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Over the weekend, China’s Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture jointly launched Linese.com, a website dedicated to spreading Chinese language and culture abroad.(Wouldn’t LearnChinese.com or something similar be a better name?) Anyway, Shanghaiist isn’t so sure why the Chinese government is suddenly spearheading this move, the whole operation has a Borg-ish feel to it. Say it with us now: “Resistance is futile” or “抵抗是没用的”.
Jokes aside, the site is actually pretty neat, featuring a wealth of information: AV clips of sites and sounds in China, bilingual short stories, interactive real time lessons with cyber instructors, blogs, forums -- you name it, all for your learning pleasure. It's a boon to Shanghaiists all around the world. As our reader survey indicates (thanks to all who took the time!) many of our loyal readers could use a little brushing up with their Chinese language skills, including one D. Washburn (we are withholding the last two letters of his first name for the purpose of anonymity)
Today’s lesson is about how to discuss the results of a competition in Chinese. Go here… oops, wrong clip. Here, this is what you need. Happy learning.
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Most commentary on the Net (including my own at http://blog.chineseoutpost.com/?p=132) deals with how non-functional (even nearly dysfunctional) the site is proving to be.
Not sure, but I think it may be behaving better in China than outside...which would limit the audience a bit. From the Seattle area here, I'd say that 60% of the pages just end in an error, 25% take so long to load that I just move on ("Buffering 13%" after 20 minutes), and 15% load without errors...but contain nothing useful.
Here's hoping the site's accessibility (and, in my opinion, from the little I have been able to access, its content) improves.
This site is junk. How can you trust a language teacher whose English is that bad? And it doesn't load in Firefox, boo hoo.
Hey Mark, for those of us living inside the Great Firewall, the site loads just fine. Now, there's a dillema for Beijing to ponder, though I wouldn't bet on them taking down that wall anytime soon.
Henry, the site is for ppl who want to learn Chinese, it certainly has room for improvment, but I wouldn't call it junk.
"...for those of us living inside the Great Firewall, the site loads just fine."
That is good to know--and I hope there is content better than what I could get to load--but until it's fully accessible from other continents, it risks simply "preaching to the choir," so to speak.
Or "propogandizing the masses," I guess the idiom should be in this case. (Just a smaller audience, I mean.)
I think those within the firewall have just forgotten how slow the internet is in China. Maybe what we consider "loading fine" they would consider "to long to wait". The site loaded just fine for me too, it took 23 seconds to load on my broadband connection.
Ken, what kind of connection are you using? I have a 2 meg ADSL, the site is up in less than a second.
It loads fine in firefox, but I have cable and am in the US...
I thought the Shanghaiist reader survey was anonymous, but here I find out you have tracked our reader responses by name. Even more surprising, you are ridiculing those readers who chose to respond by listing those whose Chinese language ability is lacking within your articles with such obvious negative undertones.
If I edited this blog, I would certainly not allow the good names of readership to be bandied about so casually...
No negative undertone here. Shanghaiist has the utmost respect for all its readers, mandarin capable or otherwise. What you see here is an example of tough love, in hopes that Mr. or Mrs. (shit, I already said "his", so I guess the secret is half-out)D. Washburn, wherever he maybe will redouble his effort and master the Chinese language. You never know, one day you could be the editor of an English city weblog in China.
Reach for the stars!
This one's well under the fold by now, but someone just left this comment on my review - correct link this time, I hope - http://blog.chineseoutpost.com/?p=132 - of linese.com:
"linese.com is not official Chinese language learning website, but a commercial project. Learns will be charged a lot of fee
Today I asked one of their teacher. She told me their service is not free. They are a company who just bribed offcials of China government to get some promotion support from government.
Has anyone else run across this claim (or better still, evidence to support it)?
If true, this may explain the "Copyright by voice of Chinese 2006-2008" on the site, and, Jay, as you suggest, "Why the Chinese government is suddenly spearheading this move."
I'd pass this off with a "BFD," except that the press releases imply it's an official government launch ("China launched...", "...the Ministry of Education said.", etc.), which forces the question, "Is the CCP now available for paid endorsements?"
If so, I'd love to see them in an iPod ad.
For beginers who don't want to invest just for a try to learn chinese, I advice you Chinese-Tools.com, a nice website with free audio lessons.
Good luck!
Heeeey, I am so excited today to find a cool place to practice my Chinese. I 've learned from the radio about how to introduce myself in Chinese, but today I actually talked to someone via a webcam and a mic on this cool website. Really helps my pronunciation!
Here you go: http://www.echineseonline.com/j.do?Sid=Helen&type=1
You get to talk with native speakers, and I find them to be so friendly and encouraging.
There is a new free website for learning Chinese available at Zhongwen Red. The site features mp3s of native speakers, PDFS, and will eventually have over 100 lessons, all for free.
There is a good web portal that has all the websites for learning Mandarin organized at Mandarin Toplist.