Tools for learning Chinese

There are so many tools on the web dedicated to learning chinese.

On this post, I decided to gather the few tools (quite a lot actually) that I consider helpful or interesting. Check it out! :)

Newspapers :

Xinhua, BBC

Videos :

THE CHINESE YOUTUBE: TUDOU & YOUKU

(I have some loading problem here...)

http://www.tudou.com/
http://www.youku.com/

PPSTREAM (Watch Chinese TVs!)

Thanks to this software you can watch sooooo many different chinese TV programms. 
This link is from Chine Information because if you go on PPSTREAM.com you'll get only the chinese Version.

Get PPSTREAM (free)

 

Dictionnaries :

PABLO :

By far the best dictionnary for PC. Type in pinyin / english / chinese.
Once you click on a character it gives an animation with the right strokes orders.
Very clear and complete. 
Can also unblock an option for translating when you slide your mouse over chinese text.

- Mouse over translation
- Animation of the strokes
- Handwriting recognition

You can download it here : http://ehaton.blogspot.hk/2007/02/learning-chinese-pablo-my-personal.html

It's free and you can donate to support the people who helped setting this soft.

GOOGLE TRANSLATE :

Very convenient to translate large amount of characters. 
Especially works well with Excel files : copy a column full of chinese words, translate it, and copy the translation back in your excel.

http://translate.google.com/

YELLOW BRIDGE :

Website which provides a lot of useful tools:

- dictionnary section,

- flashcards

More info on http://www.yellowbridge.com/

NCIKU

NCIKU is the dictionnary completing the few things lacking to Yellow Bridge: the handwriting recogniser.

Here it is: just go on NCIKU, click on "Handwrite characters" and draw the sign, NCIKU finds it for you.

Many other tools available on this website as well.

http://www.nciku.com/

 

Other useful sites :

The 3000 most commonly used chinese characters in order of frequency.

Find the most used chinese characters ranked compared to their frequency of use.
It's kind of awesome work that has been done here.

http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html

 

CHINE INFORMATIONS (French)

This site (French) gathers loads of stuff, cool and useful softwares, regularly updated news about China, chinese lessons, and also interesting things such as the 236 words and expressions censored on Internet in China:

Les 236 mots et expressions censurés sur Internet en Chine

COZY CHINESE

It provides helpful tools such as Audio Lessons, Dictionnary, Strokes order and nice gadgets...

http://www.cozychinese.com 

ADSOTRANS

I like that one: the converter: type in your text in chinese and you'll get an annotated texte (the translation and pronounciation appears when you put the mouse over a specific word).

http://adsotrans.com/

CHINESE ETYMOLOGY

A huuuuge work has been done here to gather the etymology of Chinese characters, and it goes very far, giving you the opportunity to see how the sign evolved to get to what it is today.

http://www.chineseetymology.org/