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No paid app/program/website suggestion is going to satisfy you. Things like ninchanese are designed for sales, and satisfying customers, not providing the best result. Studying is hard work, there's no escaping that. No manner of cute cat animation or ipad software is going to do better than traditional methods that beat the information into your head, paired with the motivation to study it.


The way it becomes more tolerable is for you to find some motivation to do it. If there's no stories you want to read, or friends you want to talk to, or teachers you want to impress, shows you want to watch, then you're going to have a slow, difficult time.


There's a near definitive grammar book in English that can answer all of the questions that even your Chinese teachers cannot. It's here


More beginner grammar rules that everyone should know are located here


There's graded readers you can check out which are very good called Chinese Breeze. Get the physical copies and they have audio CD's in multiple speeds. The back covers of the books have a paragraph that shows the difficulty of the book. If you can more or less read it, then it's maybe too easy, or just right. They cost like $6, and literally pennies if you buy them in China.


Put together an anki deck of your own with all your vocabulary. This software will help you manage it all. I started out with single words in a big anki deck, adding to it as I learned 10-20 words each week. Once the deck became over 2000 cards or so, I took a few days to go through the whole thing and turn them into sentences. Then I added new vocabulary in the form of sentences as I found them "in the wild" so to speak.


If you want to be able to write, you need to put pen to paper and write. As you review the anki deck, write it out each time as well. Yes it sucks. But it works. It sucks less if you're motivated to learn.


How do you get motivated to learn? Make friends. If you don't have any Mandarin speaking friends, or put yourself into an environment where you "need" to speak, you won't. Someone else in the comments here mentioned "girls" and got downvoted into oblivion. But I don't think anyone can deny that it's not a good form of motivation to learn. If you go out seeking a partner based on language, well, that's a different problem not suitable for addressing here. But the idea is sound, make good friends with common interests. You play the drums? Great, meet other people that play the drums. Join a local meetup. Volunteer at some Mandarin Language event or community center.


Language partners are valuable. I've talked to maybe 200 or more people that I met on sites like this which I highly recommend. Most of them, I spoke with once, and never again. A handful lasted a few weeks of regular talk/study. 4 or 5 of them turned out to be amazing people, teachers, friends. After making 2 very long term friends through that site, my skill level improved drastically. But overall, I learned something valuable from everyone, save for the odd student trying to get a good toefl score and just looking for a free English teacher.

At the beginning of 2016 I tested into a 202 class at my university after doing self study for a year on and off. I think it may be possible for you after two or three months, but a lot is going to hang on the leniency of the professor and your own ability to study extremely hard for the entire time. You'll also definitely be playing catch-up for at least a semester compared to the other students.

My test was a very short oral examination where the professor asked me questions about myself, my family, where I was from, and my apartment. I remember not understanding her when she asked "is your apartment far from campus?" Then I read some dialogues aloud from the textbook to test character recognition. She could tell I was motivated and did know some Chinese, so she allowed me to join the next quarter.

When I got into the class:

• My pronunciation was about average compared to other students. I minored in linguistics and am fairly obsessive about pronunciation, so it continued to improve while other students didn't pay as much attention to it over the course of the year. We all had pretty halting speech and couldn't come up with long sentences without pausing to think.
  
  
• My character recognition was abysmal and my reading was incredibly slow. This was the single worst part of my ability and it put me way behind when we had to take tests or quizzes. I worked on it constantly from day one of the class and haven't stopped since.
  
  
• Although I lacked lots of vocabulary, I never had any trouble understanding the professor. I wrote down in pinyin what she'd said and then asked a classmate to help me.
  
  
• My method of studying gave me an intuitive understanding of sentence structure that put me exactly on par with all the other students. The professor introduced new grammar throughout the year and I picked it up as fast as the others did.
  
  I know now that the way I self-studied was riddled with inconsistencies and my level could have been achieved much faster. So here's what I suggest you do:
  
  
• Learn correct pronunciation. It's worth it to learn about linguistics for this, because it will improve your pronunciation in all your languages. Learn pinyin backward and forward, including all its tricky parts that don't line up with English. Don't settle for anything that says "q is like ch in cheese" - Mandarin is NOT English and very few of the sounds are the same. Learn how all the sounds are made from Wikipedia articles, and practice like crazy to get your brain and tongue comfortable with all the new sounds. This is a phenomenal investment because good pronunciation tricks people into thinking you're better than you are. And even if you don't make it in AP Chinese, you'll still be way ahead of people who don't practice it.
  
  
• Quickly memorize a core base of nouns and verbs. I used this Memrise course. Aim for being familiar with all of these verbs plus the HSK 1 and 2 vocabulary lists in two weeks.
  
  
• Download Anki and use it religiously. If you don't know about spaced repetition, now is the time to learn. If you download pre-made decks, make sure to get them with audio so you're constantly hearing native Chinese.
  
  
• Learn full sentences. This is the key to internalizing Chinese grammar. Learn full sentences. Steal them from phrasebooks, practice aloud after the audio, and be ready to parrot dozens of set phrases at a moment's notice. Don't try making your own sentences until you've internalized hundreds or thousands of correct sentences from native sources. The Chinese Grammar Wiki is an amazing place for example sentences, and you can also find them on LineDict. Clozemaster is yet another tool for this. Check your local library for Mandarin courses and copy out the textbook dialogues. You want to saturate yourself with Chinese in context, not just vocab lists.
  
  
• If you want to spend a little money, you open up a whole new world of learning options. FluentU and Yabla make subtitled videos of native content. The Kauderwelsch phrasebooks (good thing you speak German) have word-for-word glosses and a good explanation of Chinese grammar. This book is a great introduction to grammar patterns too. Glossika is a course that will definitely kick your butt and give you amazing results if you stick with their suggested methods.
  
  
• Always be listening to Mandarin in some way. There are hundreds of thousands of Youtube videos and podcasts about any imaginable subject. Have them on in the background while you look for resources, make flashcards, or do anything else really. You've got to let the rhythm of the language soak into your ears.
  
  
• The characters will take a very long time to be familiar with, and they could be the biggest obstacle to your entry in the class. Do some research on the history of the characters and how they work, and then just always practice reading and writing them over and over. Copy out the example sentences from the resources you find, and surround yourself with Chinese text to read. It will take a long time before you're comfortable reading passages of text, but the more you try the easier it gets. It's hard for all the AP students too.
  
  
• A few weeks before you start school, or once it feels like the language is starting to come together in your mind, go on HelloTalk or SharedLingo (or both) and find some native speakers to practice with. Practice your pronunciation and your tones with them, and try having some short conversations too.

Hey there, I just started learning a few months ago - here are some of my favorite resources:

- Chinesepod ( https://chinesepod.com/) is by far my favorite. They have a lot of free lessons to listen to if you have time for podcasts. I subscribed and have access to 6 skill levels of lessons in their app with the dialogue, pinyin, and translations built in for each lesson. It also has expansion sentences on the vocab you learn in each lesson, occasional quizzes, and a quick link to throw sentences into Pleco (The dictionary app you're going to need)

- Microsoft Learn Chinese is an app (on the iOS store, at least) that has a cool feature that puts you in a dialogue with the computer, records your answers, and judges your pronunciation. I'm not sure how accurate it is, and it's been occasionally frustrating when I think I'm using the correct tones, but it's an overall very cool experience.

- Memrise (www.memrise.com)is fairly similar to duolingo, but with a few added features. They include videos of native speakers, an AI chat program called "GrammarBot," and different groups of lessons made by different people.

-Little Fox Chinese (http://chinese.littlefox.com/en) is a collection of animated stories and shows. They are all aimed at younger learners, but I like the simple and measurable success of being able to understand a show after a viewing or two, and the way that it compounds information so you are adding bits and bits each new episode. They are also separated into levels 1-6

-Youtube! Of course, there's tons of stuff on youtube, but check out Growing Up With Chinese (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRL02spq3g6bkZxqlUlMSkYnq-I7OMw_Q). It's a Chinese language learning program from CCTV. The acting is occasionally cringe-worthy, but the progression of dialogue really helps you feel like you're grasping the concepts. Be sure to watch each episode a few times until you can understand what they are saying without looking at the translation.

Happy Chinese (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdT5MUO4gYEdQBMFtkF5g803FJZOss-ip) is another series (106 episodes!) that is catered more towards hsk 3 (my guess) learners, but as a beginner, I get excited when I can pick out phrases. Happy Chinese seems to have less complex sentences, which makes those fun "OH! I KNOW THAT!" moments happen more often. I do find Susan annoying.

​

You'll eventually find your best way to learn.

I'm an artsy fella, so situational dialogues and bright colors are my jam. Everyone said not to waste time learning to write, but I picked up an HSK 1 an HSK 2 workbook off of Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Mandarin-Chinese-Characters-Quick-ebook/dp/B06XD48243/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1541387779&sr=8-14&keywords=hsk+1) and it is basically the equivalent of flashcards for me - I remember writing the characters much better than just hearing and seeing them, and there was a noticeable boost in my reading comprehension.

Have fun, good luck, and 再见!

​

Hey! I’m also 16, I’ve been learning Chinese for 3 years now and I absolutely love it!!!

Don’t know much about online courses, I was lucky enough to take it at my high school. We don’t usually use our chinese books, but if you want to start there, the type we sometimes go off from is Integrated Chinese: Simplified Characters Textbook, Level 1, Part 1 (English and Chinese Edition) but man, that price is ridiculous! I’m sure you can find some better ones at a book resale shop or even a local goodwill, I’ve found plenty of good chinese language related items at Goodwill’s near me, whether it be movies, informational stuff, or made for learning. It just depends on what you find, sometimes you can get stumble across some real treasures!

Sorry to go so far off topic, but yeah, my advice would be to start with whatever cheapest learning book you can find and then see how you like it. But I also can’t stand learning things on a computer, so that could also be personal preference. Sorry I’m not much of help!

I do like the site FluentU a lot, they post lots of helpful videos and I believe that have many more learning tools you can utilize!

Here’s a link on their list of best textbooks and from there you can scour the site for whatever else you can find.

Best of luck, and you can do it! 加油！Oh! BTW, you should download the Pleco app, as there’s a quite large consensus among Chinese learners and teachers alike, all attesting to the notion that it does wonders. It’s literally my Chinese Bible—as in, it is a Chinese dictionary. Much better than Google Translate, (although Translate can also be useful when used the right way and not as a crutch) and Pleco also gives helpful context clues and sentence examples to make things make more sense.

>I was thinking of making an Anki deck with grammar points and practicing making sentences from that, but

At the bottom of this message is a copy/paste from a prior post. It's general advice, perhaps you'll find it helpful. In regards to your specific question:

• I agree, reviewing dozens grammar patterns in Anki will quickly get boring.
  
• The most important grammar patterns are are those you see/hear/read every day. It's more useful to learn those patterns really well rather than developing a broad but shallow understanding ones you'll rarely hear or use. (Note: as a student you may have to review more patterns than helpful because you will be tested on them).
  
• Building on the prior point, the patterns you review should be sourced from the media you consume and the conversations you have.
  
  One thing you can try is keeping a journal. It's a great way to reinforce grammar and it's more holistic than writing practice sentences in isolation. You don't need to write much nor be especially creative. Each day pick one pattern and build a short paragraph around it. Spend no more than 10-15 minutes doing this. The following day, before you write, take a moment to review the prior day(s) writings/patterns. If possible, share your journal with a native speaking friend and ask them to provide feedback using the shared document's "comments" function. (Keep the comments as a record and do not "resolve" them). Do not edit your original text; you want to keep it as a record as well. (Any edits your partner wants to make can be added in-line as new text (in a different color), or in a separate paragraph. I find it easier to make quick comparisons with this method than using a red line/mark up function).
  
  Finally, here is a list of grammar resources that might help you:
  
  Appropriate for Beginning Learners
  
  
• [Allset Learning Grammar Wiki] (https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Main_Page)
  
• Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide
  
• Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar
  
• Schuam's Outlines of Chinese Grammar
  
  Appropriate for Intermediate or Advanced Learners
  
  
• An A to Z Grammar for Chinese Language Learners, (traditional only) ISBN 9789570851069
  
• Common Chinese Patterns 330
  
• A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese
  
• Error Analysis of 900 Sample Sentences
  
• A Learn's Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions
  
  --------------
  
  Repetition is the key to success, specifically: 1) high volume, 2) varied, 3) contextual, 4) mutual reinforcing, 5) enjoyable.
  
  
• Varied: learning/using grammar and vocabulary through different topics and mediums
  
• Contextual: not learning vocabulary/grammar in isolation
  
• Mutual reinforcing: learning activities that reinforce and/or build upon each other
  
• Enjoyable: liking the topic and methods through which you are learning it
  
  

It's not the 214 Kanxi radicals per-se, but for my first 1500 characters I used method in the book Remembering Traditional Hanzi. There's also a Simplified version of the book. I find this method makes it really easy to memorize characters (well enough to write them), but actually one of the biggest benefits of the book I found was the order in which the characters are presented, making them even easier to remember.

Beyond that, if you really just want to memorize the 214 Kanxi radicals, I'd recommend using SRS flashcards like Mnemosyne or Anki. You can use these to memorize anything. Before I moved to Taiwan for instance, I compiled a list of all of the street names in all of Taipei and used Mnemosyne flashcards to memorize them all. It was unbelievably useful to make it easier to remember addresses and to speak to Taxi drivers while I was there.

There are lots of flashcard decks for the Kangxi radicals. Here's one I found with a very quick Google search. I'm sure there are others. Good luck!

Thanks! I'm living in the UK at the moment, and about to move to a new city. I think i'll be able to find some chinese students there (it has two universities), so this should really be useful in practicing my mandarin!

Someone earlier recommended this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1CVOOAPOKFUGL&coliid=I3KK8RBNU3V7L0

I've been reading the sample version on amazon, and it seems to have a very well-thought out approach to learning chinese symbols; basically showing you the basics first (sun, mouth, companian, old, etc.) and then suggesting how they might alter the meaning of symbols when they form part of a symbol. Then it builds on chapter on chapter. It also comes with neat little stories! Is this the kind of thing you were suggesting?

And your general advice on writing chinese is very good! Once i've nailed a few basic phrases and greetings, i'll give the webchat one a go!

My plan of action is currently to take a listening course. Chinesepod seems to be the one that comes highly recommended, whilst at the same time working my way through the book of characters I posted earlier, and trying to find chinese friends to talk to!

In january I hope to start a proper chinese course at a local college.

Does this sound like a reasonable aim?


Thanks so much for your help. I have been quite overwhelmed by the level of enthusiasm and commitment on this subreddit!

Although it doesn't address Chinese/English bilingualism directly, I found a book by a Norwegian linguist, Annika Bourgogne, to be interesting in how it combined some theory with a lot of practical approaches on how families might approach it in different ways.


Some of the advice already given by people is things she mentions, but I think there may be value in reading through it.


One of the pieces she talks about is that it takes about 25 hours a week of intensive language use to continue to learn on pace with native speakers. Written Chinese (especially if you want people to write by hand from memory) is probably much tougher than alphabet-based written languages.


I ended up taking Chinese classes on weekends back in the US after living in China for a bit. I was one of two adults in the class (the other one was a Cantonese heritage speaker who decided to study Mandarin for fun when he daughter was taking classes too), but honestly the buy-in from the middle and high school students in my class was fairly low. There were a few that really seemed to care, but most were there because their parents required them to be there.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Be-Bilingual-Practical-Multilingual-Families-ebook/dp/B00AL8F5EM/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

​

Good luck.

Take the academic route. Start by purchasing or pirating Integrated Chinese (from what I understand it is by far the most popular chinese textbook) and the equivalent workbook if you'd like.

Use this site's vocab and definitions (they correspond with the vocab in the book but provide more accurate definitions). The rest of the site is actually also pretty useful for learning grammar and practicing reading, listening, and pronunciation.

Then learn how to use quizlet's 3 way flash card option for Chinese (its really poorly implemented but it does work, allows you to study character->definition or character->pinyin and vice versa). If you're curious how the quizlet feature works (its really poorly explained online) it requires you to make a set with one side set to chinese the other to english, on the chinese side have the character/word you want, on the english side have the definition and the pinyin within parentheses (if you have any other parenthses it will screw up and break the whole set, so I use brackets when I want to clarify definitions)

For example the chinese card would read: 水

the english card would read: water (shuǐ)

here's a template for further clarity

Also www.archchinese.com is the best site for stroke order and audio

In terms of vocabulary this combo of resources is working really well for me, I'm currently in a 6 hour a week chinese class but all the vocab learning I do at home and this is how. This so far has allowed me to recognize any character I've learned in the past, but if you want to have it solid enough that you can always write any character from memory you might want to make your own anki and update it as you learn new words since you'll end up forgetting how to write some of the lesser used characters if you don't.

As far as grammar it'll be tough on your own but you can do it from Integrated Chinese and other online resources.

I really like the book "Learning Chinese Characters from Ms. Zhang" (https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Chinese-Characters-Ms-Zhang/dp/7561912943 -- that's the first book, but I'd recommend buying both textbooks and workbook in a set if you can find it). The characters will start with the very basics and cover through about HSK3. I really like how the book guides you through how to write each stroke and how to break down complex characters. The workbook is also really great for practicing writing.

​

My Chinese teacher recommended these books to me as a supplement while I was in HSK2 and now I feel comfortable writing most of the characters I know (I'm mid-HSK3 now).

​

After that, I use apps like Pleco & Noodle (highly recommend).

The best way to learn to read handwritten Chinese is to learn to write handwritten Chinese.

This book is an old but good introduction in English.

If you are comfortable with Chinese only text, then I'd recommend this book, which is far more comprehensive.

You don't actually have to remember how to write the characters long-term, just go through all the exercises in those books and you'll find you'll then be able to read most handwriting without too much difficulty.

so I was having the same problem and if you're looking for a fast way to learn Chinese I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Eyewitness-Travel-Phrase-Mandarin-Chinese/dp/146546266X its really helped it has everything you need and will actually use. I also recommend focusing on vocab and pinyin instead of trying to balance both Chinese characters and pinyin. YoYo Chinese which is a website. she also has a youtube channel you should try out her website. her youtube videos are why I'm a master at pinyin. I promise if you memorize a page a day of the book I linked in for a month you can handle a quick chitchat with and more family. I also recommend asking your partner to teach you food items names including spices meat and vegetable as food as such a big part of Chinese culture. Your lucky since you have a partner that can speak mandarin you have easy access to a language partner. Try to find Chinese music that you enjoy which can be hard if you don't know what you're looking for try to ask your partner to suggest some songs or i can help

I also bought this book when I first started to learn, called Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese, by Fred Fang-yu Wang (non-affiliate Amazon link here). It's super old-school--it looks like a mimeograph and was written in 1958. If I remember correctly, it only includes traditional characters because of the date it was published. Regardless, many simplified/trad. characters look the same when written in cursive anyways. But it has great tips, and just helps you learn to read handwriting better anyways. I still have the book at home and I've been learning for 10 years.

It's always useful to go through some book that discusses translation between your source and destination languages. I recently saw this one https://www.amazon.com/CUHK-Learners-Handbook-Expressions-Bilingual-ebook/dp/B00A45ECY6 - not a recommendation, just a random example. Note it is written for English speakers - practically all good translators translate from their second language to their native one.

Heck, I'm Russian myself, and am reasonably OK with English (bar a noticeable accent). I'd never even try to translate, say, Master and Margarita. Dickens, on the other hand - easily ;)

still pretty early, but at the end of my first year we had to read the lady in the painting (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lady-Painting-Expanded-Edition/dp/030012516X ) which is probably the best you'll find at your level. helped me a lot, took some work but definitely worth the time.

Here is one approach to learning handwritten Chinese. And here is another resource, a book in Chinese about how to learn handwritten Chinese, and Amazon has something that appears to be similar. According to another Reddit post, " You can find a "preview" using a clever google search (add .pdf to its name). " One more book that may be helpful is the book from Yale UP on cursive Chinese.

Think of it like English, there are a handful of forms that are more or less standard. But everyone comes up with their own way of writing quickly, some closer to those "standards," others a bit farther away. But if an individual's writing gets too far away fromt the standard, then nobody can read it...it's like that. u/Luomulanren seems to be saying printed fonts and hand-written scripts naturally don't look the same, including variances like the "a" that you pointed out, as well as ornamental loops and how the letters are connected together.

Well, it's complicated. First off, it's important to recognize that Chinese doesn't have tense. It has aspect.

Think about it: if you ask me what I did yesterday, what I'm doing now, or what I am going to do tomorrow, you will ordinarily use the same verb (做), without any modification to it. By the same token, regardless of which question you ask, I can ordinarily respond in the same manner -- e.g., 我看电影.

Of course, sometimes it is important to express when an action took place. In Chinese, you can usually do this by adding some clarifying language (e.g., 昨天, 下个星期, 去年). I often say that Chinese is a highly efficient language. Since time can be expressed (and deduced) contextually, there is no need to modify the verb form.

Additionally, there are the aspect particles: 过, 着, and 了. It's important to recognize that none of these particles expresses tense, not even 了.

Chinese-language learners often mistake 了 as an all-purpose past tense marker. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The aspect particle 了 can express completion, which is distinct from tense.

Consider the following example: 我们明天看了电影以后，就吃饭. In that sentence, 了 demonstrates completion, but it is referring to action that will not take place until tomorrow. In other words, it's not past tense.

This is a complicated concept, and one that I definitely cannot do justice to in a reddit comment. If you really want to understand it, I would suggest the Li and Thompson grammar book, which devotes about 50 pages to 了 as an aspect particle.

One more important thing to note is that you usually cannot use 了 in the following pattern: Subject + Verb + 了 (+ Object). So you typically wouldn't say, for example, 我吃了饭. The aspect particle 了 is usually only appropriate when you are specifying a certain number or degree of the Object. And so, therefore, 我吃了三碗饭 would be OK.

(The exception, of course, is in the "once . . . then" structure I reference above: Verb 了以后, 就 . . . .)

Sorry if this is really convoluted. Spend some time on the Chinese Grammar Wiki or reading Li and Thompson's book, and really pay attention to how native speakers express time and aspect.

EDIT: Typos.

You can check this out: http://www.chinasmack.com/glossary

It's mostly a glossary of internet terms, but there's a few commonly used slang words. Additionally, there's a book called Niubi! which one of my Chinese friends is letting me borrow. It's pretty comprehensive, it provides history for the slang, and it even tells you whether a term is region-specific.

This is the textbook I had in college, and seems to be what many universities in the USA use. If you get more, be care as there are textbooks and workbooks with similar covers for the various levels. The books were useful enough for me that I would recommend them. If you're only self teaching, then you could probably save your money and only get the textbooks.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887276385/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526269716&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=integrated+chinese+level+1+part+1&dpPl=1&dpID=51M7k%2Bq1OaL&ref=plSrch

Go to nciku.com, they have an application that can show you the correct stroke order.
Something that you need to understand, though, is that even if you make your handwriting look exactly like the printed font, that's going to be considered "bad" by most natives. It'll be kind of equivalent to what a 2nd graders handwriting in English looks like. What you (probably) want to work towards is being able to read/write handwritten characters (which is in fact a totally different skill than being able to read printed font).

http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333

This book is generally considered the best for teaching that skill. You'll learn how to make your characters look like an adult wrote them, and you'll learn to read handwritten characters instead of just printed font.

I used this series in school: http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385 They're pretty good books with very reasonably lengthed and fluid sections. The only thing I suggest is supplementing the grammar with some crosschecks online. I didn't find their explanations for 了 usage to be adequate, for example. But, they're pretty cheap and you can add on the workbooks if you want to do guided writing exercises. There is also a Traditional version if you want that instead.

These books are more geared towards writing, but one of the side benefits of learning to write is it improves your cursive reading skills.

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333

http://detail.bookuu.com/2528718.html

Download a bunch of handwritten fonts. They are out there. Take a segment you can read in a regular font and see what they look like in the HW fonts.

Try writing in semi cursive w/o lifting off paper and you'll understand why some words are written the way they are.

I bought this book called Niubi! a few years ago. It covers most stuff from everyday slang to internet lingo and obscure profanity.

The book provides both hanzi and pinyin for all the words, but the words are just explained in English and have no example sentences. I thought it was worth the money (it's pretty cheap), but maybe more as a fun book to skim through than for serious studying.

This one

I got the bundle which was HSK1&2, and a practice workbook all for like $25. It’s a great deal. I recommend doing it in pencil so you can erase and reuse the practice areas.

I've found this book to be pretty helpful http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887100333/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1411917173&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

It's intended for western students of Chinese who want to learn to write like an adult, and was originally written for the army.

You can try Chineasy, it has great visual illustrations!

Also, I find this one to be a good book: https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Mandarin-Chinese-Characters-Quick/dp/0804844917/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0J1SYTKT7J0QSJ3BNMDJ

Remember that writing of any language is essentially just a recording of the spoken language; also, in Chinese, most content words are two or more characters, so by just knowing the meanings of individual characters, you can't understand written Chinese.

Also, I've found personally that it's very hard to properly learn the pronunciation (especially tones) unless you actually hear and speak the words.

Somebody here has already mentioned the book Remembering Simplified Hanzi (and its counterpart "Remembering Traditional Hanzi"), which is very interesting -- its approach is to learn the basic meanings of the characters and how to write them first through through mnemonics -- I think it's a good idea. And fun. But not really necessary.

I agree in that this feels like an article describing how this one person keeps it straight in his head rather than an actual study of grammar.

In terms of when to use 了, The book Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, there are two uses of the particle 了. One is the perfective aspect marker, used to show "that an event is being viewed in its entirety or as a whole." Something like "我喝了三杯啤酒" (I've drunk three beers). The other being currently relevant state, something like "我餓了" (I'm hungry, implies you weren't before). As for #3, I feel that falls into the currently relevant state category.

As for his fourth point, 了 when pronounced liao3 is a verb (unrelated to the particle le) meaning to complete or to finish, so I feel he is completely off base on this point.

I haven't used it extensively, but every time I've looked through it I've been very impressed by the quality of the Integrated Chinese textbook. It has LookInside on Amazon, so you can check whether it's suitable for you.

Also, have you considered joining a class in your area?

You should use writing guides to help you. That’s how we learn to write. Here’s a link to an amazon page for that. You don’t have to get this one, just try to find the ones that have step by step guides on them. Remember to use pencils so that you can use them for multiple times. Learning Mandarin Chinese Characters Volume 1: The Quick and Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters! (HSK Level 1 & AP Exam Prep)

Heisig is a pretty good book if you only want to learn characters and he has a simplified and traditional version.

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833244

I learned in college but we started with simplified story books that had glossaries of new characters at the end of each chapter like this one.

For more advanced reading/vocabulary I found the research paper assignments to be the most helpful. If you read multiple sources on one topic they tend to use similar vocabulary and phrases which helped me to remember them. Writing up a report forced me to learn the context and writing structure around the basic facts and phrases.

The Chinese Grammar Wiki is pretty kickass. You can also buy this book which I own and i think is good: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415827140/

"Integrated Chinese (中文听说读写)" Is pretty good. It is written by Yuehua Liu and Tao-chung Yao. This one: http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1323580038&sr=8-2

Niubi has proved to be fairly helpful in knowing a lot of general slang. It is a few years old, so it won't have a lot of the very recent stuff, but a lot of the terms used in the book are still used a fair amount in the right situations, and aren't restricted to flash slang that comes up on the internet and fades away rather quickly.

I purchased both of these books from the Foreign Language Bookstore in Wangfujing in Beijing. They were the only sentence pattern books they had at the time.

• Common Chinese Patterns 330 79RMB
  
  As a bonus, here is a site that lists all 330 examples from the book categorized by HSK level
  
  
• Exemplification of Common Sentence Patterns in Spoken Chinese 29RMB
  
  
• Chinese Grammar Wiki also has a lot of sentence patterns and examples.

I'm currently reading this book, A Learners' Handbook of Chinese Written Expressions, which covers 书面语 ("book language") words and grammatical points. It appears to be available only as a Kindle book now. I would only recommend this book to intermediate to advanced learners.

Here's a random sentence from the book:

9.4.4 殊 (quite)

中国对能取得此成绩，殊出意料。

It was quite unexpected that the Chinese team could make such an achievement.

This is a book I really enjoyed: https://www.amazon.com/Niubi-Chinese-Never-Taught-School/dp/0452295564

I'd start with memrise. Memrise has four courses on Hakka. I browsed them all, and this one looks like the only one worth your time: https://www.memrise.com/course/51837/hacking-hakka/

There's one Hakka T.V. station, Hakka TV: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqg95tSArchPfQaAWquDwg It's worth watching just to get the sound of the language down.

If you have money, definitely try to find a tutor online. I searched for "Hakka" in iTalki and got nothing, but you could probably put an ad out or find a friend-of-family or something.

If I understand it right, Hakka is usually written in Chinese characters. Heisig's books teach you how to read Chinese without learning how to talk in Chinese, so they may of may not be worth your time: https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236

There is a whole book dedicated to this:
https://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Sentences-Intermediate-English-Chinese/dp/7800525155

He really ought to have mentioned that their actually is a fast and easy way to learn characters

I like the following book for handwriting.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=chinese+handwriting&qid=1563310119&s=gateway&sr=8-6

I would also recommend [Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide] (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415700108)

The Lady in the Painting is a short book written from 300 of the most basic characters. The end of each chapter has a short explanation of some vocabulary and sentence patterns.

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Painting-Expanded-Simplified-Publications/dp/030012516X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302509627&sr=8-1

Have you tried the newer edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415827140

Pleco http://pleco.com.
Popup Chinese http://popupchinese.
Heisig and Richardson http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y + Anki http://ankisrs.net/.

https://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543529498&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=integrated+chinese&dpPl=1&dpID=51M7k%2Bq1OaL&ref=plSrch

I'll just leave this here.

Sorry. It’s an English to Chinese textbook. Has levels introduction and up. It’s called integrated Chinese in English. https://www.amazon.de/Integrated-Chinese-Zhong-Cheng-Language/dp/0887276385

There’s a link.

I started with this. No regrets choosing this as my starting point. Would recommend.

If you want common patterns, check out Common Chinese Patterns. Might be difficult for a beginner, though.

Don't get this

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415700108

It contains major errors.

Nobody here's giving you good advice, except u/koreth. They may actually think that it's just people trying to write print forms and doing so quickly, but they're wrong, and will never be able to read handwriting. Especially when they say "memorize the stroke order," given that handwritten forms often use a different stroke order.

This book is your ticket to being awesome.

This book helped me a bit: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333

But I'm still awful at it and end up asking native speakers to read handwritten things to me.

To be fair, my horrible English handwriting is probably just as indecipherable to them.