Level: News
With JapanesePod101.com, you can enjoy detailed lesson notes, Japanese lessons in 100% Japanese, recording your voice and comparing it to the native-Japanese speakers, and so many more great tools to improve your Japanese rapidly.
Well, we’ve taken the same successful formula that has allowed you to learn Japanese, and now we’re creating a new site! You can now learn Chinese using the same effective methods you’ve used to learn Japanese fast!
If you’re interested in Chinese, or maybe you have a friend who wants to learn Chinese, be sure to listen in to this news update! We have great news about our newest site!
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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
44 Responses to “News #79 - Top Secret Project, Now Unveiled!”
Sunday at 6:30 pm
If you or someone you know wants to learn Chinese, be sure to keep watching out for details! We’ll be sure to keep everyone updated.
Our Fan Page of Facebook we talked about in this news is here!
Please be sure to check it out and become a fan of us!
Sunday at 9:18 pm
Which Chinese language?
Sunday at 9:22 pm
好把！
Sunday at 10:22 pm
This is dangerous! You’re going to get me learning two languages at once!!!!
Also I agree with Mike… which Chinese language? Mandarin I assume?
Sunday at 11:14 pm
Lot’s of synergies between Chinese and Japanese???? Linguists say they couldn’t be more different! Some similarities in the characters and pronunciations, maybe enough to make things very confusing. In any case, even if you know a bit of Japanese, I cannot see the advantage in learning Chinese. Maybe it shows you are interested in learning languages, if this could be the advantage.
Well, if you believe that they are similar, good luck! I do not like misleading marketing… Also because there is no reason for that. Marketing can be honest and still work…
It is very frustrating to see American movies always picking Chinese or Korean people to play Japanese roles. As if they are all the same!!! To anybody with moderate knowledge, this looks ridiculous.
Sunday at 11:49 pm
giovanniさん,
Chinese and Japanese are indeed completely different, and I do agree that learning both at the same time is often confusing ( I know, I’ve tried…), don’t you thinkthat as a learner of Japanese you might be interested in Chinese (and Korean too, for that matter) just to see how the languages differ or sometimes share some points ( as in, for example, the frequency of usage or meaning of a given ideogram, let’s say for example 是 as in 是非 in japanese or 是, shì in Chinese)
Btw, as Mikeさん and Atolm_dragonさん pointed out,I assume we’re talking about Mandarin Chinese ? What about Cantonese ? And what kind of ideograms will be used (simplified or traditional) ?
Monday at 12:03 am
can’t wait!!!
Monday at 12:06 am
i hear it will be mandarin with a Beijing accent - which is standard (as opposed to a Shanghai accent which would be like teaching English from Alabama, USA)
Monday at 12:08 am
Yeh, I understand how the same tools can be used to study Chinese. The languages are different, but you need to learn similar things, kanji etc.. This website has many good study tools that could help you learn Chinese.
Why do people always complain about actors in Asian movies. eg she is Chinese, but she’s playing a Japanese role. What about Russel Crowe, Kate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, they are Aussies, but they play American characters, Brad Pitt has played Irish characters etc.. it doesn’t matter, an actor plays a role, if they do it well, then it’s good, if they do it poorly it’s bad, but I don’t care where they come from. None of my Japanese friends watched Sayuri because it starred Chan Xi Li as a Japanese girl, but put Tom Cruise in a Samurai costume and everyone is happy.
Should Manchester United only pick English players?
Monday at 12:18 am
プチクレア さん、
yes, I completely agree. My point was only about the putative advantage of knowing a bit of Japanese in learning Chinese. I myself am trying to learn Chinese.
The problem is, if not aware of the difficulties, somebody inexperienced might be put off learning languages altogether, if they take too much on, in the false believe that learning them together is easier as implied by using the word synergy (that is what “synergy” means “different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome”). It would be bad if a lot of people signed up now for the new language, and later gave up old and new! That would be a sad outcome…
More annoying people around that think they know a language just because they can count to 10 and say hello…
PS
I assume Mandarin as a team in Beijing is supposed to be involved. Though maybe there are a lot of synergies in learning Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien… together!
Monday at 3:12 am
Yay! I’m excited to see how the chinese lessons go because you DO have great learning features on the website (flashcards, reveiw tracks, detailed lesson and grammar notes, and a TONNE of review exercises!) I’ll defintely be checking it out tomrrow since I’ve been learning Chinese for a few years now and could use the extra assistance!
((I also wonder why an Australian can play a Scottish historial figure and everyone love it, while a Chinese person can play a Japanese person and people freak out))
Monday at 3:14 am
Gee… I wonder what the site name could be…
Monday at 4:09 am
Of course it’s chinesepod101.com
if you go to chinesepod101.com now, you’ll be prompted for authentication, with a nice little note:
The site says: “Coming Soon…”
I was planning to get into Chinese once I’ve reached certain level at Japanese (like JLPT1 ^_^ or at least JLPT2) but this is an opportunity I am not going to miss. I’ll join up right from to start and I’ll do my best to keep up.
For me this is definitely The News of the month, at the very least.
Monday at 6:47 am
While you are at it, you should make a Hungarian Pod 101. My friend would love that!
Monday at 9:36 am
Yep, av always been wondring the same thing as trevor!! N sm1 pliz tel me how do u diffrentiate btn japanese, chinese n korean!. . .
Monday at 9:44 am
Green Airplane, you get the same message at chineseclass101.com. And nice timing guys. I just got a job working with Chinese students, so I’m gonna try to work on my Chinese this summer.
Monday at 9:58 am
Which one could it be~
I’m also looking forward to this! I took 6 months of Chinese in college and had a great time with it. I don’t remember much of it anymore, but I do remember how to write everything still! Thanks to already knowing kanji
Monday at 10:26 am
Hello everyone, thanks for the great feedback.
The new site will be teach Mandarin Chinese, with a Beijing accent. This is important as standard Chinese is based on this accent.
More news coming shortly. Actually, some really exciting news. But we can’t say just yet…
Monday at 10:36 am
Yeah, Chinese!
Monday at 12:05 pm
Hehe I wasn’t going to say anything buuut … yeah I’ve been secretly trying “Chinesepod101.com” for a while now & I had some theories
…
I can’t wait! I actually have a small handful of friends who’ve asked me about Chinese … I’ve referred a couple friends to Italianpod & Germanpod. I might have to check it out for myself
Monday at 1:03 pm
As a Chinese speaker learning Japanese, I would say knowing almost all the kanji helps a lot, and quite a number of pronunciations are rather close too. It certainly helps memorization but on the other hand, grammars are cannot be more different than between say Chinese and English.
So in short, it helps with vocabulary (which is useful especially when it comes to reading signs, menus etc as long as there are enough kanji in it you can have an educated guess) but not so much conversations….
I think it’s more or less then same for Japanese speaker learning Chinese? In any case, I am glad to know finally there is a Chinese pod, I was about to sign up for another “pod site” for a friend.
Monday at 5:23 pm
So when’s the big launch?
I want to be the first one to register
Monday at 10:19 pm
Either “chinesepod101.com” or “chineseclass101.com”
Tuesday at 12:56 am
Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 6:30 pm + 24 hours … Really ?
It reminds me the original conception of ‘time’ of my indian suppliers.
Tuesday at 1:06 am
right. all I need now is a timezone.
Tuesday at 2:46 am
Hi Minna san,
Simply Fantastic, I am already looking forward to it. The other day I was tempted to sign up on chinesepod.com, but I did not. No one has your guys’ technic, I am sure of that. Your Kung Fu is the best
Jaa!
V
Tuesday at 3:33 am
Mina-san, thank you for the feedback and support.
It’s alive!
Prinny-san, very nice.
The new site is…
http://www.chineseclass101.com
Please don’t fall in love with Apple in the video.
The site is going live with roughly 100 lessons through a combined effort from Beijing, New York and Tokyo.
The are bound to be some bugs, so please be patient.
Thank you again! You guys made all these sites possible.
Tuesday at 5:24 am
It’s a nasty world isn’t it…
I remember once you acknowledged that the idea of Japanesepod101 came form the ChinesePod site, from which, let’s just say, you got a lot of inspiration… Now you are trying to invade their market…
Tuesday at 6:36 am
Mina san konnichiwa!
I recommend it strongly, I have tried out the Pimsleur method, lots of podcasts on the net, chinesepod_dot_com and others, the market for Chinese teaching, be it Mandarin or Cantonese is huge and there are lots of players out there and I must say CC101’s Kung Fu is the best.
I just signed up at CC101 and am checking out the material. They’ve got a great team delivering the courses, one is Energetic and the other one Calm, Ying and Yang
Good Luck to Amber and Victor and everyone at CC101 and Jpod101 in ToKyo, NewYork and Beijing
Ja mata and zài jiàn
Vahid
Tuesday at 8:53 am
I’m always pleased to see you adding new languages to your services . . . I’m still holding out for Portuguese ^^.
But how will your site compare or contrast with the more established Chinesepod.com — whom, I think you would readily concede, provided you much inspiration in the formative years of Japanesepod101.
Also, if I may be so frank, I really wish you would stop advertising Arabicpod101.com. The site has been dormant for many months now; and many former subscribers are still rather confused as to why this site continues to process payments for an inactive service. I fully understand if you want to shelve it until a later date, but it is questionable to collect money, and to advertise, for a dead product.
Thanks for hearing out my feedback–
Sean Somers
Tuesday at 1:27 pm
Yea, i kinda share the same sentiments as giovanni and sean here,
) so i don’t really see a need to add any more pod sites to the list, since i’m only focused on the CJK langs (chn,jpn,krn).
i’m curious how ChineseClass101.com will compare with Chinesepod.com, but also, doesn’t it seem like maybe a little late in the game to be launching now??. . .
i wont lie, i’m a very satisfied user of Chinesepod (as well as Kclass101 and of course, Jpod101
That said, I did register and checkout the new site already, and its what i expected, a team of wonderful hosts and good content. . .plus they have an Ace thats hard for me to resist. . .a base in my own backyard nYc!!
]
*sigh* at this rate i’ll be happily paying subscriptions everywhere~ [its not healthy being a language addict. . .
Tuesday at 3:05 pm
やった！中国語だ！
热烈欢迎！
For the record, they’re teaching mandarin Chinese, and everyone is from Beijing.
Tuesday at 9:06 pm
Registered!
Agreed with just1world-san. Being a language addict is dangerous.
Tuesday at 9:23 pm
och wow, i’ve been waiting for chinese:P But what’s the difference between chinesepod and Cclass?? Could you tell me?
Tuesday at 11:27 pm
Hey guys, you forgot to add Chinese to the footer on your page.
Wednesday at 3:00 am
Mina-san,
ご無沙汰していました！(Sorry for the long silence.)
First thank you for all the feedback, both the positive and the critical. The positive helps drive us, especially when working and posting at 3am
, and the critical helps keep us in check. We’re very lucky to have both from everyone. 
Let me chime in and try to answer a few questions.
Regarding the type of Chinese:
We’ll be teaching Mandarin, with a Beijing accent.
Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect, so this was important for us.
Our team records in Beijing using professional voice actors for the dialogue.
Regarding the writing system:
We’ll focus on simplified, but include traditional.
You can usually find both in the same lesson notes.
Regarding advantages of knowing Japanese when studying Chinese:
As a student of both Japanese and Chinese, I would
say that knowing Japanese definitely comes in handy
more often than not.
I would agree there are confusing moments, but
overall I think it’s a definite plus for reading and understanding.
When I was studying in Japanese school, Chinese
students had quite an advantage in understanding
long written passages. *Interestingly enough, the large
amount of English loan words actually gives a native
English speaker an advantage when speaking on many topics
such as computers, once the level of Japanese
comprehension is high enough.
As for entering the Chinese market, there are
a lot of products out there. We feel we definitely
have a top notch product to offer.
In fact, it’s because the stars were aligned on this,
we were able to do this.
We’re lucky enough to be working with David from
Popup Chinese and Amber in NY….
Let’s just say we hit the jackpot!
Regarding unique aspects of ChineseClass101.com
Or what makes us special:
I would say that David at Popup Chinese had a lot of the
ingredients
1. Beijing Accent (this is really, really big)
2. Native Male Chinese host - one thing we try to always
incorporate here at JapanesePod101.com as we feel it’s
important for male speakers learning a language
learn to imitate native male speakers
3. Linear approach in which each lesson builds on the previous one
so you can progress in a step-by-step manner
4. Test preparation material (coming soon)
Regarding Other projects
Portuguese and Hungarian would be nice.
Final note, there is a good blog write up here by David here:
http://blogs.chineseclass101.com/
And lastly, thank you again everyone. I will reiterate once more.
, but give us 6 more weeks.)
We started 4 years ago with 1 desk in downtown Tokyo.
Thanks to the amazing support, praise, critiques, comments, e-mails and everything else our community has done for us, here were are at site number 11!
(Sean-san, 10.5
I really hope you know that we feel like we did this together.
So a big thank you from Tokyo, New York and Beijing!
Wednesday at 12:27 pm
Is there a discount for jpod101 subscribers on the new site?
Wednesday at 12:39 pm
Nice of you to temporarily make all the Chinese lessons available in the basic iTunes feed, by the way - I really appreciate being able to easily go back to the early ones while deciding whether or not to sign up.
Wednesday at 6:03 pm
David Carltonさん＞
Please email contactus@japanesepod101.com and I believe they’ll have something special for you
Thursday at 4:41 am
Eh, my post on Peter’s “man-to-man” language learning was deleted. I was hoping he’d expand more on his statements in regard to gender and language acquisition.
My little wish-list for future podcasts
–
(1) Brazilian Portuguese
(2) Dutch
(3) Irish Gaelic
(4) Punjabi
(5) Icelandic
Maybe one day, yeah?
Thursday at 12:41 pm
Jessie: Thanks!
Thursday at 8:13 pm
I second the motion for DutchPod101! Tankyouwell in advance!
Friday at 12:48 am
I’m a little confused, if the chineseclass site is brand new, why are there lessons going back to January 2009??
Friday at 9:36 am
Michaelさん＞
Even though the site is new, there are about 4-5 months worth of content to work with!
ChineseClass101 is indeed new, but the goal was to have a lot of content available for users to work with right away after the site opened, which is why the lessons date back to January 2009.
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