Help me learn Mandarin Chinese

"how old are you" or is it an actual thing called 怎么老是你

That’s a word for word translation but apparently the real meaning is “why is it always YOU?” or something to that effect.

right like 怎么老是吃馒头 why are you always eating steamed buns 为什么这个APP老是连不上网络 how come this app never connects. i think it's a northern thing?
the chinglish joke comes to mind first

For my sins, I’m getting back into the game after my conversation-level chinese has deteriorated over the past 2-3 years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good beginner/intermediate readers/books? Something to slog through w Pleco or a dictionary? Speaking of which, is there a particular dictionary anyone recommends?

I’ve been an ILX/ILM lurker since the NYLPM days but have very much enjoyed this thread since I started “learning” mandarin in 2016.

i always use new practical chinese reader when i'm trying to teach someone the very basics because it's fairly sound but also because you can find pdfs online easily + videos of the dialogue are on youtube, but i think integrated chinese is still the most frequently recommended by people that know what they're talking about.

for a dictionary, i don't know what you're looking for, but i've always used wenlin which is incredibly useful at an intermediate level, if you want to try working your way through actual texts or throw in a short story, since it has mouseover definition at the bottom, and you can pop up detailed definitions for any character or phrase in the text, and also things, like, take a character and see all characters built from it, and phrases containing the characters, etc. you can also look up by radical or components or stroke number, so it feels as close as you can get to fooling around with a paper dictionary, without having to have a dictionary at hand. and as you get deeper into it, it remains useful, because the key dictionary database is from john defrancis' abc chinese-english dictionary but it also folds in information from shuowen jiezi and points to the correct entry in kangxi zidian, hanyu dazidian, karlgren's grammata serica recensa, etc. but maybe nciku if you want to download something, and that one is good because it'll give you a whole bunch of example sentences for terms or phrases you're searching for. BUT this is dark ages stuff, honestly, and everyone is probably using some cutting edge app.

is there a way to figure out how to transcribe text for somebody who doesn't know any of the characters ?

i'm looking at a singaporean LP from the 1970s and i'd just like to be able to have the title and track names (have already figured out the artist) so i can enter it into discogs.

i just don't know where to start !

OCR phone app (usually Pleco) + google translate to get the pinyin = the tedious way I've done things like this

thanks !

really having a hard time with this cover art. if anybody wants to take a stab at the curved lettering above the guy's head, i'd really appreciate it.

https://i.imgur.com/ZvSkHQv.jpg

it's actually kind of a cool pop / beat record with some good fuzz !

i'll even send you a vinyl rip of the record if you help me out :)

all i know is it's this guy:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/3206423-%E8%AD%9A%E9%A0%86%E6%88%90

fuzz guitar*

it says 风雪情未了

i mean 風雪情未了 if you want to be precise (traditional 风）

thank you !!!!!!!!