Any good and free/cheap resources for learning Mandarin?
I have been doing Duolingo exercises for a few days now, but some good books, videos, apps or websites would help me out. My tone pronunciation is a complete mess.
Hello Chinese is a freemium app I've used extensively. I'm supposedly up to hsk1 and I've enjoyed it a lot and have learned a lot. It will still take me a long time, but I feel like it's given me a foothold in pronunciation, vocab, hanzi, and that Im way more curious and excited to learn more. Would recommend.
Also pleco for an extensive dictionary/hanzi reference.
I second both of these. Hello Chinese is excellent, and while the thread question asks for free/cheap, I can't recommend premium enough. The podcasts are excellent, and the recently added character practice has helped me tremendously.
Pleco should be considered a baseline learning tool.