Ipad2 for learning Chinese

Any ideas for learning with ipad 2?

Maybe Anki for Ipad would be great. Looks nice and you can revise your vocabulary inside of the train.
Minus point is the price (the PC version is free), but I think it doesn’t matter anymore if you already bought an Ipad. At least the quality must be nice.

I haven’t used the iPad version of Pleco, but if it’s as good as the iPhone version it’s definitely worth getting.

It’s basically the same but bigger. Which is to say it’s great.

Chinese Learn Online app is great if you are at the beginner level. It’s an iPhone app but works well on iPad. Also the New CLO site (newclo.com) works on iPad 2.

Google Translate as a live speech translator. Also an iPhone app. Interestingly the other day I was having a hard time communicating with a store proprietor and he beat me to the punch to pull out his iPhone to speak into Google translate in Chinese and have it show the English to me. Not as useful on the iPad as on the phone, but still good to have.

There haven’t been many (or any) iPad-optimized Chinese learning tools out there. The iPhone apps work fine, but a great iPad app could definitely replace Chinese books altogether.

Are there any iPad optimized learning tools out there now other than ones mentioned? I’ve been using Pleco but it is mostly a dictionary plus to complement other learning tools.

I don’t favor something like Rosetta Stone, but wonder if there any tools similar for iPad?

To me, ipad has many uses. It’s hard to know if learning Chinese will ever pay off (the culture is probably far more menacing to ‘foreigners’ than the language). The ipad lowers the investment on a super-risky investment.

a. end of carrying books(use Goodreader app)
b. find your favorite book and rewrite the whole thing in traditional, and then rewrite it again in simplified. After that to start with the same book in your language and translate back again(e.g. traditional/simplified to English/German/whatever mother tongue)
c. if you’re just learning characters, write them on the ipad(instead of the little index cards) saves time and money but some people might suggest that this is not such a good idea. Writing characters with a pen with a soft nib(such as you can get from an art store) is the best way to write characters for the first month or so.
d. looking up chinese words with an ipad is simple versus maddening pre-Pleco method – looking it up with a paper chinese dictionary(usually requires 3 look ups - stroke order or bushou, etc etc then walk to window to fling dictionary out, sigh, decide to keep trying). Pleco is fawesome for ipad.
e. if one could get guo2yu3ri4bao4 (or similar) for free, then reading childrens materials. There are apps selling kids books but you have to pay (as far as I know). Maybe someone knows who to get these items for free. Google books has some free kids’ books.
f. until they become commonplace, the ipad is a thief magnet so watch out, especially if you are in Mainland. Some might suggest an ipad is akin to a sign ‘Rob me.’
g. the bible stores have good bags for small books … the satchel I use for my ipad is one I bought from a bible store.
h. maybe someone can talk about using Kindle(any of them), Playbook, etc
i. March 2012 look for ipad 3
j. the street you walk down every day can be your teacher – using ipad2 camera to fotograph signs as you walk along the street and then ask s.o. to explain or look it up with Pleco

[quote=“shuiping”]
j. the street you walk down every day can be your teacher – using ipad2 camera to fotograph signs as you walk along the street and then ask s.o. to explain or look it up with Pleco[/quote]

haven’t tried this with my iPad2, but with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, you can use pleco’s optical character recognizer to teach you the word, pronunciation, meaning and some usage examples right there on the spot. just point the camera at the character or phrase and out comes a definition and pinyin. i use this a lot to learn characters on menus, signs and store names. it’s 15 bucks or so, which seems like a lot, but it is totally worth it.

[quote=“mabagal”][quote=“shuiping”]
j. the street you walk down every day can be your teacher – using ipad2 camera to fotograph signs as you walk along the street and then ask s.o. to explain or look it up with Pleco[/quote]

haven’t tried this with my iPad2, but with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, you can use pleco’s optical character recognizer to teach you the word, pronunciation, meaning and some usage examples right there on the spot. just point the camera at the character or phrase and out comes a definition and pinyin. i use this a lot to learn characters on menus, signs and store names. it’s 15 bucks or so, which seems like a lot, but it is totally worth it.[/quote]

That and the pasteboard reader are like a gift from heaven.

Skritter.com is coming out with an app for iOS - might be worth checking out when launched.