Mencius Chinese Academy - Best Chinese Classes in Phoenix

Visualmandarin is an online language tool to learn chinese online. The name of the website is derived from visual + mandarin. This name "visual" was chosen to highlight the visual approach
that this website adopts in learning chinese. It is much easier to learn a language by associating visual concepts with words, rather than just simply focusing on memorizing words outside a context. Visualmandarin
offers many exercises that help the student on tone recognition and pronunciation.

Tools and materials offered:
• Free videos and podcasts
• Interactive exercises
• HSK Test
• Language Exchange
• Test your Chinese Pronunciation
• Tones/Sounds discrimination exercises
• Progress Tracking
• Games
• Chinese to English dictionary
• Chinese stroke order dictionary
• Chinese Characters to Pinyin converter

To place Chinese Calligraphy characters into your webpage and you don't have a computer with a built in Chinese utility to do that, here is a way to do it. Web Browsers need to recognize the utf-8 language for Chinese Characters.

Its normal to have this English meta-tag in your HTML "HEAD" section:
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

but now you should also add this meta-tag to recognize Chinese Characters
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8
_____________________________________
NOW, YOUR READY.....

1) Go to this Chinese converter webpage, type your English word and it will give you the Chinese Character
http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=liv...
[ highlight and right-click the character to COPY just as you would copy anything on your computer ]

2) Go to this page and paste your Chinese character into the INPUT YOUR TEXT field and click the CONVERT button
http://www.pinyin.info/tools/converter/chars2uninumbers.html

It will give you the utf-8 answer like this: & # 2 0 3 2 0 ; & # 2 2 9 0 9 ; <----Ni Hao - Hello

Simply paste this into your code and your done!

And it will look like this: 你好 <----Ni Hao - Hello

The English to Chinese Desktop Widget stopped working for OS X 10.4.11 or greater and is broken for most users ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2042190 ). Apparently in 2009, the company who produced it never upgraded it after some type of Javascript upgrade to browsers.

I was able to download a new widget program for free at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
This works but I found some of its results to be not correct. If I typed "hello", I didnt like the result. If I typed "Monday", it was perfect. A 2nd issue I had was the font size was so small, it could hardly be read on the screen using normal viewing. I know there are magnifiers you can use in the MAC OS to make the screen fonts huge in size but users that are sight-challanged but most people dont want to have to work that hard to see something on the screen.

A better translator is located online for all Mac and Windows users at:
http://www.systranet.com/

This URL is the actual Translator page where I converted "Hello"
http://www.systranet.com/?text=hello&lp=en_zh

What kind of study techniques do you feel are useful and productive in learning the Chinese language relative to each of the 3 areas of learning such as 1) speaking/listening 2) writing the written language 3) calligraphy? (study partner, flash cards, memorization tricks, etc)

Getting Chinese text in Windows is quite easy. Providing you have administrator rights, you can simply enable it in the control panel.

1. Open the Windows Control Panel.
2. (If the Control Panel is in “Category view”) Select “Date, Time, Language and Regional options.”
3. Open the “Regional and Language Options” icon.
4. Choose the “Languages” tab, and ensure the “Install files for East Asian languages” is checked, as per the screenshot below:

Windows Regional and Language Options dialog
5. Click the “Details” button to open the “Text services and input languages” dialog.
6. If “Chinese” is not listed in the “Installed Services” box, click “Add”.
7. In the “Input Language” list, choose “Chinese (PRC)”. The “Keyboard layout” should default to “Chinese (Simplified) - Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0″. Click “Ok” on both dialogs to return to the “Regional and Language Options”.
8. Click “Ok”, you will probably need to insert your Windows CD for the files to be installed.
9. The language bar should now have appeared in the bottom right of the taskbar. It should default to English - “EN”.
10. Click on the “EN” button to show the available languages:

Windows language bar
11. By changing the language to “CH”, you can now type in Pinyin. You can change the current language by pressing “ALT” + “SHIFT” on your keyboard.

Please view the website with pictures: http://www.fozza.com/learn/how-to-install-chinese-text-in-windows-xp/

You can record your voice on Windows with "Sound Recorder".

Windows has a default sound recorder under "Start->Programs->Accessories->Entertainment". Select the program to run, it's very intuitive to use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVGN_3CCp1Q
http://nalit.com/files/music/flute.mp3
http://nalit.com/files/music/kanding.mp3

跑马溜溜的山上 一朵溜溜的云哟pǎo mǎ liū liu d shān shàng, yī duǒ liū liu di yún yo
Above the horses running mountain, a piece of cloud
端端溜溜的照在 康定溜溜的城哟duān duan liū liu di zhào zài, kāng dìng liū liu di chéng yo
Floating above Kangding city.
月亮弯弯 康定溜溜的城哟yuè liàng wān wan, kāng dìng liū liu di chéng yo
O, curve moon, Kangding city.

李家溜溜的大姐 人才溜溜的好哟 lǐ jiā liū liu di dà jiě, rén cái liū lui di hǎo yo
Lee’s sister, o, pretty.
张家溜溜的大哥 看上溜溜的她哟zhāng jiā liū liu di dà gē, kàn shàng liū liu tā yo
Zhang’s brother, o loves her.
月亮弯弯 看上溜溜的她哟yuè liàng wān wan, kàn shàng liū liu tā yo
O, curve moon, he loves her.

一来溜溜的看上 人才溜溜的好哟yī lái liū liu di kàn shàng, rén cái liū liu di hǎo yo
He first loves her good looking.
二来溜溜的看上 会当溜溜的家哟ér lái liū liu kàn shàng huì dāng liū liu di jiā yo
He second loves her taking care of family.
月亮弯弯 会当.溜溜的家哟yuè liàng wān wan, huì dāng liū liu di jiā yo
O, curve moon, she takes care of family.

世间溜溜的男子 任你溜溜的爱哟shì jiān liū liu di nán zǐ, rèn nǐ liū liu di ài yo
To men in the world, you are free to love.

The new recording is available, please login to download.

After you login, go to home page, you should see the link on the top of the front page.

Please contact me if you run into any problems.

xie4 xie.

da4 jia1 hao3! Hello everyone!

By now I hope everybody has practiced your new vocabulary "ai4" on all your family members :)

Here is the recording for lesson 2.

Also, we found a jacket in the classroom after everyone left, if it's yours, please contact us ASAP. We'll turn it in to the school tomorrow.

Like always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us any time. You can also post your questions and comments here online.

Happy practice, see you next week.

zai4 jian4!

For those who came to the first classes this week, I can afford to use a few Chinese words. 你好! 我是 Karen. (nǐ hǎo! wǒ shì Karen) Don't worry if you can't read the characters. Pinyin will come to the rescue! If you can't even read Pinyin, here is another version: (ni3 hao3! wo3 shi4 Karen) - the numbers are used to indicate the tones.

Anyway, we had wonderful opening sessions this week for both of our training classes! The part that I enjoyed the most was that everybody seemed even more committed and excited at the end of the class than at the beginning.

I want to say a BIG thank you (谢谢 xiè xiè) to everyone who came to these first classes. You were all wonderful, and your enthusiasm for learning Chinese really showed. By being so engaged and interactive during the lesson, you helped make the class a very pleasant experience for all of us!

I'd also like to welcome any new students to come join us. Even if you did not attend one of the first class sessions, we can still make up the material relatively easily. If you wish to do this, please let us know, and we can arrange to have you come to the site 30 minutes earlier next week for a make-up lesson.

To help you practice what you learned this week at home, we have posted the audio recording for lesson 1 online. Just click here "lesson 1 audio recording", and you can review the whole lesson in the comfort of your home.