For anyone who wants to learn mandarin chinese as well, I've combined a few apps that have helped me start learning and make sense of everything in the very beginning.
Most of these are (as is usually the case with language apps) only fully available with premium, but if you just want to make sense of how the language works, how to read pinyin, write a few characters and work on your listening skills, they're quite enough to get started.
No app has been perfect, so I mixed and matched until I found a few good ones that work for me. They're each good for something else, so I use all of these at once!
1. HelloChinese.
It's good for getting started without getting too overwhelmed. The most friendly, duolingo-like app. It even looks similar! But it feels a bit different. For one, there are actually many videos of native speakers incorporated into the exercises to help you with natural listening! They teach you how to write the occasional hanzi character, but it's mostly focused on listening, speaking and reading pinyin. You can even toggle pinyin off if you want, but I've found it helps me a lot.
2. Chinese Writer
Simple and to the point. Lots of characters are behind premium, but most of the ones you'll need at the start are not. It can be very overwhelming if you're just getting started, so I suggest making your own character folder and slowly adding more instead of straight up going in and playing the pre-made HSK1 A folder.
3. Pleco
It's pretty much just a dictionary but you wouldn't believe how often I use it. I'd say every day. You can either write a character in by hand or type it in english or pinyin. It will not only spit out the main character meaning, but also any other meanings and example sentences, which is awesome.
4. Immersive Chinese
Very listening based. What I like about it is that it starts out very slow, walking you through words one by one, using them as bricks to create sentences. It won't just tell you that mĆ©iyĒu means "to not have" but it will show you 5 examples using that word, spacing them out between other sentences to make you recall it. Works best if you try to translate the sentence without looking at the translation first. Explains things that usual apps skip.
5. Memrise
The big classic for learning languages. The chinese course is very good! Many of the sentences are recorded by multiple native speakers which it's very good for practicing listening. They teach you a lot of phrases that you'd use in everyday life or that you need most, which other apps often omit. Like "Excuse me" and "call the police" are among the first things you learn. Out of all the apps, I think this one is the most worth paying premium for.
5. Anki
I use it only occasionally because I don't really enjoy the pure flashcard format, but there are some great decks out there! I currectly use this one and so far, I'm really happy with it. Great for learning to read hanzi. The audio quality is sometimes worse, but you can still tell what they're saying, so it's fine. I really like it, but you can choose whatever deck you want :D That's the wonder (and sometimes curse) of Anki.
That's all from me I think (^_^') Where are the days of having one workbook per language, huh? But at least I feel more secure using multiple sources... If you try any of these, lmk! Or if you have apps you think are better, also lmk, I'd love to add or switch up some of mine or at least try them out.
Happy learning!
