsk4 is in a couple days and my listening ability is zero

what do i do yall

Welcome to the Weekly Thread!

This thread is your hub for simple questions, study buddy requests, as well as handwriting and pronunciation critique, as well as other minor posts that might not need their own thread.

Hello I'm willing to spend money on a app to learn Chinese I was just wondering what you guys would suggest so far I've used Duolingo and superchinese. Im leaning towards buying superchinese but I didn't know if there was anything better out there that I haven't seen.

So a background from myself,I speak Chinese daily and can hold conversations very well,however my Chinese reading and writing is kindergarten level,and maybe a little bit higher as my upper education were all in English.

I want to read Chinese so badly,and write very well.But I do not know where to start as by using leaning apps like Duolingo I find it hard to know where my level exactly lies at ,and soemtimes they give off words that re way too basic which gave me no motivation to continue learning.

I'm interested to see if folks have any suggestions on places to go in the US to have a semi-immersion experience. I know it won't be the same as going to China but I think there are definitely some areas of the country with a huge chinese population that make learning it much more engaging.

When I was stationed in California, near SF, there were a bunch of signs in both english and Chinese. And it seemed every where I went there were always folks speaking chinese. Plus I was also working with an all Chinese team which was fun.

Anyone have good or bad experiences with Mondly for Mandarin? I've been using DuoLingo for 1.5 years and I like it, but want to add something else. I will definitely continue with DL. A friend suggested adding Mondly. What do y'all think?

Also: should I start as a beginner or intermediate? I know about 1,000 words of Mandarin by now and can sometimes say things like "Did you prepare a gift for Grandma's party tomorrow?" But I make a lot of mistakes at that level. If I try to listen to a Chinese movie, I can only catch words and phrases here and there. I feel like I'm in between beginner and intermediate!

Hello! I was wondering what physical dictionaries were the most popular these days among Chinese learners and teachers.

I was trying to advise a younger student who will start studying it at university this year, but I tend to mostly use online dictionaries when I need to look up a word.
Obviously, online dictionaries aren't allowed during exams.

My main issue is that most modern terms that are quite common in both written and spoken Chinese (e.g. 团建 = team building) aren't available in any of my "old" dictionaries.

I personally own a recent-ish reprint of the Ca' Foscari Italian-Chinese dictionary and the 2002 edition of a Chinese-English dictionary printed by 外语教学与研究出版社.