Resources for learning Mandarin Chinese

Question

This is a community-maintained list of resources for learning Mandarin Chinese.

Alphabetical Index

• Add-ons (browser)
• Apps
• Books
• Dictionaries
• Language Exchanges
• Lists of Resources
• News
• Online Courses and Tutors
• Podcasts
• Social Media
• Software
• Textbooks
• Websites

Just write in the appropriate answer/section. If you have concerns, questions, post a meta question, so we don't clutter the comments, but you can link your meta question from the comments.

Organization

• Answers have a type of resource each.
• Please do not include links to unlawful content (note: we are not international copyright lawyers). If a resource is listed, it does not imply we endorse it.
• Both free and commercial resources are allowed, but make sure to include a note if they are. Remember the rules about self-promotion. Include also if registration is required.
• Include links to the sites only, don't post images, they would take too much space.
• Add the resources in alphabetical order so they're easier to find.
• Please only include resources that have some kind of notoriety (we don't want to be flooded by useless resources).

Note: new rules could be added in the future.

Answer 1

Browser Add-ons

General

• Add Pinyin - Chinese Zero to Hero Reader (Chrome)

• Chinese Tutor (Chrome: Flashcards, Speaking, Dictionary, Extension) is a flashcard extension.

• Flixlingo (Chrome).

• Language Learning with Netflix (Chrome).

• Language Learning with YouTube (Chrome).

• New Tong Wen Tang (Chrome; Firefox) converts between simplified and traditional Chinese.

• Hanzisize (Chrome) enlarges Chinese text.

Popup dictionaries

• Akkadu (Firefox)
• Perapera Chinese (Firefox)
• Frill (Safari)
• GlotDojo (Chrome) with Chinese premium
• Inkah (Chrome; Firefox)
• LiuChan Chinese Popup Dictionary (Chrome; Firefox)
• Popover Chinese (Safari)
• Zhongwen: The Popular Chinese Learning Tool (Chrome; Firefox)
• Zhongzhong: An improved Chinese Dictionary (Chrome)

Answer 2

Websites

Blogs

• Hacking Chinese

• Sinosplice

Databases

See also Dictionaries.

• 9610 Shufazidian is a database of calligraphic variants.
• Chinese Linguipedia is a database of glyph origins.
• ChinesePoetry
• Chinese text project is a database of pre-modern Chinese texts.
• Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants
• Learn Chinese Club catalogues YouTube videos for learning Chinese.
• A List of Chinese names by Chih-Hao Tsai.
• List of Chinese classifiers at Wikipedia.
• Little Prince Collection: 971 "The Little Prince" books in Mandarin.
• Multi-function Chinese Character Database provides ancient character forms and glyph origins.
• Shtooka provides Chinese word audio pronunciations.
• Täglich Chinesisch (German) characters and components database.
• Wengu provides classical Chinese works.
• Xiao xue tang provides ancient character variants, oracle bones, seal scripts, etc.

Example sentences

• Bing Dictionary
• ChinesePod
• ICIBA
• Jukuu
• Leiden Weibo Corpus
• Purple Culture
• Tatoeba (also downloadable)
• We Hanyu extracts example sentences (segmented with pinyin) from videos.
• YouDao
• YouGlish finds example sentences on YouTube.
• Zaoju Wang 造句网

Flashcards and Writing

• Skritter for writing practice. Subscriptions are $US 14.99 per month.
• TOFU Learn for writing practice.

Forum

• Chinese Forums
• Chinese Stack Exchange
• Pleco Software Forum
• Reddit's r/ChineseLanguage
• WordReference.com
• Duolingo Chinese Forum

General learning

• cchatty
• ChineseKuang
• Dong Chinese - paid version starts at $US 9.99 per month
• FluentU starts at $US 20 per month.
• Glossika focuses on learning, and starts at $US 24.99 per month.
• Hack Chinese starts at $US 8 per month.
• Ninchanese starts at $US 10 per month.
• Pimsleur for languages in general, includes Mandarin starting at $US 19.95 per month.
• Ponddy Reader for teaching and learning, starts at $US 9.99 per month.
• Yabla starts at $US 12.95 per month. See also: PinYin Chart with audio.
• Yoyo Chinese bundles start at $US 88.
• ZBSchools has Mandarin videos and reading materials for a Singaporean children.

Grammar

• Chinese Boost
• Chinese Grammar Wiki

Multimedia lessons

• Global Language Online Support System (GLOSS) provides free audio lessons with transcripts.
• Learn Chinese with Peppa Pig has annotated Peppa Pig YouTube videos.
• Learn Chinese Through Stories 听故事学中文

Reading

• Blah.me provides Chinese books, novels, etc.
• Chinese Comic Shop provides Chinese comics with clickable words.
• Chinese News Club
• Chinese Reader's Guild
• Chinese Reading Practice
• Clozemaster "fill in the blanks" game (includes Chinese).
• 电子课本网 provides textbooks (e.g. 语文) used in Chinese schools.
• Fourth Tone Mandarin; now approx. $US 75 per year for a subscription.
• HSK Reading
• LingQ tracks words while reading, with various subscriptions e.g. $US 107.88 for 12 months.
• My Chinese Reading
• Nanshasi123 provides 语文 textbooks used in Chinese schools.
• Project Gutenberg provides Chinese novels.
• 七故事儿童网 has children's stories.
• Ricciwawa has short stories with audio.
• RuiWen has articles e.g. 作文 written by Chinese children.
• XKCD comics in Chinese.
• Zhihu Digest summarizes the top questions from Zhihu.
• ZhWenPG provides free Chinese web novels.

Translation

• Baidu Translate 百度翻译
• Bing Microsoft Translator
• DeepL Translate
• Google Translate
• Translate an image

Web tools

• Captionz generates subtitles for YouTube videos.
• Chinese Text Project allows search by radical.
• Chinese Tools has a range of tools, e.g. search by radical.
• HanziShan estimates how many characters you know.
• HSK东西 enumerates HSK characters and words in text; see also the HSK data.
• pin1yin1.com adds pinyin or Zhuyin to text.
• QHanzi allows character input via hand drawing.
• NJStar converts Chinese GBK, Big5, etc. to Unicode.
• Talkify text to speech.
• Worchid allows typing Chinese by inputting English, pinyin, or bopomofo.

Answer 3

Software for learning

• Anki is an SRS program with Chinese decks (e.g. the Spoonfed Chinese deck).

• Mnemosyne is a free downloadable SRS program, with some decks for Chinese.

Tools

• Chinese Sentence Miner extracts example sentences from a database of 18000+ sentences.

• Ibus (Github; Google Code) is a Chinese input framework for Unix/Linux (e.g. Ubuntu).

• Hanzi Writer is a javascript library for character animations.

• iconv is a Unix command for converting between character encoding, e.g., iconv -c -t=UTF-8 can be used to convert to UTF-8.

• Jieba is a free tool for Chinese text segmentation, written in Python.

• MacOSX Language Tools includes Chinese-English dictionaries, character-to-pinyin conversion, etc.

• Microsoft Edge's Read Aloud function is noted for its high quality text to speech.

• OpenCC converts between simplified and traditional characters; its dictionaries are available (characters; phrases).

Answer 4

Podcasts

You can find many such podcasts by searching for Chinese on e.g. Spotify or Tune In

• ChinesePod has many Chinese lessons, starting at around $US 14 per month.

• Coffee Break Chinese; transcript requires paid account, starting at £96 once-off.

• Popup Chinese

• Learning Chinese through Stories

• 每日视频新闻 video podcast news.

• Melnyks (also at Tune In)

• Radio Garden enables listening to radio worldwide, including Chinese radio, e.g. Joy FM (Beijing) and Kiss Radio (Taiwan).

• Speak Chinese Naturally; transcript requires paid account, starting at $US 3.99 per month.

• Talk Chineasy

• You Can Learn Chinese

• YMC Learn Chinese (Apple; YouTube)

• I Love Learning Chinese: dialogues focusing on a phrase or grammatical structure with Chinese sentences translated into English

• 大鹏说中文-Speak Chinese With Da Peng has short (~ 5 min) podcasts on daily Chinese expressions which are described in clear and relatively simple Chinese. There are also longer (~15 min) podcasts on various topics.

Answer 5

Language Exchanges

Various websites to find language exchange partners, people will meet in person or talk online and help each other learn each others' respective languages.

• Busuu
• Conversation Exchange
• HelloTalk
• Hinative
• italki
• Lang-8
• LangCorrect for writing corrections.
• The Mixxer
• My Language Exchange
• Polyglot Club
• Reddit's r/language_exchange
• Speaky

Answer 6

Apps

Dictionaries

• Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro 汉英词典 (Android; $US 2.99) includes handwriting recognition, native speaker audio, stroke animations, example sentences, idioms, HSK words, etc. More functionality via in-app purchases, e.g. Hanping Camera ($US 9.99) and Hanping Chinese Popup ($US 9.99).

• Pleco (iOS; Android) free dictionary with example sentences; many additional features e.g. OCR via in-app purchases.

Flashcards and Writing

• AnkiMobile (iPhone; $US 24.99) and AnkiDroid (Android) is a popular flashcard tool with many Chinese 'card decks' created by the community.

• Chinese Peach (iOS; Android).

• Chinese Writer (iOS; Android) provides writing practice by tracing on-screen characters.

• Daily Chinese (iPhone; Android) is a vocabulary builder.

• Flashonary (iOS) is a flashcard dictionary.

• Inkstone (Android $US 4.99; demo video) is an app for writing practice.

• Noodle Chinese (iPhone) is an app for writing practice.

• Skritter (iPhone: old version; new version; Android) is a responsive app for writing practice. Subscriptions are $US 14.99 per month.

• trainchinese (iOS; Android).

• TOFU Learn (iPhone; Android) includes character writing practice for Chinese. It's described as free, but it also has paid "pro" accounts.

• Word Tracer (iPhone) provides writing practice by tracing on-screen characters.

Games

• 酷狗唱唱 (iPhone; QQ) is a Chinese karaoke app which gives you a score based on your singing.

• NiHao! (iPad; $US 4.99) grammar and puzzle game.

• Word Swing (iOS; Android) is a choose-your-own-adventure text adventure game (paid version required for full access).

General learning

• AI Super Chinese (iOS; Android).

• Chineasy (iOS; Android) is for memorizing characters and basic lessons.

• ChineseSkill (iOS; Android) provides learning materials up to HSK4 (speaking, writing, listening and reading), and flash cards.

• Chinesimple HSK (HSK levels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) provides grammar and vocabulary games, a dictionary, and special levels (Android)

• Dong Chinese (Android)

• Drops (iOS; Android).

• Duolingo (iPhone; Android) is a colorful language-learning app, including Chinese. Paid versions start at $US 9.99 per month.

• HelloChinese (iPhone; Android) is a beginner app for improving speaking skills based on speech recognition.

• Incredible Chinese (iOS; Android) uses AI/speech recognition to learn via Chinese conversations.

• Lingodeer (iOS; Android) has a variety of puzzles for languages including Chinese; paid version $US 11.99 per month.

• Memrise (iPhone; Android) is a language memorization app, which includes Chinese. Subscriptions start at around $US 8.99 per month.

• Ninchanese (Android) starts at around $US 10 per month.

• Rosetta Stone (iOS; Android) is around $US 9.99 per month.

Reading and Listening

• The Chairman's Bao (iOS; Android) is a Chinese graded reader app. Most content requires a $US 10 per month subscription.

• Clozemaster (iOS; Android) provides fill-in-the-blank "cloze" sentences in many languages, including Chinese. (Pro version: $US 8 per month.)

• Du Chinese (iPhone; Android) provides short stories for reading and listening practice (regularly updated; paid version required to access all lessons).

• Hanzi Reader (iOS) segments Chinese text and allows the user to look up words.

• M Mandarin (iOS; Android) teaches Chinese via comics.

• Phrasis (iOS) searches movie subtitles.

• PinyinBrowser (iOS) adds Pinyin or Bopomofo to Chinese web pages while you browse.

• Pinyiner Free (Android) for pinyin annotation of copied text or books.

• Readibu - Chinese novel reader (iPhone; $US 4.99 per month; Android).

• Wise Talk (iPhone) provides idioms for listening practice (paid version $US 0.99).

Translations and OCR

• Baidu Translate (百度翻译) (iOS) provides Chinese-to-English, English-to-Chinese translations, OCR (in-app purchase in Pleco), common phrases/expressions list, audio lookup, etc.

• Baidu Chinese (百度汉语) (iPhone) provides free OCR, compositions (作文), and Chinese poetry recital.

• Google Assistant (iOS; Android) has an interpreter mode which live translates conversations.

Answer 7

Textbooks

See also Chinese textbook grammar index at the Chinese Grammar Wiki.

Learning

• Yong Ho, Beginner's Chinese, 2010. Amazon.

• ShaoLan. Chineasy Everyday: Learning Chinese Through Its Culture, 2016. Amazon. (Now available as an app).

• Kan Qian, Colloquial Chinese: The Complete Course for Beginners, 2015. Amazon; Routledge. Texts, exercises, grammar highlights, etc.

• Jiang Liping, HSK Standard Course (HSK标准教程), ~2018. Amazon: HSK 1; 2; 3; 4上; 4下；5上 and 5下; 6上 and 6下.

• Yuehua Liu et al., Integrated Chinese: Simplified Characters Textbook, Level 1, Part 1 中文听说读写, 2008. Amazon; Cheng & Tsui.

• Yong Ho, Intermediate Chinese, 2013. Amazon.

• Peking University, Modern Chinese: A Basic Course, 1971. Amazon.

• Liu Xun, New Practical Chinese Reader, 2004. Amazon.

• James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson, Remembering Traditional Hanzi and Remembering Simplified Hanzi, 2008+. Amazon: T1, T2; S1, S1; Nanzan T1, T2; S1, S2. A method for memorizing Chinese characters without their pronunciation. (See also: a fan-made dataset for simplified characters.)

• Yuonne Li Walls and Jan W. Walls, Using Chinese - A guide to contemporary usage, 2009. Amazon.

Reference

• Muhammad Wolfgang G. A. Schmidt, All the Grammar and Language Points For Each Of The Six Levels of the Chinese Language Proficiency Test (HSK), 2018. Amazon.

• Yip Po-Ching and Dan Rimmington, Chinese - An Essential Grammar, 2006. Amazon.

• Charles N. Li and Sandra A. Thompson, Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, 1989. Amazon; Google Books. Only pinyin (no characters).

• Claudia Ross and Jing-heng Sheng Ma, Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars), 2014. Amazon.

• Dejin Li and Meizhen Cheng, A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners (外国人实用汉语语法), 2008. Amazon. Bilingual (English and Chinese); characters only.

• Claudia Ross, Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar, 2004. Amazon.

Answer 8

Online Courses

• ChineseFor.Us is a video course (around $US 9.99 per month).

• Chinese Learn Online is an audio course taught from Taiwan; paid account (starting at $US 19.95 per month) required for transcript, etc.

• Chinese Zero to Hero is a video course based on the HSK (sample videos are on YouTube); bundle price varies e.g. $US 29 for HSK1.

• Coursera includes many free Chinese courses, such as Chinese for HSK 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (payment required for course verification).

• Culture Alley provides free language conversations and games, and includes Mandarin; paid expert help.

• iTunesU provides a variety of free Mandarin courses, such as Beginners' Chinese by The Open University and Beginning Chinese by Seton Hall University.

• MandarinX provides free online courses such as "Mandarin Chinese Essentials" and "Mandarin Chinese for Business" (course verification costs $US 99).

• Melnyks provides Chinese audio lessons; paid account (starting at $US 97 per year) required for transcript, etc.

• Outlier Chinese Character Masterclass provides instruction on character components, etc., for $US 99.00.

• Popup Chinese provides Chinese lessons via podcasts; paid account ($US 99.99 per year) required for mp3, transcript, etc.

• Yoyo Chinese provides video lessons, etc.; starts at around $US 88 per bundle.

Tutors

• Berlitz provides a range of Mandarin classes; pricing is not immediately available on their website.

• Instant Mandarin provides 1-on-1 online courses; bundles start with 12 lessons at $US 120.

• LTL Mandarin provides a variety of tutoring methods; with pricing in the ballpark of ￥150 per hour.

• That's Mandarin provides a variety of tutoring and learning methods; with pricing in the ballpark of ￥70 per hour with pricing for 1-on-1 lessons at ￥165 per hour

Answer 9

Dictionaries

Online

• Almaany

• Bkrs (mostly in Russian) (removed for copyright reasons, see comments to the answer here).

• CantoDict includes Mandarin.

• 潮州音字典 is a pinyin based dictionary.

• Chinese Tutor Dictionary

• Collins Mandarin Chinese Dictionary

• Collocation Search

• Dict.cn

• Forvo pronunciation dictionary.

• HanDian (汉典) (zdic)

• HanziCraft character dictionary.

• nciku Line Dict

• Linguee

• MDBG English-Chinese

• Mo eDict

• Revised Taiwan Academic Online Dictionary 重編國語辭典修訂本

• Wiktionary

• WordBuddy Dictionary

• Xiaoma Cidian (小马词典)

• Yabla

• Youdao

Image search provided by Baidu, Bing, and Google can be used as a visual dictionary. Many dictionaries are listed at Dictionaryphile.

Technical

• Computer Term Translations (電腦名詞譯名).

• Dr. Dict medical dictionary.

• cosdna.com for chemistry and cosmetics

• SciDict for science, biomedical, mechanics, chemistry and computer science.

• Chinese Medicinal Material Images Database

Offline

• ABC dictionary - available as a paid-for add-on in Pleco. Gives parts of speech and rates homonyms by frequency of usage. See also this answer.

• CC-CEDICT (Wiki) is downloadable as a plain text file.

• Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro 汉英词典 (Android; $US 2.99).

• Pleco (iOS; Android) free dictionary with example sentences; many additional features e.g. OCR via in-app purchases.

• Wenlin. Non-introductory versions start at $US 2.99 per month.

Many dictionaries are downloadable from HuZheng.org.

Answer 10

News

• Australian ABC中文 News.

• The Australian.

• BBC News中文: simplified and traditional.

• China Central Television (CCTV / 中国中央电视台) live stream.

• FT中文网 - Financial Times Chinese

• MSN News has Chinese-English bilingual articles labelled 双语.

• 纽约时报中文网 - New York Times: English-Chinese parallel text.

• Australian SBS News Mandarin (and audio podcast).

• Sina新闻中心

• 中国日报网: China Daily (bilingual).

Answer 11

Books

Graded readers

• Chinese Breeze series.

• Sinolingua series.

• Mandarin Companion series (simplified and traditional).

• Tales and Traditions series at Cheng & Tsui.

(Note: Fig. 7 in Loach (2017) analyzes the difficulty of Mandarin Companion and Sinolingua.)

Novels

• 活着 (To Live), available from blah.me.

Also note a Reddit /r/chinesebookclub post sorts Chinese novels by difficulty (results). The YouTube channel Kuo’s Audiobooks has readings of Harry Potter novels.

Answer 12

Social Media

Discord

• 30 Days of Chinese is for sharing your Chinese studies.

Facebook

• Business Chinese Learning

• CCTV中文 Chinese news.

• ChineseClass101

• CRI Learn Chinese

• Hanbridge Mandarin Facebook

• Learn Chinese characters

• Learn Chinese Mandarin HSK1 HSK2 HSK3 HSK4 HSK5 HSK6 with Richard Wu.

Twitter

• HSK Official

Answer 13

Lists of Resources

• Awesome Chinese NLP lists Chinese natural language processing resources.

• Chinese Discord Resource for the 看剧学汉语 Discord: TV shows sources; listening; reading; TV show recommendations; game recommendations.

• Chinese-English Exchange Discord Server Resource List

• Chinese Grammar Wiki's textbook index.

• Chinese Zero to Hero resources.

• Dictionaryphile lists dictionaries.

• Graded Watching ranks movies and TV series in terms of difficulty.

• Gratis Global lists free resources.

• Hacking Chinese for resource reviews.

• Learn Chinese Club for YouTube videos.

• Lindie Botes (polyglot) lists the resources she uses.

• LTL Mandarin's resource page

• That's Mandarin's Free E-Books and Resource Page

• Reddit's r/ChineseLanguage resource flair

• YouTube channels to learn Chinese