Show HN: My first product. Thoughts? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first product. Thoughts?

mandarintap.com

87 pointsalan_h81 comments

I've been in this market for a while. From running an English school in Taiwan to trying out products as an avid learner myself to chatting with friends who have basically been building the dominant platforms for teaching Chinese, I've seen a ton of apps like this.

And I have to say that yours is refreshing. Lots of new Chinese learning apps are coming out and 90% are just flashcards with an SRS. From a learning perspective, just memorizing words is a terrible way to go.

(I explain why in the final minute of this video: http://youtu.be/3cjnP6mogEU)

Don't get me wrong. I love SRSes and even contributed to Anki. But ultimately any language learning effort focused on single, decontextualized words is doomed. Learners need bigger chunks, like whole sentences or ideally extensive reading. That's why I see your app as a step in the right direction.

Thanks for the feedback, it should be able to support sentences up to about 7-8 characters in length. Device width is the constraint here. I'll bear this in mind for future lesson sets.

Excellent video btw, I will read into spaced-repetition.

Are there any other apps / methods that you can recommend as good examples of how to learn a language? I'm trying to learn Lithuanian (GF), and there is very little material available, so I'm looking to build something myself.

Podcast-focused services like Popup Chinese and ChinesePod get results.

http://popupchinese.com/

Steve Kaufmann's product is one of the very few that supports actual reading. His Youtube channel is also excellent.

http://www.lingq.com/

Oh, and AllSetLearning picture book reader is definitely worth downloading! They also have a good pinyin app.

http://www.allsetlearning.com/products/chinese-picture-book-...

That said, if your goal is learning Lithuanian rather than product building, you don't need an app. You need books and audio. For an overview of how to use them, try reading Barry Farber's How to Learn Any Language. Here's my own summary and results using his strategies: http://toshuo.com/2007/learn-a-language-by-taking-advantage-...

Disclosure: I'm friends with John from ASL and Dave from Popup, but my recommendation is genuine. The reason we became friends was our mutual interest in Chinese and blogging about our language learning years ago, before there were many others doing so.

Play narrative-heavy computer games that are translated into Lithuanian. I did this to supplement other methods I used while living in Poland. The Diablos were especially well-localized. Bonus is, it teaches you all kinds of obscure words and expressions that even native speakers sometimes aren't familiar with.

I spent last year studying in Beijing, and I reached a certain level of fluency, but now that I have come back, I have trouble maintaining it. I read books (许三观卖血记，活着, both by Yu Hua), and go through my Anki flashcards, and sometimes read through my textbooks.

My reading abilities haven't fallen much, but it's my ability to create sentences, i.e., talking, that's failing me. Mainly because I'm not talking with anybody, can't find anybody to talk with.

Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!

The nice thing about learning Chinese is that no matter where you are in the world, you can find Chinese language exchange partners. If you live near a university, post an advertisement in the engineering or sciences buildings (or wherever you expect to find Chinese students) or post an ad at a bus stop in the neighborhood where the Chinese students usually live (in my hometown, most Chinese students live in the same neighborhood). Another place is the best local Chinese restaurant. I have a couple language exchange partners I found by posting an ad at the bus stop. Each week, we spend 1 hour speaking Chinese and 1 hour working on reading/writing academic articles in English.

For me to seriously consider that app you should have a mode where hanzi is deemphasized (or even gone entirely).

For me it's just not worth the effort to learn. I have enough trouble with spoken Chinese as is and I have little to no use for hanzi symbols.

My Chinese teacher used to tell me that most of her students had the same attitude. It's to be expected. Few people stay in China for very long.

Other than that the app looks really nice, actually. The examples are well-chosen and I like how it shows you how the words are constructed.

I seconds this. If there was a mode to enable the latin transliterations below the hanzi, that would be great!

I agree...I started learning mandarin through the Rosetta Stone program and skipped all the Chinese character reading parts. It's just too much to learn when there's already enough to grasp with just speaking

I disagree. This is how you learn things deeply. It may take more effort and focus initially, and feel harder - though that's a bit of the point -- you remember things better during stressful situations, and the additional information allows your mind to connect more different pieces together, and in different parts of your brain (visual and langage). It might take a year of review before it starts to really click, and understanding the process of learning and so setting your expectations accordingly is how you can be more successful, faster.

So obviously I am only speaking through assumption here, but isn't the Chinese character set almost entirely orthogonal to the language? That is, very little is lost by learning it through Pidgin? The extra year it might take to fully memorize the Chinese characters would seem to have only a glancing effect on how much conversational Chinese you could speak

Largely true in my experience, but without hanzi you're illiterate in China. Definitely a plausible thing for a short visit, but if you stay for a longer period I think it'd be very paralyzing. This comes from an experience I had traveling with a friend when I was a beginning fluent reader and speaker and he just a speaker. Over the few months in Beijing his confidence deteriorated and he ended up staying at home ordering the same food from the nearby market every day. I think his illiteracy contributed to that.

This is very true. I studied abroad last year, and some of the students who could not read had an incredibly difficult time. Eventually, they were forced to catch up, and life got much better for them. They could explore the city much easier, do things on there own, without having to have someone who could read with them.

Could you elaborate. How was not being able to read a problem?

Did they have trouble navigating the city? Was this perhaps in a city without subways?

As an example, lets imagine we're in Taipei and we're ill.

We're walking down the street, but all the shops look the same. http://goo.gl/maps/sj3ft

Where can I get some medicine?

The answer is the one that says ”藥行“

I thought we were talking about people who spoke Chinese? Can't they just ask?

On a few occasions, in my own country, I've had old immigrants ask me to read something for them. I don't know if they are visually impaired or illiterate but it wasn't a big deal. (Though it is sad when you consider these people have probably been living here for a long time.)

Anyway, if it's someone who doesn't speak English it's not _that_ difficult to find medicine.

Go on the Internet, google a picture of the medicine you need, and show it to people?

Or use Google Translate? I've communicated with realtors using Google Translate. It was a frustrating experience, but it worked.

And if that doesn't work then I'm sure you can find _someone_ who speaks English. That wouldn't take half an hour, I'm sure. You can also try using gestures or drawings.

This strikes me as fairly trivial stuff. I mean, I'll grant you that I'd be worried sick if my mother was running around in Taipei on her own, as she's not used to traveling and doesn't speak English. But we seem to be talking about young, smart, educated English speakers here. It's not that big a deal.

Edit: said->sad

I don't get it.

If you're a foreign guy in China there are always tons of girls who'll go with you to wherever you want to go and who'll translate for you. If you speak just a little Chinese you can have a very comfortable life there.

For some people, the freedom to go to a restaurant and understand the menu is considered valuable.

Many, if not most, restaurants in China have picture menus.

Update: that's in the major cities anyway.

Sure, it's not impossible to get around. You're just always going to be dependent on said girls. Even with the foreigners-don't-need-to-know-Chinese excuse, being illiterate is difficult.

Sure. I guess we're just disagreeing on how much of a problem it is and after how much time this will get to you. I suppose it's a subjective thing.

Agreed, my experience was stated above: I spent 4 months there and some a persons confidence deteriorate. Being slightly literate myself was frustrating but extremely manageable.

But each spoken syllable (even separated by tone) can have 5 or 6 meanings depending on context (which are different characters)! You can't get passed a few basic phrases without hitting this.

By learning the characters (especially if you learn the radicals inside each character first) you can build up an understanding of the context of each character that you're using.

For example, how would you go about learning the response to the question "Which zhong?"

zhong guo de zhong / 中国的中

("the 'middle' character from 'middle kingdom' (China)")

and knowing to give the correct response when someone is confused about what you're saying in a sentence (which can happen a lot when you're a beginner who makes word order mistakes.)

I used to use Memrise for this ( http://memrise.com ) but since they updated the UI you can no longer clearly see which dependent radicals a character has easily, so I've accidentally stopped practising.

Thanks for the feedback, this is something my test users also suggested. I'll prioritise this when I add new features.

Excellent! I'm moving to China in a few weeks and know no Mandarin, so this has already been a huge help. Obligatory feature request: I would love to be able to repeat a specific phrase. If I miss a character or want to hear the pronunciation again, I'd like to be able to fix it before moving on to the next phrase inside a lesson.

Thanks!

Highly recommend you try Skritter in addition to Mandarin Tap. No affiliation, just completely and utterly blown away by how much faster I could study Chinese during a year long intensive immersion course solely by using Skritter (threw away my notecards).

From experience, Skritter can reduce your weekly study requirements from hours of painful rote memorization to "roll out of bed at 9:30, study 20 minutes before weekly quiz and ace it every time". It's fun and enjoyable to use, and furthermore you can load vocab lists from textbooks, and work through them in the proper order. This means building your vocabulary in logical ways while also learning how to write Chinese.

I wish I had Mandarin Tap too though. In Skritter you can load from textbooks and customize long sentences, but I like how Mandarin Tap gives you neat categories from which to pick. This can be more expedient than working through a textbook, though working through the textbook can still be irreplaceable.

TLDR; get skritter too, it's truly an amazing piece of software. Wouldn't be surprised if the founders are on HN. It's also $10/mo recurring whereas this is $3.

[feedback after purchasing and using Mandarin Tap]

- The app's title on iPhone 4S is "LearnFastIOS", not Mandarin Tap. You can do better on the icon.

- The app doesn't scroll smoothly on iPhone 4S

- Interface is really lacking

I'm really busy today, but I may come back to Mandarin Tap when I'm more focused on refreshing my Chinese. I'm overall not impressed, for $3 I want an interface better than a poorly scrolling big long list.

I have recommended skitter in the past and received a lot of positive feedback from hn. Their mobile app is top notch. Plus they integrate with many other Chinese and Japanese learning tools so you get a good experience.

Thanks for the purchase and the feedback. I'll resolve the issues you've raised. I've tested it on iphone 4 and 5, but not 4S.

It would be a big help if you identified the iOS version you are using.

I'll second Skritter if you're trying to practice character writing (which Mandarin Tap doesn't cover). They use spaced repetition and import vocab lists from textbooks, if you're using one. I picked up a cheap drawing tablet and it really helped.

I am a senior software engineer in 北京 and my wife works at 人大. We are both quite involved in teaching and have to say; Good pronunciations and the idea of constructing patterns and sentences is nice and refreshing. Wish we could also have a similar tool to assist with teaching English. Small issue, the app is called learnfastIOS on install.

Thanks for point that out! Correcting it promptly! (I renamed the app, as I prefer the name MandarinTap)

Makes more sense...

Oh yeah, changeable font would be nice as Chinese characters are mostly about pattern recognition. And as you know, they have the stylized and abstract way... Clerical, regular, etc. This can sometimes lead to confusion to newcomers as endingsvare more fluent, angled, etc.

It's still showing as LearnFastIOS for me: iPhone 4 5.0.1, iPad 3 5.1.1.

woh bu dong.

Seriously, it looks handy. I was in Shanghai a few years ago and this would have come in handy to prepare. My brother speaks Chinese - I've fwded this to him.

Your "app store" icon for the Apple one is distorted.

If you don't mind, could you share your development stack. Are both the apps written using native languages (objc and java) or are you using frameworks that are cross platform (phonegap, titanium, etc)?

I was wondering the same thing. I was surprised that it looked like he launched Android and iOS versions at the same time, which makes me think it's probably a cross platform framework. I'd definitely love to hear more about the dev stack.

Looks great! I tried to check it out in the ios App Store but the link took me to a blank page (ok chrome/ios6) and didn't launch App Store as expected: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin-tap/id588224825?ls=...

Removing the parameters at the end works as expected: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin-tap/id588224825

Thanks! I shall correct this promptly.

Looks great. Reminds me a little of Duolingo http://duolingo.com You might want to check them out to get ideas for improving your app.

Found some issues in the Chinese and usability issues where the progress is wrongly calculated, question area scrolls upwards, overlapping text, etc. Have screenshots if you need.

Example of a mistake in Chinese is '跑步' (running) pǎobù which is written as pǎbù.

Also, the iOS examples has the .idea directory included and the Capture module and all art assets.

The next button is active and therefore shows a dotted line around the button.

I like the design of the landing. It's very simple and effective. The only thing I would change is the font. It looks a bit boring and bootstrap-y. :)

Speaking of apps for helping you learn Chinese.

I don't know how difficult it would be to create something like this, but an app that could help with mastering tones would be very useful to me.

I'd buy such an app even if it was very simple. Like if it had a start and stop button and would graph the tone of what you said in between.

But, yeah, I don't know if it's feasible to create.

Some applications exist to help you recognizing tones based on the pinyin, but you want a comparison between the model and your voice? Thought Rosetta did this..

I can't seem to find this app.

What I want is a graphical representation of the tone of my voice (over time).

I've been told that my voice is monotone when I speak Western languages so I don't really have a good feel for what I need to do to speak in a high or low tone. If I had a graphical representation of what I was in fact doing then I think I could gain control over the tone of my voice more easily.

I guess the obvious alternative is to record and play back my own voice.

Look at a demo of Rosetta Stone. Haven't touched it recently, but it should be able to do most of what you want.

I think Rosettastone may have feature. From what I understand voice-recognition for Mandarin is a hard problem.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's kinda easier than for English because standard Mandarin is born separated clearly by characters and have only 4 tones (tone for certain character in sentence may change but always within those 4 tones). However as for speaking language in reality (e.g dialects), it's hard (I won't say it's harder than any other languages since I don't have any experience working on it).

Nice to see a fellow language educator. Very interesting to see your translation and audio outsourcing to Elance.

We've done something for the Irish language, which has its own pronunciation complexities. The site itself is very simple as it is, just wanted to share in any case: http://www.pronounceirish.com/

I love the idea. My thoughts about the app. 1# where do you get the information for doing the grammar and pronunciation? 2# what is your end goal for producing this?

The only consideration I could say is to high a higher level view of the main application screen. Something that allows you to jump to levels/tutorials more effectively.

Agreed, it does need a little more hierarchy for navigation. Too much scrolling at the moment.

#1 I outsourced all the translations (and audio recordings) on www.elance.com

#2 The goal was to spend 3-4 months playing/experimenting with product design. The project is a learning exercise in how to craft something original (hopefully) and useful (even more hopefully!). I enjoy building things and playing with ideas. I guess the end-goal is to help me shape my career direction and find my next full-time job :)

The reason for it being a Mandarin learning app is that I was frustrated by the existing products in the marketplace. Designing this was a very iterative process, I have a set of test users and tried all manner of mechanisms to help them learn. First couple of mechanisms I threw away because it didn't help recall and were too confusing. I had the luxury of being able to discard ideas that didn't work very quickly.

Looks great. I'm interested in something like this for my 5 year old, who is already in a language immersion program. Might consider a children's version ... she's not so interested in asking about train schedules and other adult concerns, but would love to know the names of all the animals in a zoo.

Cool, I'll add in a animal wordset. I'll do the animals of the chinese zodiac (pig, dog, tiger, horse, monkeys etc). I'll also do another for the zoo (penguins, eagle etc)

Please feel free to suggest new word sets. Next major release will have new lesson sets. (two weeks from today)

I really like the design of the app and the voices are good too (I've tried several language apps where the phrases are poorly stitched together and difficult to understand). It seems like an interesting way to learn Mandarin.

It would be hard to evaluate as I know how to speak in Mandarin (and the hardest part comes to the written language, which again I can't evaluate.)

Not alone there are different favors of the written form.

I would prefer if after I complete a sentence / word and it repeats it back to me in Chinese, that I could replay this so if I didn't hear it or I wanted to really memorize the pronunciation I could.

Good point, expect this feature a week on friday. (11th Jan)

Any idea how to get your head around the tonal part of the language? I took three years of mandarin in high school and a year as an extension as an adult.

I still struggle with the tones.

Looks great, the interface seems very minimal and easy to use. Voices are well recorded. Overall design could be improved, but at least its not ugly.

Seems very usable. congrats

Any thoughts about making something like this for Japanese?

For Kanji, certainly. It probably won't suit Hiragana and Katakana.

Yes, for Kanji. These hieroglyphs is what most people are having trouble learning in Japanese and Chinese, as far as I know. Grammar is hard but it's not such a barrier.

there's a very good web app (it works on mobile browser as well, but no native app) on japanese. please someone make a mandarin version that works like this http://nihongomaster.com/

I just downloaded this and went through a few lessons. Very well done!

One feature request: a review mode that pulls from all completed lessons

Good point, feature/bug fix backlog is full for the next two weeks but I'll implement something like that in the version to follow. Some like "Exam Mode" where it retests you on everything you have studied so far.

Could also have a another list which is only words that you have made a mistake on. "Revision Mode"

Looks great! Only two remarks: I think the app icon would look nicer without shine + without the white line at the bottom of the icon.

The logo/icon is weak, it does need to be replaced. (and will be)

Bought it.. seems like a nice way to get started with the very very basics, also nice to show people to explain it

Thank you sir, your thoughts after using the app would be very interesting to me :)

This app looks pretty good. I would happily pay for it if there was a promise of more lessons/content later.

There shall be more lessons in the future :) If you have suggestions for what high-level word/phrase sets you would like, let me know.

Unfortunately, at the moment I'm just guessing as to what people want.

I have never seen an app like this. Interesting concept maybe do the same for Japanese or maybe Arabic?

Nice and simple, although I would change the default bootstrap font.

Nice work. What did you use for the voice over in your demo video?

I outsourced the voice over on elance.com. Lots of voice-over providers to choose from. (any language/accent you want)

Interesting, I thought it sounded computer generated. Do you know if it was?

Nope definitely not computer generated.

I seriously recommend getting professional voice overs. Originally the demo was narrated by myself, but having a professional do it makes a HUGE difference. If I showed you the same video with my voice, you would laugh :)

Cool thanks. Makes me think of my own video voice overs.. equally horrible..

Surprised to see that tokenadult hasn't commented yet.

im gon get this

Reply on news.ycombinator.com