Community Info

Community Information

Below is information about the "Chinese Character a Day" community on LiveJournal. To join this community, click here. You may leave the community at any time.

• Far East 3000 Chinese Character Dictionary
  
• Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and History
  
• Fundamentals of Chinese Characters
  
• Far East Chinese-English Dictionary
  
• Far East Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary
  

• MAY or MAY NOT keep updating this journal.
  
• MAY or MAY NOT continue to provide all the information about each character that I started providing at the beginning.
  
• MAY or MAY NOT correct errors if you point them out in comments.
  
• SHALL NOT let anyone besides myself post, although (currently) any members may comment.
  
• SHALL NOT answer your questions about China, Chinese culture, Chinese language learning schools or software, and spoken or written Chinese.
  
• SHALL NOT answer your questions about Livejournal, how to post, how to comment, how to set up your own community, where I learned Chinese, why I am doing this, or why I am doing it incorrectly.
  
• SHALL eject you from membership if you (a) flame, (b) ignore my warnings that you are commenting way off topic, (c) try to discuss politics, religion, your partner's genitals, or anything else a reasonably intelligent adult knows doesn't belong in the comments to this group.
  
• AM much nicer and more reasonable than this list suggests. (I just don't want this community to become a huge time-sink, so I'm not going to babysit.)
  

characterguy

• Listening Practice
  
  
  
  • http://www2.kenyon.edu/People/bai/VCSC.htm (survival Chinese videos; pretty good!)
    
  • http://chinese.rutgers.edu/content_cs.htm (elementary language lessons from Rutgers University)
    
  • http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echiba/ (elementary language lessons from Harvard)
    
  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/index.shtml (the BBC's elementary VIDEO language lessons; very nice)
    
  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/trad/hi/programmes/default.stm (the BBC's web-based Mandarin radio broadcasts can be used to practice your listening skills)
    
  • http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/guangboku/ (the U.S. government's Radio Free Asia web-based broadcasts can also be used to practice your listening skills)
    
  • http://www.chinesepod.com/ (brief lessons, updated daily, in the format of a morning talk-radio show; good for utter novice through advanced levels; basic features free, advanced features require a monthly fee)
    
  • http://www.shufawest.us/language/index.html (the "Tone Drill" link is particularly good for beginners)
    
  • http://www.languageguide.org/mandarin/ ("survival Chinese" guide for beginners; emphasis on Mainland usage)
    
  
  
• General Reference
  
  
  
  • http://languagesonline.blogspot.com/ (a blog reviewing online learning resources for various languages; well done by livejournal's own kelly_in_taiwan!)
    
  • http://pinyin.info/unicode/marks3.html (application that converts regular Roman text with numbers -- gen1 zhe4ge yi2yang4 -- to Pinyin -- gēn zhège yíyàng)
    
  • http://chinalinks.osu.edu/ (guide to web resources on the Chinese language)
    
  • http://www.shufawest.us/language/index.html (guide to web resources for learning Chinese)
    
  • http://www.govtilr.org/ILRscale1.htm (the U.S. federal government's standards for assessing ability in reading, writing, speaking and listening to a foreign language)
    
  • http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/ (THE best site for info on using Chinese on a Mac)
    
  • http://syndicated.livejournal.com/hanzismatter/ (why you should be careful if you want a character tattoo)
    
  • http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/ (frequency lists of Chinese characters, and also a FAQ on reading and writing characters in different computer systems)
    
  • http://www.archiebarnes.com/ (includes a downloadable textbook of Classical Chinese)
    
  • http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/ (authentic info on the oldest Chinese musical instrument -- one which is still played by a hanful of people)
    
  
  
• Chinese Character Reference
  
  
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character (good general introduction to Chinese characters, including their principles of composition, history and relationship to the spoken language)
    
  • http://www.zhongwen.com (etymological dictionary of Chinese; emphasis on long-form characters)
    
  • http://www.chineselanguage.org/CCDICT/index.php?lang=en (Chinese Character Dictionary with multiple methods for character search)
    
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kangxi_radicals (list of the traditional Kangxi Radicals)
    
  • http://www.hello-han.com/ch-education/hanyurumen/word/pianpang/pianpang.htm (list of commonly used character radicals with their Chinese nicknames; simplified forms)
    
  • http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/ (Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, but quite comprehensive for Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Vietnamese; when prompted enter "guest" as username and leave password blank)
    
  • http://www.internationalscientific.org/chin_home.aspx (another very useful etymological dictionary of Chinese; includes small seal, bronze inscription and oracle bone forms of characters)
    
  • http://140.111.34.46/dict/ (Guoyu cidian, an online Chinese-Chinese dictionary
    
  
  
• Reading Characters Practice
  
  
  
  • http://www.newsinchinese.com/ (Chinese news with pop-up translations of words)
    
  • http://www.oneaday.org/trad/index.html (Chinese idioms in long-form characters)
    
  
  
• Other Dialects
  
  
  
  • http://www.cantonese.ca/ (Cantonese pronunciation, tones and phrases)
    
  • http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/taiwanese/index.php (introductory Taiwanese)
    
  
  

• zhongwen (This seems to be the most active community when it comes to posting and answering questions about the Chinese language.)
  
• chineselanguage
  
• chinesevocab
  
• learn_mandarin
  
• chinese_majors
  
• kanji (This is a community for learning Japanese kanji and their pronunciations. Unfortunately, it seems to be moribund.)
  

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• RSS Digest: http://community.livejournal.com/dailycharacter/data/rss?auth=digest
  

• http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kittycat.php (good luck getting the song, or the images, out of your head!)
  
• http://www.vikingkittens.com/ (kitties + vikings + Zep = fun)
  
• http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/swk2.php (an inside Star Wars joke AND an inside Kung-fu movie joke!)