EXCELENT
This app is the best! Great! Definitely should be downloaded. Amazing its the best teacher for Chinese that there is.
Omg
I tried to restore it on different electronics, but it only let me buy it again. On one app, I spent $30 for purchasing it again. I thought that I only had to purchase it once, not twice. I want $14.99 back!
Not worth it.
In the overview, it talks about 30 lessons. But only the first one is free and the rest are $2 -_- LIES HARRY BELLOWED. but yeah. Really not worth the download.
rubbish
1 lesson only and it was rubbish
Languages lover <3
I love this app, even tho the first lesson's free but you still have to pay the other lesson <3 but still I learn a lot of basic stuff from it <3
Good but needs literal translations
Interesting, and well presented. However there is one important omission. On the "get the meaning" section it shows Mandarin and Pinyin on one side, and English (or whatever your selected native language) on the other side opposite the Mandarin. But it only shows an idiomatic translation, and no literal translation.
Eg
Wo de mingzi jiao = My name is
But to be able to really speak another language you need to think in it, ie find the words in that language to express your thoughts the same as you do for your mother tongue. To do that you need to know the meanings of the words, not just a translation of an overall phrase, and for that you need a literal translation.
Eg
Wo de mingzi jiao = me of name-word called
That's not good English, but Chinese people don't say "my name is Jo", they say "me of name-word called Jo" (or just "me called Jo", which with the benefit of the literal translation above you can say in Chinese, right?)
We learn our first language by learning words and then learning to string them together; to learn another language later on we need to do the same thing, and for that we need the literal translation along side the idiomatic one. This is needed for all languages (eg French is "je m'appelle Jo" = "I myself call Jo") but doubly so for Chinese as it's so different from European languages.
The ability to click on pinyin words or mandarin characters to get a dictionary entry would be helpful.
Also we need text highlighting and copying enabled; it's impossible to enter the diacritics necessary for Pinyin on an iPhone, eg to look up words on mandarintools.com, so you have to find them on some web page and copy from there.
The substitution feature of the "build your vocabulary" section is great, as is the way the audio is accessible at various stages, and the general scheme of the lessons is well thought out, except for the "now you write it" section which seemed useless - I couldn't enter anything it recognised as correct, perhaps because it's impossible to enter one of the Pinyin diacritics (the caron) on an iPhone. Maybe code to replace circumflex which you can enter but is unused in Pinyin with caron?
A good app, but without the literal translation it's more of an enhanced phrase book than it is a complete learning tool. Adding the literal translations and a dictionary would make for 5 stars.
:-)
Eg
Wo de mingzi jiao = My name is
But to be able to really speak another language you need to think in it, ie find the words in that language to express your thoughts the same as you do for your mother tongue. To do that you need to know the meanings of the words, not just a translation of an overall phrase, and for that you need a literal translation.
Eg
Wo de mingzi jiao = me of name-word called
That's not good English, but Chinese people don't say "my name is Jo", they say "me of name-word called Jo" (or just "me called Jo", which with the benefit of the literal translation above you can say in Chinese, right?)
We learn our first language by learning words and then learning to string them together; to learn another language later on we need to do the same thing, and for that we need the literal translation along side the idiomatic one. This is needed for all languages (eg French is "je m'appelle Jo" = "I myself call Jo") but doubly so for Chinese as it's so different from European languages.
The ability to click on pinyin words or mandarin characters to get a dictionary entry would be helpful.
Also we need text highlighting and copying enabled; it's impossible to enter the diacritics necessary for Pinyin on an iPhone, eg to look up words on mandarintools.com, so you have to find them on some web page and copy from there.
The substitution feature of the "build your vocabulary" section is great, as is the way the audio is accessible at various stages, and the general scheme of the lessons is well thought out, except for the "now you write it" section which seemed useless - I couldn't enter anything it recognised as correct, perhaps because it's impossible to enter one of the Pinyin diacritics (the caron) on an iPhone. Maybe code to replace circumflex which you can enter but is unused in Pinyin with caron?
A good app, but without the literal translation it's more of an enhanced phrase book than it is a complete learning tool. Adding the literal translations and a dictionary would make for 5 stars.
:-)
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