Free Language Version 2 was just released last night. It is built using Drupal 4.7.

I have bolded the Mandarin Chinese resources below.

There are 12 languages thus far at Free Language

• Learn Arabic
• Learn Cantonese
• Learn English
• Learn French
• Learn German
• Learn Hindi
• Learn Italian
• Learn Japanese
• Learn Mandarin Chinese
• Learn Portuguese
• Learn Russian
• Learn Spanish

For all the Drupalers out there, Free Language v2 is running Drupal 4.7 and following contributed modules were used to beef it out:

• aggregator2
• captcha
• emailpage
• google analytics
• insert_block
• pathauto (to the max)
• poormanscron
• simplenews
• sitemenu
• tagadelic

I tried to keep contrib mods to a minimum while still maximizing the site's functionality.

I am going to upgrade to Drupal 5 as soon as I can get some funds together to commission the upgrade of aggregator2 to Drupal 5. Or perhaps someone will decide to just do it!

Here is a link to the Mandarin Chinese Tags Page:

I have been steadily adding news feeds to Free Language today. A total of 10 feeds have already been added:

Radio Free Asia News in Cantonese
BBC World News in English
BBC Afrique News in French
Deutsche Welle News in German
Corriere della Sera Italy News in Italian
Deutsche Welle News in Chinese
Xinhuanet News in Chinese
BBC Brasil News in Portuguese
BBC News in Russian
BBC Mundo News in Spanish

The idea is that people will be exposed to the idea that they can read news to help learn a language once at a given level of comprehension.

These days Mandarin Chinese is growing more and more popular as a second language for people all over the world. This is true mainly because of the evident booming Chinese economy and the current and future market that is growing at a breathtaking pace.

Here are some of the free resources I have come across:

Learn Mandarin Chinese Podcasts at Free Language

Chinese has four (or five - depending on how you look at it) tones. Here is a page that explains some basic information about the tones in Mandarin Chinese. Also, a link to a Mandarin tone exercise game.

Here is an Audio Tutorial of Survival Chinese

This site has free Chinese lessons.

A fabulous and free online Chinese dictionary.

An assortment of basic Mandarin lessons.

General info about the Chinese language and lots of links to other aspects of Chinese culture, art and more.

Wikipedia info on Mandarin Chinese.

Wikibook on Mandarin Chinese with lessons and information.

I had a synchronous encounter (thanks to a good friend) with someone here in Beijing who is working on a most astounding and incredibly useful project called adsotrans.

From adsotrans read me:

"To use this website simply copy Chinese text into the submission box and click "Adsotate". The text will be automatically annotated -- mouseover any word for a popup with pinyin and english. More control over annotation options and full webpage translation is possible through the advanced interface. If you're simply looking for freshly annotated Chinese texts to read, why not check out our sister site page, which is also open to the public. Students looking for study material should visit News in Chinese."

Indeed, this is a worthy, user-edited and -driven project that is quite impressive.

Their News in Chinese website is a great place for more advanced learners to experience their intuitive user translation interface for reading the latest RSS news feeds in Simplified Chinese from Xinhua. If you are very knowledgable about the Mandarin language, you can contribute greatly to the project with your expertise. Volunteer info is here.

And finally, here are a couple more links for learning Mandarin starting from the basics:

Sinosplice Chinese Language Study Resources

Sinosplice Chinese Study Book Reviews (Great help for choosing a text to use.)

Basic Chinese Phonetics with Pinyin Voice Recordings

Chinese Pronunciation Guide (Requires RealAudio)

There is obviously a lot more info out there, so I encourage you to search around. These links will give a good intro and link to a lot of other sites, but there is so much more out there.

In the words of Mao Zedong himself: "Study hard and make progress everyday." :)