Comment by cmuguythrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmuguythrow | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been learning Mandarin via Comprehensible Input (CI) for about 9 months and really admire OP’s dedication and consistency. In the first 4-5 months of being truly consistent with ~1hr a day of Anki and Peppa pig I got to around 2,000 words and was able to have a great experience when I traveled to Taiwan, so I can vouch for the core methodology in this post. It’s not “easy”, but it’s definitely the most effective way to learn a foreign language that I know of.

The CI community has come a long way in the last ~5 or so years - the general consensus looks a lot like OP’s methods, which I would summarize as:

1. Brute force [premade Anki flashcard decks](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/810519009) for the first ~1k most common words

2. Start watching comprehensible input as soon as you can, ideally for an hour a day or more

3. [Sentence mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcQJESGQvc)the comprehensible input and add it to the daily SRS flashcard grind

The best summary of these methods that I’ve found is https://refold.la/

Self plug: I’ve been working on a way to generate Mandarin audio comprehensible input using LLMs/TTS models. The idea is that there aren’t many great CI options between 500 words and ~3k-5k words - OP himself mentions that when he started watching Scissor Seven 刺客伍六七 he barely understood anything, which is pretty hard to “push through” without some hardcore willpower. My project https://plusonechinese.com makes Mandarin audio stories that are 85% comprehensible at any level from 400 words all the way to 8k or more words and then auto-imports the audio snippets into SRS flashcards, which makes a CI workflow like this a lot easier to engage with at a lower level and without advanced willpower. Still working on making the content _truly_ interesting, but would love some feedback!

I also use Netflix to great effect for practicing Chinese, especially when paired with the Language Reactor[1] extension in Chrome.

* Note: Netflix has much more Taiwanese content than mainland China content, so do note the difference in the accent / dialect you'll be learning.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/language-reactor/ho...

How do you pass the initial language barriers? I'm trying to learn Spanish with Netflix shows and the Language Reactor, but I find it extremely hard to understand spoke Spanish. The characters speak so fast that I couldn't discern individual words or phrases. For a lot of times, they speak as if they are murmuring. When I was learning English, my ability to understand spoken English grew with my ability to read, but in the case of Spanish, I can read a lot more advanced text than being able to listen...

Have a look at Dreaming Spanish, it exists precisely to bridge the "comprehensibility gap" for learners.

https://www.dreamingspanish.com (or find the Youtube channel)

There's tons of free content to keep you occupied for a while, and then there's a paid tier if you want more down the track. After choosing the level that's suitable, I recommend starting with Pablo's videos - he's the founder and I still like his style the most, particularly his older videos before things expanded. Just click on whatever looks interesting.

Thanks! I've been on it for some time. I can understand Beginner level most of time, even with 1.25x or 1.5x for most of the videos, but I find most of Intermediate can be significantly harder to understand. One possibility is that the there are more idiomatic phrases in Intermediate, like the use of reflexive verbs, such as hacerse, levarse, ponerse, irse and etc under different context. They are so different from English and I still need to translate them instead of comprehending them.

Keep at it, consistently doing a bit every day, and you'll get there. I went through all the free beginner videos (at the time) before moving onto intermediate, then did the same before moving onto advanced, and only then was I really able to start watching stuff made for native speakers without feeling too lost. I'm not a CI purist though, I looked up words or grammar points occasionally, but I didn't actively try to study or memorize anything.

this is akin to incomprehensible input and you need it, after listening to a lot of it your brain will start recognizing patterns and decompose things on its own, for now just brute force through as much of it as you can.

I tried but all the content was sooo boring! The only show I could sort of watch was aiqing gongyu back then, because it was a pure rip off of Friends but at least it had some humor, but most of the content on Netflix is pure drama and is really boring to watch.

Your app is good, I'm between HSK1-HSK2 and there are often scenarios I want to practice that aren't covered in the standard dialog options in other popular Mandarin apps, so I see the appeal.

Some feedback: - It took a while to generate my first session, I almost lost interest before I even knew what the app was.

- I tried to click on the buttons in the splash screen screenshot, mistaking it for the app itself.

- I would have liked to not to have to enter the prompt myself the first time, and just click something pre-made, only because the first time I use an app I have very little patience and just want to see what it actually does, so if it makes me think (or wait a long time) I may churn.

Maybe if you had a default prompt's audio baked into the APK it would feel more snappy (for those who select the default prompt.)

Anyhow nice work

Peppa Pig is hard :-)

What would a be a good child animation for learning a foreign language? I'm trying to learn a little of French for a coming trip.

Totally depends on what you can get access to in the target language. For French - maybe Trotro? https://www.youtube.com/@TrotroOfficiel/videos

If you need French Subs + dictionary (and maybe also English subs) you can try using the [languagereactor](https://www.languagereactor.com/) chrome plugin and find a source that has both subtitles (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZ2gLCkv5Y)

1. Check Wikipedia for the major TV networks in the country. E.g. Sweden is SVT

2. Check if the network has a mobile app

3. Use a VPN to connect to that country and open the app

4. Look for shows you want to try.

I remember watching haimian baobao (spongebob squarepants). Back then you could download this pptv app and watch a bunch of shows for free, I'm not sure what's the equivalent today.

I also find it hard in Spanish, even though it's a kid show.

I wish more people would talk about incomprehensible input. Just feeding input in your brain, like an LLM, so that with time you can detect pattern. Like playing the radio in the background, or watching Chinese movies without understanding much, or watching educational chinese youtube videos while you sleep, etc.

I was hoping to find something like your app. Haven't tried it yet but so excited!

DuChinese is a great app for reading stories at beginner levels of vocabulary. It also supports tap-to-lookup and saving words to flashcards, but unfortunately they don't integrate with Anki, only their own app's system.

DuChinese does have an integration with HackChinese, which is basically a Mandarin only paid version of Anki with a sleek interface. I use it for convenience because I find managing Anki decks too tedious.

Yeah DuChinese is I think the premier Chinese graded reader app right now. We also have the tap-to-lookup and make-flashcard-from-content flows (unfortunately only in our system for now, haven't build flashcard import/export yet). The thing we have that they don't is the ability to generate content about whatever subject you want (which can help make it much more personally interesting)

Also while naming quality resources I should also mention [Pleco](https://www.pleco.com/) - it's _definitely_ the best Chinese dictionary app - highly recommended.

Thank you so much for sharing!

Your project is very interesting. Thanks a lot!

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