Chinese-Chinwa

Chinwa Chinese language resources

Introduction

Chinwa was a website with some Chinese language learning resources: HSK lists in French and English, and some grammar points explained. The website is no longer online.

I earlier got some of their stuff and built learning lists with sound in different format: xml, json and csv.

These lists can easily be imported in Anki, or another program.

I made an Anki deck with sound: most of the sounds come from the Shtooka project Shtooka project or on my website which maintains a copy of it (I added some missing parts) Yojik Website.

The missing sounds were created by Text To Speech: I tried many flavors of the system and ended using the sounds produced by Google translate. I wrote some script to automaticely download the sounds.

The lists

I extracted the lists from the web pages. I built csv (comma separated value) files from the extraction:

Here is an example:

爱 ài aimer, affection, apprécier

I added some fields: traditional writing, origin, sounds, so I got this:

爱 愛 ài aimer / affection / apprécier love HSK1 [sound:cmn-1cd08e6e.ogg] Chinwa 29233

The transformation program is written in nodejs/javascript: Ididn't know well the language at thi time, so, I decided to deep a bit with real problem solving.

Th program generates 2 other files:

1. a JSON file with the same content as the .csv files.

   {

         "hanzi": "爱 ",
         "traditional": "愛 ",
         "pinyin": "ài",
         "translation": "aimer / affection / apprécier ",
         "classifier": "",
         "lesson": "HSK1",
         "sound": "`[sound:cmn-2d9d12c4.ogg]`",
         "origin": "Chinwa"
   

   }

2. a XML file, with the same content.

   <hanzi>爱 </hanzi>
   <traditional>愛 </traditional>
   <pinyin>ài</pinyin>
   <translation>aimer / affection / apprécier </translation>
   <classifier/>
   <lesson>HSK1</lesson>
   <sound>[sound:cmn-2d9d12c4.ogg]</sound>
   <origin>Chinwa</origin>
   

The Anki decks

The Anki decks are created by importing the .csv files.

I created different notes, to exercise different parts of the language.

There are 7 different ways to learn:

• Normal

  This is like the normal use of Anki, with the Hanzi presented (recto) and the English or French translation presented on the verso face. There is sound associated.

• Sound

  You'll her the sound, and have to guess the translation (English or French.)

• Saisie-Hanzi

  The English/French translation is displayed, and you have to type the Hanzi correspondance.

• Saisie-Pinyin

  The English/French translation is displayed, and you have to type the Pinyin correspondance.

• Son-Saisie-Hanzi

  You'll hear the sound (Chinese) and will have to type the corresponding Hanzi.

• Son-Saisie-Pinyin

  You'll hear the sound (Chinese) and will have to type the corresponding Pinyin.

• Traditional

  This is like the Normal deck, but with traditional writing.