Introduction

"Welcome to Chinese at Emory", a video message by Yu Li.

Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The most widespread form of Chinese is Mandarin, which may be regarded as modern standard Chinese. It is spoken as a first language by over 835 million people in central and northern China, as well as Taiwan, claiming more native speakers than any other language. An additional 100 million speak it as a second language. The Chinese writing system developed more than 4,000 years ago and consists of an individual character or ideogram for every syllable, each character representing a word or idea rather than a sound. Characters are written in columns read from top to bottom and from right to left, or in horizontal lines that read from left to right. In 1956 an alphabet based on Roman letters (Pinyin) was developed in mainland China. Its purpose, however, was the phonetic transcription of Chinese characters rather than the replacement of them.

Departments & Related Programs

Russian and East-Asian Languages and Cultures Department (REALC) 

Online Audio and Video

"Languages Make a Difference"

Online audio and video materials are available for Chinese through Blackboard coursework.

Online Resources

Dictionaries and Translations:

1. Online Chinese-English Dictionary: excellent character recognition system

http://www.nciku.com/

1. Online Chinese-English Dictionary

http://www.zdic.net/

1. Online Chinese-English Dictionary: Youdao Cidian

http://dict.youdao.com

1. Online Dictionary for Chinese-English Sentences

http://juhai.dict.cn/

1. Good Translations

www.mdbg.net

Pinyin:

1. Online Pinyin Practice

http://pinyinpractice.com/wangzhi/

1. Tone analyzing website

https://www.speech.kth.se/wavesurfer/

Chinese Characters:

1. Online Chinese Tools, which includes a Chinese Character Flashcards java applet for learning Chinese characters.

www.mandarintools.com

1. Online character dictionary and pinyin chat, with various items of interest related to Chinese language learning

www.zhongwen.com

1. eStroke: animations to show order of strokes

http://www.eon.com.hk/estroke/

1. Online animations to learn to write characters

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/azi/page1.htm

1. Bopomofo

http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=enctext.org

Chinese Grammar:

1. Basic Chinese Grammar: A Review in Slides (Rutgers University)

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~rsimmon/chingram/

Online Videos and Learning Series:

1. Conversational Chinese Online (I)

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content.htm

15 Units of conversational Chinese for beginners, sound files and exercises developed by Tianwei Xie

1. Conversational Chinese Online (II)

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol2/

6 Units of conversational Chinese for beginners, sound files and exercises

1. Communicate in Chinese

http://english.cntv.cn/program/learnchinese/communicateinchinese/

A Chinese language-learning series by CCTV. Free online videos

1. A blizzard website created by Prof. Marjorie Chan at Ohio State, on Chinese linguistics

https://chinalinks.osu.edu/

1. Free U.S. State Department FSI print and audio materials for Mandarin, Cantonese, and many other languages

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php

1. A website of a leading expert on technology and Chinese learning and teaching in the U.S. His sites especially "Learning Chinese Online" have many resources. 

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ 

Chinese Learning Apps and Tools:

1. Chinese Flashcard iPhone App

http://www.clavisinica.com/iphone-zika.html

1. Chinese-English Dictionary App for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android

http://www.pleco.com

1. KEY System for students & teachers of Chinese

www.cjkware.com

1. Perapera Chinese pop-up dictionary for Firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perapera-kun-chinese-popup-tra

 Online Chinese Books:

1. Chinese Books Cyberstore

http://www.chinesebooks.net/

Emory Favorites

Chinese Characters and Culture
Learning Chinese Online
Mandarin Learning Tools
China.com
Sohu.com
Sina Global Network
Chinese Yahoo