magical (not really) language learning

I saved a bunch of open educational resources a while ago and then promptly forgot about them. Haven't really looked over them in detail, but hey, why not share them in case they are useful to you?

Chinese Reading Modules by Yan Li https://ceas.ku.edu/chinese-reading-modules

These reading passages are intended for students at the intermediate to advanced level in their study of Chinese. They were developed with funding from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Ting Yi Ting by Sheree Willis & Yan Li https://opentext.ku.edu/tingyiting/

An online guide that enables learners to hear and identify phonemic categories in Mandarin (including lexical tones) in a variety of phonetic contexts, and to associate those phonemes with Pinyin orthography. Includes extensive audio examples and computer-graded comprehension checks.

Russian Aspect in Conversation by Stephen M. Dickey, Kamila Saifeeva, and Anna Karpusheva https://opentext.ku.edu/russianaspect/

This resource is aimed at demystifying some important uses of imperfective verbs for learners of Russian at the intermediate level and above. It focuses on patterns of imperfective usage in infinitives, imperatives and the past tense that involve single completed actions and that are difficult for foreign learners to grasp.

Elementary Chinese I by Wenying Zhou https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/chs101/

This open textbook is designed for those who are learning Chinese as a second/foreign language in their first semester. It has eight chapters, covering topics including a brief introduction about the Chinese language, greetings, and self-introduction, hobbies, nationalities, family members and occupations, inviting friends to dinner, talking about food and beverage, making phone calls, and talking about classes and exams.

Elementary Chinese II by Wenying Zhou https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/chs102/

This open textbook is designed for those who are learning Chinese as a second/foreign language in their second semester. It has six chapters, covering topics including describing school life, shopping in stores and online, transportation means, reporting weather and climates, ordering foods, and asking and giving directions.

Elementary Mandarin by Carl Polley https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/elementary-mandarin

This course is designed for learners with no background in Chinese. It introduces basic structures of the Mandarin Chinese language with emphasis on listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Students will gain these four skills in standard Mandarin Chinese, attaining approximately the Novice-High level on the ACTFL-ETS (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) proficiency scale. Topics of conversation include basic greetings, names, family, work, study, and hobbies.

开源中文 EverFlow Mandarin by Runqing Qi, Yingjie Li, and Yu Zhang https://www.colorado.edu/project/everflowmandarin/

EverFlow Mandarin is a textbook aimed at enhancing the language proficiency of Chinese learners at the intermediate level as determined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). It is designed for students who have completed two years of Chinese language courses in comprehensive universities in North America. After studying the content of the ten lessons in this textbook, students' Chinese proficiency can reach the levels of either Intermediate-High or Advanced-Low as determined by the ACTFL.

Various Chinese resources by Wen-Hua Teng https://coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/materials/language/chinese/

Learning Chinese: A Foundation Course In Mandarin (汉语基础教材) by Julian K. Wheatley https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/res-21g-003-learning-chinese-a-foundation-course-in-mandarin-spring-2011/pages/online-textbook/

This online textbook represents materials that were used in the first four semesters (two years) of the Mandarin program at MIT. They eventually formed the basis of a print textbook of the same name, published by Yale University Press (elementary level available 2011, intermediate level due late 2011 or early 2012). Information about the Yale edition, plus online materials that could supplement the OCW material with some allowances. The Yale website also includes extensive audio-clips (numbering over 40 by July 2011, up through Unit 4), which cover much of the same ground as the OCW version.

IChineseER from Pomona College https://lchineseer.sites.pomona.edu/

Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration by Anna Tumarkin and Shannon Donnally Quinn https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/diverserussian/

If you're planning a trip soon or want to learn some super practical Mandarin Chinese expressions, I highly recommend the Huayu101 app from Taiwan's Ministry of Education. It provides sample sentences and questions for many useful topics.

It's only available on the Apple app store from what I can tell (looks like it was removed from the Google Play app store). But luckily, you can also find the content online at https://lmit.edu.tw/lc/huayu101/.

Here is a list of the topics:

Greetings 基本問候

Accommodation 住宿

Order 點餐

Shopping 購物

Transportation 交通

Asking for help 急難救助

City tour 城市遊覽

Arts and cultural activities 藝文活動

Call and reservation 電話與預約

Exchange 換鈔

Making friends 認識朋友

Hospital and post office 看病幾郵寄

After selecting a topic, you'll see a list of phrases, sentences, and questions. These are very practical things you might need to say or that a waiter, clerk, etc. might say to you.

They even have audio! To me it sounds like real people, not text to speech. Hypothetically, if you can't speak any Mandarin, you could get by by playing the audio to people.

For some sentences/questions, they even provide multiple options, and you can select the word that's applicable to you.

Besides English, the app and website also support Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesia.

I can't believe it's already been over 6 months since my last watching updates post! I've been watching more movies, and I'll also mention a couple variety shows, so it's not just cdramas.

Shows/series:

Some of these were mentioned as “currently watching” in my previous post.

《不良执念清除师》 Oh No! Here Comes Trouble A young man learns to use his supernatural calligraphy powers to help strange beings, with help from his frenemy and a young police officer. This show was like a breath of fresh air and very humorous. That being said, it was difficult to follow all the storylines. If you're going to watch it, I think you should binge it if possible. Content warning: Death, gore

《此时此刻》 At the Moment An anthology of quirky pandemic love stories, not all with happy endings. It's kind of like Love Actually in that the characters are connected across stories. Initially I didn't plan to watch because of the pandemic through line—I thought it would bum me out. But it didn't, actually. My favorite episode was Head of the Family. Content warning: Unhealthy relationships, sex and nudity

《隐秘的角落》 The Bad Kids Three kids accidentally film a murder and try to blackmail the killer, resulting in devastating consequences. I felt the first half of this show was more captivating than the second half—the second half went a bit overboard IMO. Apparently the original novel is way darker so…! But I still recommend it wholeheartedly. Content warning: Death and violence (but not graphic)

《沉默的真相》 The Long Night The murder of a disgraced prosecutor seems like an open-and-shut case, but his past reveals a much more complicated story. This show masterfully weaves together three different timelines. I was so confused after the first episode, but it all made sense in the end. I don't recommend binge watching it—I regretted doing so. Content warning: Violence, death, sexual assault

《双镜》 Couple of Mirrors A young woman's personal and professional lives are turned upside down, and she befriends a mysterious woman with a dark past. You have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy this show. There was a ridiculous number of car accidents! It's a GL drama, but if I hadn't know that, I don't think I would have noticed until the end. Content warning: Death, violence

Recently, I found a really useful Chinese reading resource for learners of all levels. As the name states, it contains a bunch of graded readers split up based on grade level and HSK level. I’ve selected Elementary School Grade 1 (HSK-1), and here’s what it looks like: 

I’ve selected the story 少了一头驴. As you can see, the vocabulary and grammar should be tailored to the grade level, so it’s really useful, especially if you’re studying for the HSK. All the stories include audio, and some of the lower grade levels even have nice background music and sound effects. Some of the higher levels only have Google Translate audio though (even though Google Translate for Mandarin still pretty decent). Here’s the layout of the stories:

There are 3 tabs: Picture Story, Vocabulary and Print. “Picture Story” is just the story itself, and “Vocabulary” is exactly what it sounds like, although not every story has a vocabulary list ready to go. Here’s a snippet of a vocabulary list from another story:

Going back to the story itself: if you hover over the words, you’ll highlight a vocabulary word/phrase and two things will pop up:

If you click on the audio button, the highlighted words will be pronounced, and if you click on the screen looking button, the following will pop up:

This is a really thorough one-on-one analysis of each character. It gives you some common usages of the character (there are several panels of common words; just click on the numbers in the top left), the Pinyin, and the stroke order. 

Pressing the “P” will show the breakdown of the Pinyin and how it’s pronounced:

Pressing the play button will play the stroke order gif, and the rewind button is to restart the gif:

Definitely check out this site for reading practice, I can’t believe I just found out about it. Keep this bookmarked if you’re planning on doing the HSK anytime soon!

language

for 成语s: zaojv.com

for definitions: baidu.com

for dictionary: Pleco

books

4 classics (四大名著): 三国演义, 西游记，红楼梦，水浒传

others: 聊斋志异

social media

- 小红书

凹 means concave,

凸 means convex,

And then 凹凸 means bump/irregular as in an uneven/rough road. What I find cool about this is that each character matches its meaning in shape and that the translation to them is so literal.

• Lyrics Training - Lyric fill in game

• Radio Garden - Listen to the radio anywhere in the world

• Language Reactor - Browser extension to learn with Netflix, YouTube, etc

• BaBaDum - Fun vocab games

• Linguno - Listening, vocab, and conjugation exercises, plus 10 daily crosswords in each language

• Bilinguis - Read a small selection of classic, older books in a bilingual side-by-side style. Some have audio reading as well!

• Lyrik Line - Read and listen to poetry in your target language!! Huge selection

• Top 40 Charts - Top 40 music hits in countries around the world.

• Kiosko - Daily newspaper covers all over the world. Clicking on one takes you to the news website to read more

• Lexicity - For all of you ancient language obsessed people!! Amazing and thorough resource for many ancient languages

-> Click on the link below to get links to all those sites + more information about them!