a good chinese forum?

[Adriano]

Hi people!
Guessing I'm in the right board to ask such a question, does anybody know a good (or the best) online forum you can learn/teach/discuss about Mandarin? Just as TJP is for Japanese language?
I'm also joining the English Experts, known as the best online forum about the anglophone world/english language in portuguese.
Now feeling more confident to join "shiritori" games in mandarin, discuss the "language mysteries" and share info about living in China, I would like to know a good place, full of attentive and kind people like TJP.
よろしくお愿いします！
再见！

[Adriano]

P.S.: before somebody just tell me "google it", you know, sometimes people can give you better/useful tips than Google.
Searching for "japanese language forum" or "日本語フォーラム", the best one doesn't even appears on the top 50.

[Rypervenche]

Hi people!
Guessing I'm in the right board to ask such a question, does anybody know a good (or the best) online forum you can learn/teach/discuss about Mandarin? Just as TJP is for Japanese language?

Adriano，你好！Check out http://www.chinese-forums.com/ for a forum that is pretty good. If you are at all interested in Taiwan there is a good but quite small forum at http://www.forumosa.com/, but I'm assuming you're not. As for chatting, I have found http://www.sharedtalk.com to overflowing with 中國人. You can also find a lot of people on QQ (http://im.qq.com/qq/all.shtml).

I have a bunch of websites for Chinese in general as well, but I have yet to sort through them all (there are a lot 囧). If you would like to see some of them and go through them yourself you can. Here is the list in an html, http://3.ly/rkya.

I have a bunch more that aren't included in that link, but that should get you started (especially with this über link http://3.ly/SdTb).

Also, if you need any help or would just like another Mandarin learner to speak with, I would love to chat with you. Send me a message if you're interested.

Ryper - 沛睿

[ss]

Adriano，Ryper, 大家好！

Adriano, I don't participate in Chinese forum, but if you like, you might want to create a discussion thread in this "General Off Topic" sub-forum here. I know there are quite a number of native English speakers like Rypervenche, Donkies, can communicate in Chinese. And I think there are Chinese speakers (not just from China, I think) in this forum, as well.

You might want to try TJP chat, as far as I know, sometimes there are Chinese speakers there. If Ryper and I were in the chat room, we would be happy to chat with you. But regarding info living in China I don't think I can help.

(Just FYI, Ryper's can speak fluent Chinese, very impressive!)

[Adriano]

Hey Ryper, 太谢了！ ；）
Thank you so much for your links, I've looked through every one, and really liked the forum about Taiwan, although it's not focused on the language.. indeed I want to learn the bopomofo alphabet as soon as I can, because even not being used in China,it's a very useful alphabet for when you don't get the 拼音（ピンイン）of a certain letter.. and it's also very used in children's books.
I clicked on this link(http://3.ly/rkya.) but I must to be logged in to see your list ..
I knew about QQ, it's kind of a chinese messenger, my girlfriend uses it everytime to talk with her family.

Hi SS! So you too can speak chinese?
I've never imagined there were so many mandarin speakers here in TJP. 吃惊! or 吃驚! in japanese
那么我们一起练习汉语吧！
Actually my weak point in chinese is pronounciation, how to tell apart b - p, d - t.. I hope I can find a good forum to make 发音练习（発音練習）
I would like to start such a thread, but I don't know if I'm allowed to,even in off-topic,since this is a japanese language forum..
再见！

[血まみれ剣術師]

1. Chinese Savvy
2. The Mandarin Center
3. Becker's Chinese Page edu
4. Chinese Town
5. China History Forum

Are a few good websites to keep in mind.

[ss]

Adriano, 你好！

Have you visited this page before? Pinyin Pronunciation

b - p, d - t.. sounds exactly like English pronunciation, b for "bull", p for "pull" (please listen to this sound file ) ， d for "den", t for "ten"

b - bi4 必 bu4 布
p - pi4 劈 pu4 瀑

d - di4 地 du2 读
t - ti4 踢 tu2 图

Difficult to explain pronunciation online

You mentioned about "shiritori" games in mandarin, something like this?
华语 →　语文　→ 文章 →　章鱼 →　

[hyperconjugated]

Some chinese forums, mainly on language

http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72
http://www.unilang.org/viewforum.php?f=50

[furrykef]

b - p, d - t.. sounds exactly like English pronunciation, b for "bull", p for "pull"

If I understand correctly, in English, the difference between "B" and "P" (as well as "D" and "T") is voicing as well as aspiration, whereas in Chinese, it's only aspiration, and both are unvoiced.

[Adriano]

5. China History Forum

Hey 剣術師, I guess you've just pointed out the best forum about China here, thank you! Though it's not focused solely on the language, it's a very rich resource, thank you again!

SSさん、thanks for your explanation! Tough I still don't understand.. I can easily tell apart those syllabes in english,no mistery, but chinese..may be it will be solved with some more couple of months trying to grasp words in music and movies.
Everytime I listen for instance, 不好 (bù​hǎo) and 谱号 (pǔ​háo), all what I get is プハオ。
Same thing with 大学 (dà​xué) and 踏雪 (tà​xuě) = both ​タシュエ.

This is the littlest of problems concerning pronounciation.. I'm still having problems to tell apart QIN, QING, JIN, JING, all sounds like チン to my untrained ears.
Once, when I heard the expression 请进（どうぞお上がり下さい） I had to type about ten times to get it right (qǐng​jìn), since all you can hear is チンチン。
I guess for 99% of mandarin learners, the great difficulty is to learn the ideograms.. but for us,japanese learners,the "new" pronounciation is the worst part to get..
Anyway,the language is still amazing for me! Different from Japan, China is a mosaic of cultures,beliefs,languages and food!


Edit: have to thank hyperconjugatedさん for this amazing forum too

[ss]

Furrykef wrote:
If I understand correctly, in English, the difference between "B" and "P" (as well as "D" and "T") is voicing as well as aspiration, whereas in Chinese, it's only aspiration, and both are unvoiced.

Yes, Furrykef, you're right, I think.
I'm not sure how to describe it since everyone speaks differently ...
In normal circumstances, it's like when you say "beach" vs "peach" (with aspiration), "do" vs "to" (with aspiration). The pitch and plosive are slightly different, perhaps.


Adrianoさん、I see your confusion. Don't worry about the "in" and "ing" parts, even native speakers sometimes made mistakes on those pinyin. Like the word 请进, there are many other words associated with the similar pinyin 情景，青筋，清静，清净，勤谨，亲近 .. As you may already know this, pinyin is fixed, once you master the word, all you need to do is memorize it by heart. It's the same in English vocabulary, you encounter new words every now and now, once you learned it and used it a few times, you would able to spell the words or apply the usage naturally.

Good luck with your studies.

[abyx]

better treat chinese syllables as a whole, dont split the consonants apart. When talking about the sound of "b" "p" ppl are actually talking about the sound of "bo" "po"

another chinese forum
http://www.chinese-forums.com

[furrykef]

better treat chinese syllables as a whole, dont split the consonants apart. When talking about the sound of "b" "p" ppl are actually talking about the sound of "bo" "po"

A phoneme is a phoneme. The "b" sound in "ba" is the same as the "b" sound in "bo".

Now, the same letter doesn't always represent the same phoneme -- the "i" in "shi" is not the same as the "i" in "jing" -- but when they do, I fail to see the problem. Chinese isn't any more "syllabic" than English is in regards to what sounds are possible.