

Show HN: My first product. Thoughts? - alan_h
http://www.mandarintap.com/

======
xiaoma
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.

~~~
lucaspiller
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.

~~~
dougk16
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.

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DigitalTurk
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.

~~~
danso
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

~~~
loceng
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.

~~~
danso
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

~~~
tel
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.

~~~
DigitalTurk
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.

~~~
tel
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.

~~~
DigitalTurk
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.

~~~
tel
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.

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decktech
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!

~~~
shredfvz
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.

~~~
AdamTReineke
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.

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gbraad
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.

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

~~~
gbraad
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.

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mgkimsal
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.

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simplesoon
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)?

~~~
pure
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.

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bdickason
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=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin-
tap/id588224825?ls=1&mt=8)

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

~~~
alan_h
Thanks! I shall correct this promptly.

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vineet
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.

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gbraad
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.

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mobweb
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. :)

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DigitalTurk
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.

~~~
gbraad
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..

~~~
DigitalTurk
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.

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

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mise
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/>

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Vinnix
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.

~~~
alan_h
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.

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te
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.

~~~
alan_h
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)

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k-mcgrady
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.

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itsnotvalid
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.

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brenfrow
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.

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

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pgrote
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.

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braveheart1723
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

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IceyEC
Any thoughts about making something like this for Japanese?

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

~~~
devcpp
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.

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paulrosenzweig
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

~~~
alan_h
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"

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mmackh
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.

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

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

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

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

~~~
alan_h
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.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
alan_h
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 :)

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

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w1ntermute
Surprised to see that tokenadult hasn't commented yet.

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antoniuschan99
im gon get this

