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6
Here is a nice short overview on Mandarin tone sandhis: http://web.mit.edu/jinzhang/www/pinyin/tones/index.html
If you want to read into the details I have found the following a very good source (from the father of another romanization): "Yuen Ren Chao: A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9."
6
Complete rule of tones change is not a simple subject which can be understood just b a list. But there is a simple one I think might be suitable for you. http://www.trinity.edu/sfield/chin1501/ToneChange.html
Plus, if you are a foreigner who want learn Chinese without academic purpose, I think it's enough since many Chinese cannot use tones change complete ...
5
As a form of Southwestern Mandarin, you can approach the Chongqing dialect with resources designed for Sichuanese in general. The English Wikipedia gives a lot of resources on "Si4cuan1hua4", including a good overview of the phonology, and a introduction to Sichuanese Pinyin. The Chinese Wikipedia gives a little more detail on the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect.
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5
There is one main difference between children's books and adult foreign textbooks:
Adult foreign textbooks are designed to give foreigners the best chance to communicate in simple everyday circumstances.
Children's books start with the very basics and require longer to get to the same place, however they provide you a much more solid base and a far wider ...
4
I learned Chinese through children's books as a child.
I've suffered from NOT using children's books in other languages. What has happened in those languages is that I've learned a lot of "technical" terms, and can hold my own in "advanced" discussions. Then I trip over some grammar point or some every day phrase that every 10-year old native speaker knows.
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3
I have read some children's books and found that they can be helpful. However, there is one drawback that I've seen, which doesn't apply to textbooks. Some children's books are designed to help children learn to read. However, the assumption is that the children already know how to speak. Thus, the book helps new readers learn characters but assumes they ...
3
For example, you can go to Forvo.com. (You can find the Chinese section at this address; on the right you see the top users that provided most audios.)
It's a huge database of words, characters, expressions in any language provided by users. The good thing is there's a lot of stuff, but the down-side is that although some users provided many audios (so you ...
2
No.
Children's books are written -- not surprisingly -- for little native speakers. These are little people who have an astonishingly broad vocabulary at age three. And that vocabulary includes many words that foreign learners of the language never pick up (or need, really.) What kid doesn't know the sounds that every animal makes, or the words for a bunch ...
2
As xiecheng mentioned, tones changes are very complicated, and there is unfortunately little material on subject. Not that you care to this extent, but one can actually "map" tones using audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net). If you do that, you'll see that tones change a lot when they are in sentences and that how and the extent to which a tone can ...
2
I recommend this《小學生的國語辭典》approved by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education for their primary school students. It contains the following features:
语文帮手 (or language assistant) to highlight certain words that require
particular attention. For example:
「人才」有才能和德性的人。例: ...
請注意：指才能和知質義時「人才」也可以寫成「人材」：但是有木料或原料的意思時「木材」和「藥材」不可以寫作「木才」、「藥才」。
小提醒 (or small ...
1
To memorize characters and pronunciation you can use Memrise, which will help you to learn by repeating words you've missed during the previous learning session.
However, you won't learn any grammar or usage, just words. So it is not a complete solution, but a good help to expand your vocabulary.
It is not as feature complete as Codeacademy but I don't ...
1
mp3.baidu.com is a music downloading site as far as I know...
If you are looking for professional Mandarin recording of selective Chinese articles (includes Lu Xun's article sometimes), I would suggest the Yuedu.FM.
BTW, VeryCD is no longer a file-sharing site anymore because of copyright issue, and all download links has since been removed. However, the ...
1
AllSet Learning just launched a grammar web site, and the front page has a list of reference books that they used to prepare it. The site itself also looks useful. There's not a lot of detail yet, but they say they will continue working to add more content.
1
Another web site is http://www.iciba.com where you can find not only the pronunciation of Chinese characters and words, but also their meaning in English and Chinese.
Update
This site has real person readings, but unfortunately the site is totally in Chinese:
http://www.caca8.net/zi/py/ — single characters
http://www.caca8.net/ci/ — words
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1
I've used a mixture of textbooks and children's books to practice reading. The biggest advantage to children's books is that I can read them together with my daughter. She's not very interested in my textbooks!
The biggest thing to be careful of with children's books is to check which phonetic system they use before you buy or borrow them. Here in ...
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