Ninchanese on Kickstarter: a gamified learning app to learn Chinese

[Sajimi]

Hi everyone,

 

Ninchanese is a gamified learning app where you learn characters, to build sentences and to speak Chinese. 

A while back, I posted about Ninchanese being in beta. 

 

We've been getting very good feedback from users and want to be able to offer everyone a fun and efficient Chinese learning experience so we launched a Kickstarter campaign for Ninchanese. The campaign is live and we've reached 50% of our goal so far. 

 

You can check it out here: http://ninchanese.com/kickstarter

 

If you like it and want to support a small indie team making an interesting Chinese learning tool, please consider sharing the campaign with others and supporting us. The campaign is live until the 2nd of August.

 

I'm happy to answer any questions or comments you might have.

Sarah 

[Mr John]

Just to let you know, the link you provided doesn't work.

[imron]

It seems it had an extra http in front of it.  I've now fixed it for the OP.

[Sajimi]

Mr John: thanks for letting me know :/

Imron: many thanks for fixing it! 

[陳德聰]

Question, what is a "nincha" and is it related to the Japanese "ninja"?

[Sajimi]

A Nincha is a cat that lives in the made up world of Ninchana, where the story in Ninchanese takes place. 

This is a Nincha: https://slack-files.com/T02DHHZHK-F074Q0HSL-fcfe9cc48b - sorry couldn't figure out how to post the picture directly. 

 

-- no relation with Ninja

[陳德聰]

Hm. Alright.

[Xiao Kui]

i find the name Ninchanese really distracting - it has nothing to do with Chinese - it just sounds weird. why not Ninchinese, still a little  weird, but at least maintains some connection to Chinese.  Anyway, just my opinion, and perhaps not important to your audience - i wish you every success!

[Sajimi]

Hey Xiao Kui, thanks for voicing your opinion. 

 

Happy to talk about Ninchanese and why we picked the name: we wanted something fun that had to do with the characters in the story so it's the contraction of Nincha and Chinese.  That being said, since you and others seem to find it distracting, we'll give it some thought. 

If you type Ninchinese, you'll find us too, if you'd rather use that name . 

 

Also, thanks for your encouragements!

[陳德聰]

Okay but is "nincha" something you just made up? I have never heard of such a thing before seeing your post. It's fine to make up cute little mascots but yeah it seems a bit odd if you don't have a reason for naming it with those sounds, especially since it seems to have to connection to any word in Chinese... 您茶nese, 您察nese, 您差nese... I am genuinely curious about your naming process.

[Demonic_Duck]

Yeah I'm not sold on the name either. It seems like it's trying to do too many things at once, one of which is evoking the word "ninja", which of course is Japanese, not Chinese. Also, I'm no expert on traditional forms of dress, but Baimei's costume looks distinctly like a Japanese kimono to me (and her hair and makeup style also looks Japanese).

 

I also hope you've done your research on intellectual property law with regard to Yoda's likeness and name.

 

Hope that doesn't sound too negative. I like the general idea, I'm very interested in gamified language learning, and of course everyone loves cute cats. Just feel a few things could use renaming or redesigning.

 

If you're open to suggestions for renaming (for your race of hyper-intelligent cats), I'd go with Miaoxingren (喵星人), as they're very literally extraterrestrial cats. Plus, it's already a popular word on the Chinese internet. That one's for free!

[Sajimi]

Hi guys, thanks for your suggestions.
 

I spoke about this matter with my team, and to be honest; we don't plan on changing the name. Thanks for your ideas and comments though.

A lot of people we've spoken with like the name. My team loves the name, I like the name and no one in our beta users has said that they dislike the name.

If you try the app, you'll see a lot of Chinese culture that has nothing to do with Japanese or anywhere else, even if we are fans of Asian culture in general. I understand what you're trying to say about "not mixing up Chinese culture with other Asian cultures" but don't worry, it's really not the case. 

 

You pronounce Ninchanese with nin like "you" in Chinese and chanese like chinese. "Chat" is cat in French, which is why it's in the name haha (I'm French-American); we think it's funny. Ninchanese is a really good tool to learn Chinese, I think. Come try it and I'll be happy to speak about the tool it can be for Chinese learners!

 

By the way, Baimei will not be pleased if you say she's not beautiful in her dress Also her costume is inspired by Hanfus, which were traditional in China during the Han Dynasty. We wrote an article a while back about this: http://ninchanese.com/ancient-chinese-fashion-women-timeline/.  It's pretty interesting to see how clothing evolved in China!

 

Yocha is indeed a nod to another popular green creature, because when you start learning Chinese, you can feel like everything is the other way around. It's just a reference and our Master Yocha is very much his own cat.

 

Really, everyone, I appreciate you taking the time to think about Ninchanese and that you care about making a good app that makes sense. That's our goal too. 

 

Have a great weekend.

[陳德聰]

Cool. /s