Iphone/iPad Apps for Learning Chinese

[hanyu_xuesheng]

The ankimobile app is supersmooth, and easy to use. Highly recommended.

.... and quite expensive. (US$ 25)

[HerrPetersen]

Yes, quiet expensive, a free altnerative is ankimini which is free but needs jailbreaking. (and is slower and has less features)

[Wince - I love Chinese]

Hey all,

We've just revamped our website at http://ilovechinese.co.uk. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Thanks for the great thoughts about what you like in mobile Chinese learning programs so far, please post more - the feedback contest posted earlier in this thread ends next Friday.

Thanks!

Wince

[rob_rally]

Hi everyone,

I would just like to let you know about an iPhone app that I have created to help to learn to read Chinese. Please check it out and see what you think.

www.hanzireader.com

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hanzi-reader/id383433187?mt=8#

Cheers,

Rob

[lrdict]

Hi,

please check out the new version of LRDict 中英德辞典 (Chinese-English, Chinese-German dictionary) iPhone app. It now features OCR for Chinese, English and German text. You can copy to the clipboard and reuse the scanned text anywhere, so it can be handy even if you don't want to lookup entries in the dictionary.

For chinese text this seems to be one of the few apps that actually work.

In the current version it is still a bit slow, and also there are memory limits for large text, together with need for proper focus and lighting conditions of the images. Works great, however, for textbook phrases and more.

Give it a try! Lite (free) version on its way, too. B)

[mikelove]

Congratulations on getting Tesseract working for Chinese on iPhone, and on beating us to market with built-in OCR (though hopefully only a by a few days if Apple's approval folks get their butts moving) - I imagine every other Chinese dictionary developer on iPhone is going to be scrambling to add their own OCR module over the next few months :-)

[rob_rally]

Hi,

I'm the developer of HanZi Reader for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. I wrote it because I wanted something that was really fast at getting the dictionary meanings of the text I was trying to read so my reading practice would flow at a normal pace.

Please check it out at www.hanzireader.com, or search for Hanzi Reader on iTunes.

Kind regards,

Rob

[Gleaves]

A group called Rye Studio makes some nice audio storybooks. They are about 4 minutes, 20 pages. $.99 each. They are in English, Chinese, and Japanese (audio and text). Pretty short for a buck, but I plan to replay them a bunch. They are pretty well done and cute.

Edit: Another group that offers these is AppleTree App.

[Doodle Panda]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to announce the release of a new free iPhone/iPod touch app for beginners to learn Chinese--Doodle Chinese.

The app aims to make it a fun and immersive experience to learn Chinese, with hand-drawn cartoons accompanying every phrase and situational conversation. The contents are suitable for both adults and kids. The lessons teach reading Chinese characters and pinyin (one button to toggle off Chinese character if you prefer to focus on pinyin), with native speaker audio for all phrases. The practices and quizzes cover reading and listening. Please check it out and share with me your thoughts and feedback.

Get the free app from iTune: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doodle-chinese/id400579904?mt=8

Company website: http://www.doodlepanda.com

Contact: contact at doodlepanda dot com

The free app comes with introductory lessons on numbers, animals, and conversations. Additional level packs covering several hundreds phrases can be purchased in app.

Best Regards

[Doodle Panda]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to announce the release of a new free iPhone/iPod touch app (Doodle Chinese) for beginners and kids to learn Chinese.

The app aims to make it a fun and immersive experience to learn Chinese, with hand-drawn cartoons accompanying every phrase and situational conversation. The contents are suitable for both adults and kids. The lessons teach reading Chinese characters and pinyin (one button to toggle off Chinese character if you prefer to focus on pinyin), with native speaker audio for all phrases. The practices and quizzes cover reading and listening.

Get the free app from iTune: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doodle-chinese/id400579904?mt=8

Company website: http://www.doodlepanda.com

Contact: contact at doodlepanda dot com

The free app comes with introductory lessons on numbers, animals, and conversations. Additional level packs covering several hundreds phrases can be purchased in app.

Please check it out and share with me your thoughts and feedback.

[Deb Thomas]

I have bought the Collins Mandarin dictionary app for the iPad as it seems to be the best iPad Chinese dictionary app I could locate. It has some limitations however, namely simplified characters only, and the method of entering characters in the Chinese to English part of the dictionary does not seem to be integrated with the iPad character writing functionality of the Chinese keyboard - in other words I cannot write in the character I cannot pronounce and have it appear on the dictionary screen; rather I need to be able to pronounce the character and input it using pin yin.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a Mandarin dictionary that allows for the handwritten or stylus entry of the characters and in traditional form characters?

[hanyu_xuesheng]

pleco.

[Henmangren]

Here is another iPhone App designed to help learn Chinese:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/bumang/id406496545?mt=8

It's geared towards learning vocabulary like in a multiple choice test. It shows you a Chinese word and

you have four pinyin choices to answer. You can create your own lessons or use the built-in dictionary

to lookup English words.

[dporter1465]

We've just released a new Chinese flashcards app for iPhones based on the Clavis Sinica dictionary. One feature that distinguishes it from most of the other Chinese flashcard apps is that instead of simply indicating that you "know" or "don't know" a character, you have to show that you know it by choosing the correct pinyin and definition from a multiple choice list. You can find details on our site at clavisinica.com/zika-flashcards.html or else search on the iTunes store for CS Zika.

Within the next several weeks, we also hope to release the initial version of an innovative app designed to help (relative) beginners learn to write characters. Again, it's quite different from other similar apps we've seen. We'd welcome your thoughts on either or both of these efforts.

--David

[Shelley]

Hello, crow610, pleco is available for iphone. see home page side bar. This is what i would go for with out hesitation. i use and like it alot on windows mobile. Shelley

[Sky Harbor]

Currently I only use KTDict and Dianhua. It's definitely a plus over using a paper dictionary, and much faster too. But I notice that some of the words that pop up in both dictionaries have definitions which are ambiguous: when I was asking for a receipt in Guangzhou, I said 回单 (which the cashier didn't understand) before saying 收据.

I also just downloaded the CCTV/CNTV app after backreading and it's great so far. Hopefully when I leave China to go home the streams won't have server lag.

[Prodigal Son]

Is anything ever going to dethrone Pleco? This is the king of iPhone apps to learn Chinese.

[luminormarina]

I recently purchased an iPad 2 and found the free PLECO app to be particularly helpful.

[carlo]

Recently discovered this app for learning cursive Chinese characters, 草书. Those who have at least 2-3000 characters under their belt and have mastered the 楷 forms may find this interesting. It teaches you recognition (you have to match the cursive characters to the corresponding regular forms) and also carries a handy dictionary of some 1500 草字.

[ManManLai]

Hi everyone,

I would like to announce the availability of a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch called ManManLai. It offers a dictionary, flashcards, HSK vocabulary and more.

You can read about it at this link:

http://manmanlai.net

The iTunes description, linked from the website, offers even more details on the app. This is the first release, and more are planned and in the works.

Thanks!

Matthew Sinclair-Day

ManManLai