Chinese

You wanna learn Chinese!? Good!

Here's a few tips/tricks and resources for you.

I recommend you to:

  1. Start taking classes at a highschool or junior college/college (depending on your age)
  2. Study in Taiwan: Take classes at Shi Da language school, one of the biggest and most popular language schools for foreigners. I also highly recommend WenHua Daxue, which I also tried and found to be intensive and a good program.

How did I learn?

  1. Studied Chinese at a junior college (West Valley College)
  2. Lived in Taiwan, studied at Shi Da, a quality and popular language school in Taipei.
  3. I also tried out WenHua Daxue, which is located near ShiDa, and has an intensive high-quality program, for less cost.

Resources

Online Dictionary

    1. mdbg.net. By far the best one I know. Easily switch between traditional and simplified characters.

Keyboard input: How can I 'type' in Chinese?

Its easiest to get started typing using Pinyin. Taiwan uses bopomofo as keyboard

input type, but its easier and faster to type using pinyin in my opinion.

Lets get started installing the input language. We're going to install an input method for typing

the original Chinese characters, aka traditional characters.

Windows 10

  1. Go to 'Settings' > 'Time and Language' > 'Region and Language'
  2. Click 'Add a language'
  3. Click 'Chinese (Simplified)
  4. Go back to the Languages section > select 'Options > Keyboards: 'Microsoft Pinyin'
  5. Under 'Character Set' select Traditional Chinese.

MAC

  1. Go to 'System Preferences' > Keyboard > Input Sources
  2. Click the + button, select 'Chinese,Traditional' > Pinyin - Traditional
  3. Thats it! you can get started by changing inputs using the mac shortcut, press the CTRL + SPACE keys, if you keep pressing space, it cycles through the available inputs.