Sentence database

[sthubbar]

Following the advise from http://alljapaneseallthetime.com I am a firm believer in the benefits of studying sentences instead of characters or words. I have just found what looks like a great resource to find sentences.

http://www.drjulianstudio.com/products.htm

I have just purchased a copy of this software and am adding this to my two other main methods of making sentences, 1) Tutor 2) Pleco.

[renzhe]

This approach seems controversial, but there are people who swear by it.

Could you keep us informed of your progress? I'm sure many people would find it interesting. How long have you been doing this and what has your progress been like? What are you expecting from it?

[roddy]

What's the corpus like for colloquial / conversational sentences? Material like that is very often and understandably based on written language - not necessarily useless, but something to be aware of.

[atitarev]

I am a firm believer in the benefits of studying sentences instead of characters or words.

With Chinese it makes sense (more than with other languages, IMO), especially if the words are spoken out loud, not written down, not always true, though. However, once you get over the basic into the upper intermediate, you may build up your vocab by individual words but still need to see them used in a context. Does anyone agree?

[hanyu_xuesheng]

You will find sentence databases also here

http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/search.html

http://dict.cn/

[sthubbar]

@hanyu_xuesheng: Thanks for the links

@roddy: When you use words like "corpus" it is clear you do not understand the lack of sophistication you're dealing with. I think "Talladega Nights" is a movie classic and Howard Stern should be broadcast worldwide. Hmm, well maybe he is with satellite radio. Honestly, they just seem like sentences to me, some are easy, some are hard. Download the software it can be used fully functional for something like 10 days.

@renzhe: When I say I believe in Khatzumoto's method, it is in the same way people say they believe in world peace. It is something that I can imagine, just not a part of my reality. One of the key's of his method is "fun". Well, my feelings expressed here have not changed.

After two years of diligently studying Chinese characters for an average of 30 hours per week, I still struggle everyday and want to throw whatever material I'm using against the wall.

I have gone through 3 major phases. Each new phase was brought about because I felt like I had hit a wall and had to do something different or quit.

[calibre2001]

Do we have any threads that compiles common sentence patterns used in chinese i.e.

與其。。。。。。。，不如。。。。。？

。。之所以。。。是因爲。。。。。。

除了。。。。之外，。。。。。。。

I think it would be very helpful.

[david808]

I was looking for something like that as well.

[renzhe]

Yes, that would be really useful for revision purposes.

I find that the NPCR set of textbooks does a good job of introducing them and explaining them, and I've been planning to write them all down into some kind of learning document.

I don't know whether/when I'll have the time to do this, though.

[calibre2001]

another one:

.............,至/到........爲止

Example

我高中之際被數學搞胡涂,至上大學爲止

This kind of sentece structure is quite popular, note the mandatory usage of 爲止 at the end of the sentence and words equivalent to 'until/up' (e.g. see the bolded 至 above) to open the subsentence that ends with 爲止

More examples

http://dict.youdao.com/search?q=%E7%88%B2%E6%AD%A2&btnindex=&ue=utf8&keyfrom=dict.index

[smiss]

If you are currently in China I suggest you to buy the book "学汉语 － 用例词典 A Learner's Chinese Dictionary: Illustrations of the Usages" (100元). It's full of example senteces for the most common words and expressions and helped me a lot.

[Luobot]

Another sentence database at www.nciku.com

[calibre2001]

Sentence structure/word of the day

足球比賽是否舉行將視天氣而定

Whether the football game will be played or not depends on the weather.

[calibre2001]

Sentence structure of the day

除了服從命令之外，我們別無他法。

Aside from following orders, we could not do anything

他法. what a word

[ChouDoufu]

The Chinese site 句库 (Jukuu) has a lot of sentences in Mandarin, English and Japanese.

A clarification to Luobot's post: Nciku has two resources for sentences, 1) looking up words will provide example sentences for most words. 2) Conversations: if you search for a word in conversations, results with sentences in which the word appears will be given. You can click on the link provided to see the sentence in the context of a short conversation.

Disclaimer: I am affiliated with nciku.

[calibre2001]

Sentence structure of the day

過早入住登記或過晚結賬退房須視客房情況而定。

Early check-in and late check out is subject to room availability.

[c_redman]

Wow, the sentence database for JuKuu must be huge compared to the other online sites. Dict.cn and similar clone sites all seem to borrow(?) from the same 40,000 example sentences as their source. But the results from JuKuu look more like it's taken from a large sentence-aligned corpus. Their sentence results each have their "origin" indicated, while some of the sentences link to detail pages, which refer to online bilingual articles (which is awesome in itself, although the articles are related to other words in the sentence).

If you try an infrequent word like 斜边 (hypotenuse), there are 35 hits in JuKuu and none in dict.cn and some others I tried. However, even for simple words, the results are often long sentences. This may make it less useful for learning grammar than the contrived example sentences on other sites.

[Philee]

Example

我高中之際被數學搞胡涂,至上大學爲止

This sentence is a little bit weird for it employs both modern and ancient styles. If you want to use the modern one , try this:

我高中时被數學搞胡涂,直到上大學爲止

Maybe it employs both styles 'cause it is used in Taiwan (as they are in traditional Chinese Characters )

But in mainland we use 时 and 直到...为止 more often. And 搞糊涂 is completely of modern style, while 之际 and 至...为止 are of ancient one.

[student]

Brian Vaughan has complied a mnemosyne data base of "20,000+ chinese sentences with translations and pinyin",

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/node/115

The sentences were apparently generated by searching online dictionaries for words in the HSK vocabulary lists. The database is classified by (1) the HSK level of the target word; and (2) the maximum HSK level of the other words in the sentence.

[calibre2001]

That's a good point. I've noticed Taiwan newspapers are harder to read due to more literal usage of written chinese. That's not such a bad thing right? I guess it'd be good if we could display more examples of classical chinese borrowings in modern day chinese sentences and their modern equivalents.