Learn Chinese

Start at pinyin and the tones

The Chinese on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 189 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Chinese voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.

• 27pinyin sounds
• 10digits
• 12pronunciation rules
• 100core words
• 20everyday phrases
• 20sentences

Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the course teaches them:

• mā 妈 — high and flat — hold one note, like singing it妈妈 — mother
• má 麻 — rising, the way an English question rises at the end麻烦 — trouble / a hassle
• mǎ 马 — dips low, then comes back up — the longest of the four马上 — right away

Then material that does not run out

Once you are reading, the level is the point. The Text Generator writes Chinese at the CEFR level, length, topic and format you ask for, so the step up is a setting rather than a new book. Speaking scores you word by word as you read aloud. The Conversation Partner talks back. The Translator explains a sentence instead of replacing it, and the Corrector marks what you wrote and says why.

Above the on-ramp sits the Path — a station map from A1 to C2 with grammar, vocabulary and checkpoint stations — and Words & Notes, where everything you save comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule in seven quiz styles.

What Chinese actually costs a beginner

mā, má, mǎ and mà are four different words — mother, hemp, horse and to scold — and only the pitch separates them. A tone is learnable but only by ear, which is why every card carries a recorded voice. Pinyin's own trap is that several of its letters do not say what they look like: zh, ch, sh and r are made with the tongue curled back, c is a ts, and q and x have no English equivalent at all. Characters are taught where they belong — inside the words, phrases and sentences, with the pinyin beside them — rather than as a second alphabet to finish first.