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Chinese-English Exchange Resources

A document listing resources for the Chinese-English Exchange Discord server: https://discord.gg/ADdR45y. Mostly tailored to learning Mandarin and Cantonese. Resources for other dialects as well as for historical and Classical Chinese are more than welcome, however.

If you have feedback or suggestions, or any problems using the resources, please leave comments in the resources channel of the Discord. Many links have not been vetted, so sharing your experience using them is encouraged.

Mandarin and Cantonese lessons sections should be focused around getting a person to a beginner/intermediate level from zero. Once they reach that point, they should be looking towards native content for self-study.

Table of Contents

Input Methods (輸入方式)

Name Type OS Language Description
System Default Phonetic/Shape Win, Mac Pinyin、倉頡、行列 "Chinese Simplified (PRC) - Microsoft Pinyin New Experience Input St." for Win7 and Win8. Ctrl + Shift + F to toggle simplified–traditional.
System Default Phonetic Linux All Fcitx over ibus because newer. You can use RIME or the pinyin package
Rime Phonetic/Shape Win/Mac/Linux/Android All Framework for custom IMEs. You can pretty much get any input method imaginable and it is cross platform. See this guide for setup help. You can get Trime from F-droid for phones.
Google Input Phonetic Win Pinyin Google input method
FHL Taigi-Hakka IME Phonetic Win/Mac POJ(白話字/教羅)、TL(臺羅) I have never personally used this.
Sogou Phonetic/Shape Win 拼音、五笔 Easy to switch between Pinyin, Wubi, or both together. Shows the necessary Wubi key strokes even if you enter Pinyin in the combined mode, so good for learning Wubi.

Guides/Textbooks

Pronunciation (發音)

Grammar (語法)

HSK (漢語水平考試)

  • HSK Academy - Very helpful for those learning Chinese characters. Aimed mainly for those seeking the HSK (similar to TOEFL) tests, but still good to learn new words, phrases. There is a short introduction to Chinese grammar also.
  • HSK Check
  • Sample Test Papers
  • Conversion - Old HSK to New HSK

Character/Word Lists

Word Dictionaries (詞典)

  • Pleco - A dictionary aggregator, you get a [ZH↔EN] dictionary (CEDICT) for free, but then you can purchase 现代汉语词典, 现代汉语规范词典 etc. Some dictionaries may be downloaded for free, for example, MOEDict, Cross-Straits, CCCanto, and Words.hk. You may wish to look at the following user-land dictionaries assembled by alexhk09

  • Youdao (有道) by Netease (网易) very solid Mandarin to English translations.

  • Line (formerly Nciku) [EN→ZH][EN←ZH][EN↔Thai][Online] Most examples, flexible handwriting detection, and has the features. A tad bulky/slow. Examples are online

  • [Firefox][Chrome] Zhong Wen - Mandarin pop-up dictionaries available for both browsers. Still recommend CPD or Liuchan pop-up dictionary over this as it has support for both Cantonese and Mandarin.

  • CPD (Chrome) [EN↔CA,ZH][Browser] Pop-up dictionary.

  • Liuchan (Firefox) [EN↔CA,ZH][Browser] Pop-up dictionary.

  • Zdic (漢典) [C↔C,EN][Online] Primarily a Mandarin-Mandarin dictionary. Compiles the pretty much everything of readers of Modern Chinese Language need in a single search bar: definitions, translations (probably lifted from MoeDict, sometimes also provides translations along individual senses probably lifted from Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 5th Edition), etymology, 說文解字、康熙詞典), shaped-based input combination lookup (五筆、倉頡、鄭碼), variant characters, readings in related Chinese languages (音韵方言), etc.

  • MDCG [EN↔ZH][Online] Curators of the CC-CEDICT dictionary that serves as the standard C many reference. Does not show examples unfortunately.

  • Words.HK (Jyutdin) [CA↔CA][Online]. Requires Facebook login, but available free of charge on Pleco.

  • CantoDict [EN↔CA][Online] Jyutping, audio bytes, examples. The most comprehensive English-Cantonese dictionary out there. You have to make sure you select the right category for searching.

  • Pleco's Cantonese-English dictionary CC-Canto [EN↔CA,ZH][Android][iOS] based on CC-EDictA2 with a human check for differences for Cantonese. Available in Pleco directly.

  • 吳語學堂, dictionary for Wu languages.

  • 吴音小字典, another dictionary for Wu languages made by the 吴语协会 Wu Chinese Society.

  • 现代汉语词典7th Ed. [ZH↔ZH][Book] Standard dictionary that Mainland uses.

  • Pin Pin [EN↔ZH] Both CC-CEDICT definitions, definitions from Tatoeba, as well as user-submitted definitions.

  • null

  • [Pe̍h-ōe-jī] Taiwanese-English dictionary by Maryknoll Taiwan

  • MoeDict 臺灣閩南話常用詞辭典 - A Taiwanese (Hokkien/臺語/閩南話）dictionary maintained by the Ministry of Education for the Taiwanese government. This is provided under the Creative Commons BY-ND 3.0 license whose source can be found on this GitHub page. See the Pleco entry for a way to build the dictionary into an existing Pleco installation.

  • Hakka Dictionary - maintained by the Hakka Affairs Council (客家委員會) for the Taiwanese Government. You can hear voice recordings of example sentences, dictionary definitions are also fairly detailed. I believe the source can be found on this GitHub page, released under an Attribution, No Derivatives, Non-Commercial license. See the Pleco entry for a way to build the dictionary into an existing Pleco installation.

  • Syndict (薪典) - Primarily a Hakka dictionary. If you follow it on WeChat, you can do Speech-To-Text recognition, i.e. Hakka to Hanzi.

  • Kaifang Cidian - Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Wu Dictionary

  • Sinicia - Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Wu Dictionary

  • Stephen Li Taishanese Dictionary

  • Choân-Bûn Kiám-Sek - Dictionary for Hakka and Taiwanese by Academia Sinica. (閩南語、客家話)

  • Singlish Dictionary

Character Dictionaries (字典)

  • 小學堂 - This provides topolect-specific (i.e Classical, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, etc.) lookup for characters. Provided by Information Sciences department of Academia Sinica (中央硏究院) university.
  • The Complete Collection of Ancient and Modern Characters (古今文字集成) [C↔C,EN][Online], a very comprehensive dictionary covering historical character evolution and etymology, historical pronunciation and usage, and contemporary regional topolect pronunciations. Also includes pronunciations in Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, along with a reference section for historical languages/scripts such as Tangut (西夏文), ʼPhags-pa (八思巴文), Jurchen (女真文), and Khitan script (契丹文). Allows lookup by radical, character, Unicode, or phonetic lookup. Dictionaries referenced include 漢語大字典, 說文解字, and 康熙字典.
  • Zdic (漢典) [C↔C,EN][Online] Primarily a Mandarin-Mandarin dictionary. Compiles the pretty much everything of readers of Modern Chinese Language need in a single search bar: definitions, translations (probably lifted from MoeDict, sometimes also provides translations along individual senses probably lifted from Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 5th Edition), etymology, 說文解字、康熙詞典), shaped-based input combination lookup (五筆、倉頡、鄭碼), variant characters, readings in related Chinese languages (音韵方言), etc.
  • Zi Tools that breaks down components and presents their oracle bone, seal script, or just a pictograph
  • Multi-function Chinese Character Database CC-English-C (Uses homophones in addition to romanisation for pronunciation, for those that are more comfortable with that than romanisation) (Also has audio clips, but those can be a little stretched out to emphasise the tones)
  • Ctext Dictionary - Classical Chinese character dictionary and document archive.
  • 韻典網 [C↔C][Online], a Rime dictionary (韻書) website which allows searching historical Rime dictionaries and rhyme systems: 《廣韻》、《中原音韻》、《洪武正韻牋》、《分韻撮要》、《上古音系》. The website also provides reconstructed historical pronunciations.
  • 新华字典, the dictionary given free of charge to every Mainland Chinese student
  • [Android] Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字) - Analyses character etymology in Classical Chinese, or more specifically, traces the make-up of seal script (小篆) characters and attempts to explain how the creates their meaning. First published in AD. 121 by Xu Shen (許慎), the version annotated by Qing scholar Duan Yuancai (段玉裁) is frequently referenced by Chinese students even today. The Android app additionally contains a dictionary with definitions in Modern Mandarin (though I am not sure where it pulls its definitions from at the moment).
  • Zhongwen [EN↔ZH][Online] (Unrelated to pop-up dictionary). Lightweight and responsive. Alternative to Wenlin for radical-based breakdown of characters and shared-radical map. However, character search does not work (might be encoding issue) and unable to copy paste.
  • Outlier Dictionary that offers much more up-to-date. Still in development.

Specialist Dictionaries

  • Pleco - A dictionary aggregator, you get a [ZH↔EN] dictionary (CEDICT) for free, but then you can purchase 现代汉语词典, 现代汉语规范词典 etc. Some dictionaries may be downloaded for free, for example, MOEDict, Cross-Straits, CCCanto, and Words.hk. You may wish to look at the following user-land dictionaries assembled by alexhk09
  • Baidu Baike [ZH→ZH,EN] An encyclopaedia, but it does list definitions.
  • Wikipedia - Great for translating technical jargon or just generally specific words. Find the article, then click on the Chinese version of that article. Unfortunately filters in and out of being on the blacklist for the Great Firewall of China.
  • HanziCraft, Breaks down character into radicals and assorted strokes. Also features a table list of homonyms.

Reading Material (閱讀材料)

Newspaper (報紙)

Novels and Visual Novels

  • Qidian - Probably the largest. You can also find fan translations of some of their stories if you do a bit of searching. They have an energy system that you can make use of to read for free. You can also find several mirror sites.
  • xxsy
  • xs
  • jjwxc
  • Cantonese webnovels
  • Chinese Visual Novels originals - In case you don’t know these are basically books with pretty pictures and music in -the background. You can find some of these on Steam. For all translated to Chinese, here.
  • HKGolden
  • Shikoto
  • Fan-transcribed E-books
  • Novelupdates - In case you want the totally legal fan translations to reference. Fantasy genres explanations Xianxia has become kinda catch all in English.

Dramas

  • Viki - A legal stream service (thus their catalogue will depend on your country, though you can use a VPN to get around this region lock) that focuses on East Asian media. Their catalogue is a majority Korean drama, though they have Chinese and Taiwanese dramas. They have a useful feature
  • MyDramalist - Drama information and watchlist site
  • Croton's Official Youtube [ZH]
  • TVB
  • Dnvod - Loads of films with Chinese subs/dubs.

Youtube

Other Media

Manhua

Donghua

Audio and Podcasts

Miscellaneous

Calligraphy（書法）

Fonts（字體）

  • Noto has neutral, consistent, and broad serif and sans-serif faces for all of the CJK scripts: Sans SC Sans TC Sans HK Sans JP Sans KR Serif SC Serif TC Serif HK Serif JP Serif KR The font family was produced by an in-depth collaboration between Adobe and Google. There are also more obscure scripts and styles covered under Noto that are available to download from the Google repository.
  • Typesetting characters in Japanese but also applicable to Chinese
  • Unicode FAQ on CJK Characters - On the technicalities of representing fonts
  • BableStone Han font designed specifically for obscure characters and the new additions to Unicode.
  • 花園明朝(HanaMin) another font that contains rare characters (through CJK extension F), though technically designed for Japanese, will allow you to view even more obscure characters.
  • Fonts for Older Scripts
  • Academic writing is typically done with 楷書 for the author, 宋體 for everything else, 四號 for regular text, 三號 for titles for Mainland China. For English, the standard is typically double-spaced Times New Roman or Arial font, 12pt for regular text 16pt for titles.

Texts

Tools

  • Baidu translate [MLT] Machine translator. Has Mandarin, Cantonese, and Classical.
  • Google Translate [MLT] Great for handwriting recognition. Click on the 拼 -> handwriting
  • Simplified↔Traditional Conversion [Chrome] [Firefox]
  • Real Time Anki Import - To automate anki entry
  • Anki [Memorization][SRS] - Flashcard memorization program. Recommend using Anki as a revision tool and build your own decks, but if you really want to can find pre-built decks to learn vocabulary. Also see this.
  • Zhtoolkit [Text Analysis] - Breakdowns a text into its constituent words with definitions with CC-EDICT. Can custom set dictionary and also filter out learnt words.
  • JNovelFormter - Quickly converts .txt files to be easily viewed as an HTML document. Useful in conjunction with pop-up dictionaries and the popup-dictionary-to-Anki function
  • Jyutping Converter
  • Horizontal Hanzi - For disambiguating similar-looking characters
  • Pin1yin1 - Converts characters to Pinyin with diacritics (tone markers) or Zhuyin to a text
  • Text analyser - Pay for program

Communities