These were the best graded readers I ever came across. I liked that they were a continuous series that gradually expanded the vocabulary as you went along.
Sad it had to happen, but thanks very much to all involved for working on a replacement. Looking forward to signing up as this UK instance has been the best part of the 'fediverse' for me.
I do think the geopolitical angle they are going with is a bit overplayed. It looks like Mandarin is only a bit below the trend for foreign languages in general. Personally, I think part of that is just people realising over time that studying Mandarin won't necessarily lead to business or career success.
It does explain why all the niche communities I visit have gone from quiet to abandoned.
I'm not sure why I am so invested in this story, but I'd love to see some consequences for this cultural vandalism.
I'm seriously impressed with how functional this app is from the start. Like lots of others have said, it felt like coming home given how long I'd used Sync for. Didn't hesitate to pay for the ad free version once that option was added.
Yeah, this is my experience with Lemmy so far: it has replaced the "all" experience for me, but all my hobby / interests subs are completely dead.
Thanks Tom - appreciate your efforts as this is fast becoming my favourite corner of the internet. Hope your flat purchase goes well.
I would really recommend the Imagin8 Journey to the West graded readers. They are one continuous series which is really handy, they increase the amount of vocabulary featured every few books and they have free audio on YouTube of the series.
The problem I encountered when I started switching the in-game language to Chinese was that descriptions of game mechanics and systems can be quite hard to read, whereas it's relatively straightforward to keep up with the narrative.
I did the same as you initially and just set audio to Chinese for games like Cyberpunk, and I think it did help my listening. Now I've played through a few games with text and audio set to Chinese and it has gotten a bit smoother.
I hope it will be, and think it has the potential.
It has already replaced the "all" experience for me, and I automatically come here rather than Reddit. On the other hand, most of my engagement on reddit was with hobby/interest communities. Very few of the ones I visited on Reddit have made it across in an active way so far.
One unexpected thing is that I actually enjoy my specific instance and find myself browsing "Local" way more often than I expected.
Most of my Chinese time has been taken up recently playing a game called Murders on the Yangtze Rivers (山河旅探). It is basically an ace attorney detective style game but with the setting being in historic China. I've really enjoyed it and it has voice acting which is always a plus.
I'd say to play fully in Chinese it's something HSK5+ would enjoy, but someone could also play in English with the audio in Mandarin and get some benefit from it.
English trailer