Grammar Flashcards for Dangdai—當代中文 "A Course in Contemporary Chinese"

I've started making grammar flash cards based on the lessons of the Dangdai - A Course in Contemporary Chinese books commonly used in Taiwan. I've only covered book 1 of 6 so far for testing purposes and I'm looking for volunteers to help me test and adjust as needed.

TL;DR These cards are designed to work within the limitations of the existing flashcards system for use in self-graded, spaced repetition tests only, and for gauging your familiarity with the many grammatical structures covered by the books. Please download, try, share, and give feedback.

Flashcards currently cover all lessons in Books 1-3.

Download:
Notes on the cards:
  • Traditional characters only.
  • Designed for self-graded, spaced repetition tests (have not tested with other testing formats).
  • Headwords may contain the relevant characters in the grammatical structure as written in the book, or the Chinese name for the grammatical structure if only the English description is provided in the book (BIG THANK YOU to 吳老師 at NTNU for the research help on these). These were used because using English words to describe the structure in the headword is not an option due to formatting limitations.
  • Definitions contain the English descriptions of the grammar structure and a number of hand-picked examples from the book with some inconsequential edits thrown in for fun here and there. This is where mistakes most likely occurred, although I tried proofreading every individual entry. If you find any errors please let me know and I will update.
  • I've followed the same category name format (e.g. //當代語法/Book 1/L03) as @bsh26 's cards here: http://www.plecoforums.com/threads/flashcards-for-a-course-in-contemporary-chinese.6100/
  • I plan to fix issues and continue building this set as long as I keep studying, which will hopefully be through the whole series, but no guarantees. At the very least through book 3, the point at which most native Chinese speakers will think your spoken Chinese is excellent, provided you use the given structures.
Test Settings Suggestion:
  • Profile: copy of Spaced Repetition
  • Show: Chars + Pron (You'll probably want to enable the pronunciation for the headwords that contain characters describing the grammatical structure as are a bit obscure.)
Import Settings:
  • Definitions
    • Definition source: File Only
    • Store in user dict: ON
  • Problem Handling
    • Fill in missing fields: OFF
    • Missing entries: Create Blank
    • Ambiguous entries: Prompt
    • Duplicate entries: Allow

@mikelove Notes for Pleco:
  • Formatting for headwords with English letters/words. Currently any English words or letters use huge spacing, so it would be nice if there were a more readable way to format headwords with combined languages.
  • Maybe I overlooked something while exporting to .TSV, but I can't seem to figure out how to input and export definitions with line breaks. Please let me know how as it would make definitions much more readable. [Fixed]
  • I'm not sure at what stage you are with some kind of grammar add-on, but I hope this can be a stopgap until then.
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
This is awesome, thanks for posting it!

Formatting for headwords with English letters/words. Currently any English words or letters use huge spacing, so it would be nice if there were a more readable way to format headwords with combined languages.

Yeah, in our next major update we're no longer going to force A-Z letters in Chinese headwords into full-width; it'll stick with whatever width they were originally.

Maybe I overlooked something while exporting to .TSV, but I can't seem to figure out how to input and export definitions with line breaks. Please let me know how as it would make definitions much more readable.

Insert the special character U+EAB1 () in the place you want the newline to be. (this is also being worked on)

I'm not sure at what stage you are with some kind of grammar add-on, but I hope this can be a stopgap until then.

Nothing imminent, we're trying very hard not to take on any more long complicated new-data-file-related coding tasks until we get 4.0 out and adding a grammar add-on would qualify.
 
Insert the special character U+EAB1 () in the place you want the newline to be. (this is also being worked on)

Thanks! That worked.

I may have just found a bug: I have a couple of cards that use slashes / and //. Both cards aren't registering the pinyin tones correctly regardless of spacing. For example headword 太 // 了 and pinyin tài // le show up as 太4 // 了4. It seems to be a pattern that the character directly after the slash registers the same tone as the one before, and the character after the ignored one registers correctly. In another card, 多 / 少 + V with pinyin duō/shǎo + V, the result is 多1 / 少1 + V3. Any way to fix this? Or should I just not use backslashes?
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We use slashes in headwords to indicate character variants, so the system repeats whatever tone it saw last after it encounters one. If you use another character that looks like a slash (Unicode has like half a dozen of them) that should avoid the problem.
 
We use slashes in headwords to indicate character variants, so the system repeats whatever tone it saw last after it encounters one. If you use another character that looks like a slash (Unicode has like half a dozen of them) that should avoid the problem.

Replaced with fullwidth solidus. Thanks!
 

jurgen85

榜眼
Interesting! I don't have the book but these could absolutely be useful anyway. I only skimmed through a few but noticed some minor things:

* things like 跟一樣 and 又又 would look nicer with …… inbetween/after the hanzi.

* if tone color breaks like in "V- 起來", you can write an upside down question mark in the pinyin to sync it. E.g. "V5 -¿ qi3lai2" here.

* In the first example of 好/難, they/you probably meant 菜, not 在.
 
Thanks @jurgen85 !
* things like 跟一樣 and 又又 would look nicer with …… inbetween/after the hanzi.
Fixed!
I was using three MIDDLE DOT Unicode: U+00B7, UTF-8: C2 B7 but it seems like Pleco doesn't recognize them, so I replaced them all with MIDLINE HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS Unicode: U+22EF, UTF-8: E2 8B AF.
* if tone color breaks like in "V- 起來", you can write an upside down question mark in the pinyin to sync it. E.g. "V5 -¿ qi3lai2" here.
Fixed!
* In the first example of 好/難, they/you probably meant 菜, not 在.
Fixed!
 

Spemex

Member
I am using CCC right now and have spent way too many hours trying to input vocabulary into Anki and I feel that it takes up too much time. This is a godsend!

I am not sure if I am allowed to ask but...
How could I upload this to Anki instead?
I bought the Pleco bundle but I still prefer Anki since I have been using it for so long already.
Anki Shared Decks database unfortunately doesn't have all those amazing decks you guys share here, that's such a pity.
 
I am using CCC right now and have spent way too many hours trying to input vocabulary into Anki and I feel that it takes up too much time. This is a godsend!

I am not sure if I am allowed to ask but...
How could I upload this to Anki instead?
I bought the Pleco bundle but I still prefer Anki since I have been using it for so long already.
Anki Shared Decks database unfortunately doesn't have all those amazing decks you guys share here, that's such a pity.

Pro tip: come back to pleco ;)
 

heijopai

秀才
I am using CCC right now and have spent way too many hours trying to input vocabulary into Anki and I feel that it takes up too much time. This is a godsend!

I am not sure if I am allowed to ask but...
How could I upload this to Anki instead?
I bought the Pleco bundle but I still prefer Anki since I have been using it for so long already.
Anki Shared Decks database unfortunately doesn't have all those amazing decks you guys share here, that's such a pity.

I am also using pleco as a dictionary but Anki for the flashcards and would love to use the deck on Anki!
 

Spemex

Member
@cubafornian - is there any chance to get the Grammar Flashcards for the remaining books (4-6)? Or any one of them? :)

Once again, this is some amazing work that you have done.
 
@cubafornian - is there any chance to get the Grammar Flashcards for the remaining books (4-6)? Or any one of them? :)

Once again, this is some amazing work that you have done.

Thanks! Glad it helps. I’m in the process of making book 4 now. About one-third of the way through. Don’t think I’ll get to 5 and 6 though. I’m done taking classes for now, and those books seemed a lot more focused on written Chinese. If I go back to taking classes it will be with the business-oriented book. Any interest in cards for that?
 
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