#chinese resources

I think I meant to share this in my Chinese names resources posts, but I guess I forgot! If you like learning about Chinese names, you absolutely must check this article out.

What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

The highlight of this article is its amazing interactive graphics. Below is an example of one showing the top characters in male given names in different decades. As you can see, hovering over a character shows additional information.

There’s also a series of graphics that dive more in depth into each decade. I love seeing which characters occur together most!

Make sure you use the arrows to see the data for female names too.

Lastly, you can see how the characters in your Chinese name rank.

Now go forth and nerd out, fellow name nerds!

I wanted to share a resource for reading practice that I stumbled across recently. It’s called the Chinese Reading World, and it was a project led by the University of Iowa.

The site was put together from 2005 to 2008, so it’s not super up to date. However, there is a ton of content! Everything is sorted into 3 levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. 

Each level has 30 units, and each unit has 10 lessons. The lessons begin with a vocab pre-test, then there is a reading with some comprehension questions. Lastly, there is a vocab post-test, which is the same as the initial test (at least for the lessons I’ve done so far). There’s audio for each lesson text, but unfortunately it can’t be streamed—you have to download it. There is also an achievement test at the end of each unit.

My experience has actually been that I already know all the words on the vocabulary tests, but the reading passages contain other words that I’m not familiar with.

So far, the readings I’ve encountered are not very long. This is nice since reading longer pieces can be frustrating at times. With shorter readings, you can just read 1 or 2 on some days and read more when you have more time/patience. I believe the readings are taken from Chinese newspapers.

Also, every unit has a theme. With 90 units total, there are bound to be themes that interest you.
Example unit topics:

• Directions and Asking Direction 方向和问路
• Sports and Outdoor Activities 体育和户外运动
  
• Chinese Music and Musicians 中国音乐和音乐家
• Chinese Minorities and Local Customs 地方习俗和民族风情
  
• Chinese Sports and Olympic Games 体育和奥林匹克
• Contemporary Chinese Literature and Writers 中国当代文学和作家

The 3 levels also each come with 5 proficiency tests. They seem to be based on vocabulary knowledge, so expanding your vocab is clearly a huge focus of this site. The only thing I’m unclear is about is I’m not sure exactly when the proficiency tests are meant to be taken. After completing all units? Or are they spaced out so you are supposed to take test 1 after the first few units, test 2 after the next few, etc.?

I’ve started working my way through the advanced section this week. With 300 advanced lessons alone, it really feels like I have an infinite number of articles to go through!