How I spend 5 minutes a day reading Chinese
It’s been a year since I last published content for this blog, and a lot of things have happened including migrating it from a static website to hosting it now on Medium.
I finally finished Memrise HSK5 vocabulary in January 2017, primarily using the mobile app to review old words and test out new words.
Additionally, I also impulsively bought several books from Lucky Bookstore near NTNU while vacationing in Taiwan January 2017, but I have yet to flip through a single page and listen through the audio CDs. It’s finally a dream come true to have the books that the MTC (Mandarin Training Center) curriculum course uses, but a shame that the books still are collecting dust.
Chinese is one of those languages that’s been simmering for the last year. It’s never out of mind, but I haven’t been able to get myself out of my proverbial bed and to my desk to conquest the HSK5. I periodically think about how long it’s been since my last italki language exchange, how long it’s been since I wrote an article on lang-8.com, or long it’s been since I opened up Memrise to flip through a few flash cards.
I try not to give myself too hard of a time for missing a routine, so I can take it easy and just enjoy the language when I come across it, and when I’m ready to make large strides again I can go out and pass the HSK5.
Some time in February or March 2017, my girlfriend showed me the Decipher Chinese Reader app and I’ve been hooked to it and also the Du Chinese Reader app. I’ve been to enjoy a consistent set of articles that I conveniently read on my bus ride home. Each app, by default, sends out notifications when a post is published, and between the two apps I get about an article to read every other day ranging from beginner to advanced. Aside from Facebook messenger notifications and work email notifications, these are the main apps that on my phone that I have notifications enabled for.
Content-wise, it is refreshing to learn words that I would properly not encounter from reading textbooks. I was surprised to learn the word drone 无人机 in a Decipher article about how a city in 中国的南部uses无人机 (drones) to 庆祝元宵节。
Below you can find screenshots of the two apps and a brief comparison of both apps.
Du Chinese
Pros:
- Free articles (that expire within few weeks of publication)
- Sentence Translation
- Has Read-along Audio, so that you can use the app like an audio book.
Cons:
- No Traditional Chinese Support
Decipher:
Pros:
- Free articles (that expire within few weeks of publication)
- Word Translations
- Traditional Chinese Support
Cons:
- No Sentence Translations
- Must sign-in to listen to audio from phrases.
This is by no means an exhaustive comparison of the differences between the two apps, and I still keep both apps on my phone so I have a steady of flow of content to read. While I do prefer Du Chinese, because the sentence translations provide great clarity in understanding the articles, Decipher’s cons are not flagrant enough to make it worth removing.
Here is an art gallery of words that I have learned from the last few weeks of using both Decipher and Du Chinese
Other reading content:
It’s been a week since I first drafted this article and the Du Chinese and Decipher apps are still part of my daily language learning intake!
