Speak everyday Mandarin, one day at a time.
One short lesson a day, built around the real phrases you’d actually use. Plus free pinyin, tones, characters and situation guides for your trip.
Your reviews by memory stage
Words and characters together, from your review schedule.
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The part that actually works
You do not have a memory problem. You have a scheduling problem.
Everyone forgets. What separates people who learn a language from people who keep starting one is whether anything brings a word back at the moment it is about to slip. That is all spaced repetition is, and it is the single highest-return habit on this site.
Ten minutes a day genuinely beats two hours on a Sunday. The catch is that a schedule is only worth something if it survives, and without an account yours lives in one browser on one device.
Learn once Review on schedule
Mission statement
Making everyone in the world learn another language.
Every language you pick up is another few hundred million people you can meet halfway. This site exists to make that first step, the hardest one, cost you ten minutes a day instead of a term at evening class.
Where to start
New here? Do these four things, in this order.
Most people who give up on Chinese quit in the first month, and it is usually because they started with characters, or skipped the tones and meant to fix them later. Here is the order that works, and what each step actually costs you.
Learn the tones and pinyin first
Pinyin is how Chinese sounds are written in letters you already know, and the tones are part of every syllable. Both are small and finite. Hear the four tones in pairs, learn the eight spellings that catch everyone out, and every word after that is one you can actually say.
Start Day 1, then do one a day
These are the phrases you would actually use: saying hello, giving your name, ordering food, asking where something is. Each day covers a few of them, explains why they work the way they do, then quizzes you. Do not binge three at once to get ahead. The day in between is doing half the work, because that is when things stick.
Do the review cards every day
Spaced repetition is a flashcard deck that works out when to show you each word. You get 15 new ones a day, in course order, and each word comes back just before you would have forgotten it. If you only do one thing on this site, make it this. Do the cards even on days you skip the lesson.
Write characters alongside, not before
Characters are the long project, and they are much easier once you can already say the words they write. Every lesson ends with a writing box for that day’s characters: watch the stroke order, trace it, then write it from memory. A few a day adds up faster than you would expect.
What a normal day looks like
About 25 minutes, split three ways. One sitting or spread across the day, it makes little difference.
Today’s lesson
New phrases, the reasoning, then the quiz.
Review cards
Whatever the deck says is due. Answer honestly, tones included.
Writing
Trace a few of today’s characters.
On a bad day, do the reviews and nothing else. Even four minutes keeps the schedule intact. Skip a day and tomorrow’s pile is bigger, which is how people end up staring at 200 cards and quietly giving up.
Four things to leave alone for now
- Starting with characters. They are the part everyone notices first and the worst place to begin. Without the sounds you are memorising shapes with nothing to attach them to.
- Fixing the tones later. A word learned without its tone has to be learned twice. Learn the tone with the word, every time, from the first day.
- Booking the HSK. The guide is here when you want it, but the lower levels barely test speaking or listening at speed, so it is a strange thing to aim at first. Get through Day 30, then decide.
- Waiting until you feel ready to speak. Press the speaker on every line and say it back. Saying a word badly is how you get to saying it well. Reading it in your head is not.
Going to China in a few weeks?
Different plan. Skip characters for now and go straight to the situation guides: the restaurant, the taxi, the train, the hotel. Keep pinyin switched on, learn the tones well enough to be understood, and do the daily lessons with whatever time is left. Twenty phrases you can actually say will do more for you than a hundred characters you can recognise.
How it works
One course. The daily lessons teach the phrases you would actually say, one short lesson at a time, with tones and pinyin first and characters from day one. Around it, Learn holds the reading, vocabulary and grammar references, and Practice has the spaced repetition deck and the stroke order writing tool. Pinyin and tone colours switch on and off on every lesson.
Going to China soon?
Jump straight to the situation you need, no course required.
From the blog
What a lesson cannot hold
Posts on why tone drills stop working after a month, and what to do when your listening is far behind your reading.
Read all posts →
What’s included for free
More than you would expect
The tones and pinyin guides, every character, all 129 words, the grammar reference, the situation guides, the printables and days 1 to 30 of the daily lessons, with no account and no card.
See the comparison →
Part of the Learn Languages Online network
Eight languages. The same courses, spaced repetition and situation guides are being built for each of them.