[shocking88]

NJstar comms is BS really =/
It fails at life and it has that stupid trial counter thing after it expires.

I'd rather go IME or with the other program I've got.
Does everyone use IME here?

Oh, I use NJstar to edit Chinese html files, since notepad refuses to do it for me. :x(My default non unicode language is Japanese, so it refuses to save anything other than that. x_X)
Otherwise, normally, I use IME too. ^O^

[tranced_azn]

For me, this is what we did as students in China. We read stories and short essays in our textbook, and we study them. But in each new story or short essay, we are introduced to new Chinese characters. So, our teacher would give us homework. And the homework would be to write each new character at least 5 times, and write pinyin over it. This is how I learned han zi, and this is how most Chinese people learn han zi. ^^

Oo, not a bad idea. i'll try it out when i get the chance =D

[jacinda]

Umm...it's an island?

Well, I think the standard of living in Taiwan is a little better than Mainland.
Seriously

I don't know about that. Depends on where you're living I guess. I've never been to Taiwan, but I think the standard of living is quite high in mainland China. The dorm rooms are very nice even in the smaller universities. It's very spacious compared to most Asian countries I think.

Anyway, even if there was a slight difference between the living standards of both places, it's not a good reason for a student to pick Taiwan over mainland China. You won't get as much out of a trip to Taiwan, because there's just not as much there. Going to Beijing you get to see all the historical sites from thousands of years ago like the Great Wall and The Forbidden City. It's much more of an amazing and eye-opening experience. Plus there's all the other places in China that you can go to on the weekends. There's all the minority areas that you can go see, Shanghai, Guilin, Huang Shan, Yun Nan, even Tibet, though that takes longer. China has so much variety, and the cost of living is cheaper there too, due to the artificially low dollar:yuan ratio, so you can do more for less!
/pimping my favorite place on earth


As for learning hanzi...

What I do is I have a Chinese-English dictionary. I learn one Chinese word/day by writing it down on an index card and carrying around that card with me that day. During my spare time, like on the bus or in between classes I write that word down again and again. Then at the end of the week I review the words I learned. I also just read news and websites and stuff.

It works better if you already know how to speak the language fluently and just want to improve your vocab. If you're starting from stratch I would get some learning tapes.

[Tetra]

Does learning from a translating dictionary actually help, cause translations usually aren't the most accurate.

The ratio of dollar:yuan and dollar:NT are pretty big...but shouldn't the NT be much cheaper?

[TrainDriver]

the uni in beijing is one of the top 20 unis in the world apparently, so it has to be pretty good.

[jacinda]

Does learning from a translating dictionary actually help, cause translations usually aren't the most accurate.

The ratio of dollar:yuan and dollar:NT are pretty big...but shouldn't the NT be much cheaper?

What do you mean? Actually I think I gave the wrong impression. The low dollar:yuan ratio doesn't really make things cheap in China, it makes American consumers buy Chinese products more because the workers get paid a wage that would allow them to live comfortably in China whereas it seems like a really small sum to Americans making products cheap. A few dollars/day in China is about 25 yuan which can buy a decent amount of food.

Besides that fact everything is just cheap in China except electronics and cars and clothes (when there's no sale). The imported stuff is unfortunately very high priced due to the artificial low currency rate, but at least these aren't necessities.
What a student would need to buy, like food and paper and books, etc is extremely cheap.

As for the TND, it's about 32/USD, but the fact is, oproducts in Taiwan, if converted, would be about the same as how much you'd pay for it in the US. In mainland China the product would be much less. So say something was 8 yuan in China. It'd be a dollar in the US. But in the US it would really cost about 2 dollars maybe. So the Yuan should be really 4 yuan to the dollar. Do you understand what I'm saying?

And to the above poster...yes Bei Da U and Qin Hua U are supposed to be two of the best colleges in the world.

ETA:

As for the learning with a dictionary, like I said, I use it because I'm already fluent in the language, I just need to broaden my reading and writing knowledge. So I already know the nuances between words. I don't rely on the dictionary for definition, but rather just the ease of finding the way to write words. It's nice because it give both simplified and traditional writing. Both of which I'm trying to learn.

If you are just starting out with learning, or want to know the definitions of words, you should read.

[adikkeluangman]

Can someone translate and pinyin this title.

09 走火入魔

Thankies...

[NAN]

Can someone translate and pinyin this title.

09 走火入魔

Thankies...

It's a proverb. It means something along the lines of being so crazy over something that one is becoming almost insane. There's probably a better translation than what I provided, so others please help ^^;;

Word by word translation:

walk, fire, enter, devil.



pinyin:

zou3 huo3 ru4 mo2

[wenwen]

it means walking into fire and becoming possessed/obsessed but not at the degree of possessed

[xinfinite]

^ Love that song.. by Soler lol..

[jacinda]

Can someone give me the han zi for these names:

Wu Peng (male swimmer who won at the most recent swimming competition)

Yang Yu (female swimmer who won at the most recent swimming competition)

[Alice]

吴鹏和杨雨。

[jacinda]

Thanks!

[..cow..]

For me, this is what we did as students in China. We read stories and short essays in our textbook, and we study them. But in each new story or short essay, we are introduced to new Chinese characters. So, our teacher would give us homework. And the homework would be to write each new character at least 5 times, and write pinyin over it. This is how I learned han zi, and this is how most Chinese people learn han zi. ^^

That's how I learned it here (in Canada) too.
And the books came from Taiwan, so there were zhu1 yin1 fu2 hao4 beside the words. That helped. If you know the equivalent of the zhu1 yin1 fu2 hao4 in pin1 yin1, it's a lot of help.

The thing you really need to focus on to remember the words is writing it over and over and over, then testing yourself. If you get the words wrong, write it over again and repeat the process. But you need to know what the word means and how to use it, so read comic books (I read Doraemon) and the newspaper. Once your level of understanding goes up, you can read things like novels and such.

[adikkeluangman]

^Thanks again. Here is another to help me.

01 超口愛

[tranced_azn]

my simplified chinese sux as well, i need to brush up on my reading too. i actually miss my language now, eventhough i used to go to chinese school every week i couldn't wait to get outta there. but now i have an urge of learning again.

lol, that's the same predicament im in too. i attended chinese school for a while, but i chose to stay out and not attend. now it's been quite a while and im trying right now to learn from what knowledge i know. before, i talked to my family (the people on my mom's side) in chinese, but then i got lazy and my chinese knowledge declined (but my grandma and auntie can speak pretty good english thanks to me, lol). i write the character down with the pinyin and try making various sentences in my head and on paper. and when i go to chinatown, i try to read and identify characters i see. and shows are quite useful too, but sometimes they talk very fast >.< but i can get some generalized meaning hearing the people talk and seeing the subtitles. im watching chinese paladin right now, hehe. can't wait till summer, so i have more time to 學習中文and漢字

[NAN]

I was told that if you can read Chinese newspaper without much problem, then your Chinese level is equivalent to a Chinese sixth grade student. So pretty much an elementary school graduate, which is pretty good. I can't even read my fifth grade essays anymore. -____-; I need to start reading more.

[Tetra]

Wow so what's high school level
I can't even read the newspaper >_>

[MUXU]

nothing related to what you guys are talking about..
but i just wanna do something fun

guess what 马杀鸡 means in english (only works if you speak mando)

hint: the sound of 马杀鸡 is similar to the real english word
if you know it..shush

[Aziraphale]

Wow so what's high school level
I can't even read the newspaper >_>

Maybe if you can read novels, that might be the high-school level...

guess what 马杀鸡 means in english (only works if you speak mando)

hint: the sound of 马杀鸡 is similar to the real english word
if you know it..shush