Mandarin resources

Since I embarked on my journey to master the Chinese language, I've come across a number of useful websites and mobile phone apps, as well as written a few blog posts for reading practice. So here's a collection of all the above, for those of you trying to get to grips with Mandarin. I'll update this page with further resources and blog posts as I find/write them!

Useful websites:

  • Nciku - not just an excellent Chinese dictionary (which allows you to not only type in English or pinyin, but also lets you handwrite characters on-screen to search). It also has a fantastic set of vocabulary lists, community pages, Q&As and conversations.
  • Google translate - very handy (and generally fairly accurate) for translating Chinese to English (and visa versa). Will also translate entire web pages for you.
  • practice-chinese.com - great blog authored by Chinese teachers in Beijing, with vocabulary lists, reading practice and conversations as well as study tips.
  • Mandarin segments - another brilliant blog by someone learning Chinese.
  • laowaichinese.net - blog written by a non-native Chinese speaker with tips and strategies for learning to speak Mandarin Chinese.
  • Day in Chinese - a great blog collectively authored by a group of people learning Chinese (including me)
  • Pinyin annotator - allows you to paste in a ton of Chinese characters, and end up with the pinyin next to each word.
iPhone apps:
  • DianHua - great dictionary and flash card app
  • CamDictionary - translates photos taken of text
  • Google translate
  • Nciku - comprehensive dictionary by the website of the same name
  • TuneIn Radio - not strictly for Chinese but great for listening to Chinese and Taiwanese radio stations in Mandarin
  • Chinese input - not an app, but instructions on how to switch on the Chinese keyboard on your iPhone so you can type either using pinyin or hand writing chinese characters.
My blog posts and reading practice:


You can access a feed of all of my Mandarin related blog posts here.


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