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The podcast is meant to accompany written content on Hacking Chinese, so the best way to find structure is there! There's currently only one playlist for the podcast, but I can consider creating more later if people would benefit from it!

This is a great summary! Did you use an AI tool to generate it? If so, which one? I've tried a few times myself, but it's simply too tedious to first generate a transcript and then generate a summary based on that. I think your summary is quite good, much better than what I was able to generate with ChatGPT.

Hi! What do you need help with?

So happy to hear you find it helpful! The episode that has the most pronunciation tips per minute playtime is probably #76: www.hackingchinese.com/a-guide-to-pinyin-traps-and-pitfalls/ Regarding my pronunciation course, there is a Black Friday sale coming at the end of this month, so that might be a good opportunity!

@HackingChinese I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that thank you 😁

Yeah, that's a good analogy! Knowing the words in a song is not the same as being able to use them to convey information, being able to perform punches and kicks in a kata doesn't mean you can use them to defend yourself, and so on. These activities might still be useful, of course, but not just enough on their own!

Do you mean playing the game yourself, watching it on TH-cam or both? I think all three options can be very useful! I've learnt a lot of language from computer games over the years, although not as much these days. I used to play StarCraft 2 in Chinese, for example, and it's great to hear the same set of short phrases over and over when moving units around. I can still quote a lot of them without having tried to learn them. :)

You were almost faster than me, and I published the video! :P

Thank you! I'm so glad to hear you like it! :)

I don't think you should feel too bad about it! Yes, learning is easier if the language is spoken where you live, but you learn by engaging with the language, not simply by living there. I'm sure you've been busy with other important things! Getting started is more important than exactly how you get started, so don't fuss too much over the best way to do things; doing something is always better than doing nothing. Find someone who can talk to you on a very basic level, listen to podcasts, get a good textbook, or anything else that allows you to engage directly with the language. Once you're moving, you can gradually upgrade the way you learn. 加油！ You can check the Beginner category on Hacking Chinese for much more advice, including my answers to 50 common beginner questions: www.hackingchinese.com/archive-2/beginner/ You can also check out my course Unlocking Chinese: The Ultimate Course for Beginners, which I created specifically to help people get off to a good start! www.hackingchinese.com/courses/unlocking-chinese-ultimate-guide-beginner/ Also, I will think a little bit more about your question and try to address it in an upcoming podcast Q&A, so stay tuned! You're not alone in your situation and answering the question in more detail seems worthwhile.

Have you tried it? It's great fun! Also a great way to spot very common everyday objects you never realised you don't know how to say in Chinese. :)

It would be even easier if there were good (and free) apps specifically for mimicking, but the only one I know of is not maintained anymore. However, using Audacity is quite easy once you get the hang of it!

This is what the lessons in the pronunciation course look like! Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to create video content for the podcast. One day, maybe!

Glad you found it useful! :)

I don't use Firefox anymore, but I'll see if I can investigate that further. Nowadays, I mostly use my phone for dictionary lookups, and Pleco with the professional bundle has so many dictionaries easily available that there's seldom need for anything else. However, I realise that not all people can buy the bundle or want to use mobile, so browser solutions are still important. If you find something, do let me know!

Thank you for your comment! You are entirely correct that the episode focuses mostly on why you should't use lists. The reason is that I actually have two articles about this and, as I mentioned briefly in this episode, I might record a follow-up episode focusing on the second article. That one only discusses way to use lists that are actually useful! If you don't want to wait for the podcast episode, you can check out the other article here: www.hackingchinese.com/different-lists-for-learning-chinese/ However, I think the current podcast episode doesn't present a straw-man argument at all! I think you underestimate how many students rely on lists and how much they do so. This includes very serious learners. After having worked with Skritter for almost ten years, I have been in contact with many students who are both extremely serious and spend a majority of their time with lists of various kinds. Of course, there's a certain selection bias going on here, because people who hate lists probably don't spend that much time with apps like Skritter, but unfortunately, an over-reliance on lists is a fairly common problem, even among serious learners! If you have some specific question you'd like me to adress in the upcoming episode, this is a great opportunity to mention it, too. :)

It's a bit old now, but Audacity still works roughly the same way! Glad you found it helpful!

Good question! Would you be okay with be posting your question on the article itself, along with my answer? I think more would see it that way! The problem is of course that in order to produce something that beginners can understand, there needs to be some support beyond Chinese itself. That might be gestures, images, English or something else. Of these, I think English is by far the worst one, and for gestures and images, we need video. However, this is mostly true for absolute beginners. Once you know a hundred words or so, you can make sense of easy dialogues and stories without support. Or maybe you use some support the first time, but then move to audio only after that. You might study a text in your textbook, then put the audio in your audio library for listening only later. Or you have textbook that has extra texts with audio based on the chapters you've studied. Or you have a teacher who knows what you know and can tailor the content. In general, audio-only without support is probably not feasible for complete beginners, but it grows in usefulness as you learn more. Also, don't forget that listening has many benefits beyond simply getting better at understanding new content, because you also get better at processing what you already know (fluency) and you hear the sounds and tones over and over. While I haven't checked all the videos from all the recommended resources here, most of them don't use direct references to things on-screen. In one case, I noted that as a disadvantage, but it's actually not very common. Yes, they use on-screen support, but not in a way that makes it impossible to follow in audio-only mode!

Hi! Glad you like the podcast! To answer your question, I think it would be helpful if you provided more details. Learning Pinyin (or some similar system) is very useful, but you say "Pinyin chart" specifically, so do you refer to something related to the chart? Talking about the Pinyin chart is actually quite interesting and there are lots of things to say about it, so I can cover this in the Q&A anniversary episode which should be in three weeks. I actually do talk about the Pinyin chart in my pronunciation course, too, although it's not a very important part of it.

@Mar I have now published the Q&A episode! You can listen to it here: th-cam.com/video/nSWfV2gmCwA/w-d-xo.html

Yes, of course I do! I'm reasonably sure my English is quite easy to understand, though, but you're more than welcome to offer constructive feedback if you have any.

Says who? Which type of Chinese do you consider without "accent"? What does it have to do with great pedagogical skills? What use, do you think, does your comment have?

I have never claimed to have "a perfect pronunciation" in any language. If you have consturctive feedback, I'm all ears! And I do always use natively reconded audio for mimicking practice, including in this course.

Yes! Rawest squigs didn't exist when this video was made (it's rather ancient), and it was introduced partly because of the issues mentioned here. I only use rawest squigs these days!

Yes, I agree! There is a written article on Hacking Chinese that covers the same content, so there are plenty of illustrations there. you can check it out here: www.hackingchinese.com/my-best-advice-on-how-to-learn-chinese-characters/ Of course, it would be awesome to create videos with both audio and visual support, but that takes an order of magnitude more resources and time than I have available. :(

Do you mean in general or for some specific skill? I have written a few articles trying to summarise the best reading and listening practice, if that's what you're after. Reading is here: www.hackingchinese.com/beginner-chinese-reading/ and www.hackingchinese.com/10-best-free-chinese-reading-resources-beginner-intermediate-advanced/. The listening one is much older, but will be updated soon (I'm working on it, but it's a massive task so it won't be out at least for a month or so): www.hackingchinese.com/the-10-best-free-listening-resource-collections-for-learning-chinese/

Maybe? I think I was going for "each time you benchmark", but simply saying "benchmark" seems to refer to the results/measurements/numbers. I'm not a native speaker, though, so I could just be wrong!

@@HackingChinese I think you've hit the nail on the head!

I don't have a guide for this yet, but if you're looking for relatively cheap teachers online, you can check out Italki or a similar site. Quality is a bit hit and miss, but if you try a few, you should be able to find someone! I offer coaching and tutoring too, but if you're just looking for a tutor in general, Italki will be much cheaper. :)

1. No idea, as I've never tried Sound Forge, but the most obvious difference is that Audacity is open source and free, maybe? 2. You compare with a model native speaker you're mimicking. This video is very, very old, so it's not very good at showing this, but it's often possible to hear when your voice is different from the target model if you play them on-top of each other. This is covered much better in the pronunciation course I launched earlier this year: www.hackingchinese.com/courses/mandarin-chinese-pronunciation-course/

I am a very serious person! :)