Archive for October, 2005



Safari Fix

Number of improvements to the site for Safari users were made yesterday. There is still an issue with the Javascript rollover effect, but we will continue to work on it. Apologies for any inconvenience.

New Premium Features

In our continued effort to deliver more and more value to our subscribers, for today’s podcast we have added sample sentences for the Supplementary Vocabulary terms and the ability to add all these terms to your Word Bank with one-click. Next Monday, we will also be adding audio for the sample sentences. If […]

Change in Publishing Schedule

Just an announcement that we will be changing the publishing time from 00:01 Shanghai time to 09:00 starting tomorrow. For reference Shanghai is 7 hours ahead of London, 12 hours ahead of East Coast USA & 15 hours ahead of West Coast USA. We are making this change to better ensure the quality […]

The 4 tones

Here’s a useful little lesson on the 4 tones.
We’ve had quite a few comments on the tones recently. I’ll do another lesson on those soon.
Ken

The cost of learning Mandarin

Hank posted some numbers below concerning the price of Mandarin lessons here in Shanghai. Allow me to offer my two bits, as it were.
For the Mandarin learner there are two costs: Time and money. Since these are related, it is useful to manage them simultaneously and as efficiently as possible. […]

Simplified characters

On ChinesePod we’ve chosen to use simplified characters because they are the ones you are most likely to see on mainland China.
Traditional characters tend to have more brush strokes but they look better (and more complicated). In terms of recognition, it is possibly easier to identify the meanings of the simplified characters. Writing […]

Studying Chinese in Shanghai

We have had many questions about the USD20/month, or ~RMB160, (for yearly payment) cost of our premium subscription. We feel that it is important to make ChinesePod a business so that we can continue to produce hundreds of more podcasts and continually improve the tools in the Learning Center. With no disrespect intended […]

More User Feedback

Our feature on the recently launched Yahoo! Podcasts resulted in a big increase in users of the site and reader feedback. Future improvements to ChinesePod are driven by user suggestions, so please continue to let us know your thoughts, suggestions and criticisms.
Thanks,
ChinesePod
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transcription of dialogs in chinese caracters
Patrice | France
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A more organized front page with […]

Podcasting will change the rules of the game

One of the great advantages of podcasting technology is it’s timeliness. Here’s why we get excited about that: We can respond immediately to your requests, or to the news and events of the day. Within hours, we can incorporate that information into the lesssons and get them to you without delay.
Thus far we […]

More cluelessness

This teacher sees teaching Chinese as a matter of pronunciation. “Chinese is jaw breaking but fun”.
Believe me, you do not want to end up in a classroom with her.
Ken