River of Chinese

Learn thousands of Chinese words fast with this groundbreaking new app! Forget about clunky flashcards, River of Chinese makes learning new vocabulary as effortless and easy as scrolling through a social media feed. As you scroll, the Hanzi characters glide by in large, easy-to-read fonts. Pinyin pronunciation and the English translation is revealed gradually, providing a natural way to test your recall. As you see new words glide up from the bottom you can practice pronunciation before hearing the word spoken and then seeing the written Pinyin. 

Features:

  • Thousands of words

  • HSK1 is included. Has HSK1-4 (2012) available as in-app purchases. (More HSK on the way, including the new 2021 lists)

  • Hear the words spoken aloud (by the iPhone’s built-in speech synthesizer)

  • See the Pinyin pronunciation to reinforce the spoken words

  • Copy words to the clipboard

  • Open a word in the Pleco dictionary app (requires download of Pleco, if you don't have this app and you want to learn Chinese, you should get it. Pleco is the best Chinese-English dictionary available.)

Read the AlphaDigits review


Download on the App Store



User Guide

It's simple to use:

  1. Select a topic

  2. Select a sub-topic or 'Show All'

  3. Scroll down to reveal new words.

As you scroll down a never-ending stream of words glides up from the bottom of the screen. At first only the Chinese hanzi character appears. As it scrolls upwards the pinyin pronunciation appears, then the English translation. If the 'autospeak' option is activated the word will be spoken just after the hanzi character reaches the midpoint of the screen. Finally the English translation appears.

Features

Autospeak: When this is enabled the word will be spoken using the iPhones built-in Chinese voice just as the hanzi character reaches the middle of the screen.

Shuffle: When this is enabled the words will be shown in random order.

Simplified vs. Traditional: For characters that have different simplified and traditional forms a small "s" or "t" will appear next to the hanzi. Tap on either the hanzi character or the s/t to toggle between the forms.

Speak word - To hear the word spoken tap on the ear icon that appears under the word as it scrolls upward, or tap on the pinyin.

Copy to clipboard - To copy the hanzi, pinyin and english translation to the clipboard, tap on the clipboard icon when it appears under the word.

Open in Pleco - To see the translation of the word in the Pleco dictionary, tap on the book icon. This requires that Pleco be installed on your device. Pleco is the best Chinese-English dictionary for iOS. If you don't have Pleco and you want to learn Chinese you really need to get Pleco!

Voices

For best results with spoken output, please ensure you ahve the "Tian-Tian" and "Yu-Shu" voices downloaded for Chinese. (In Settings -> Accessibility -> Spoken Content -> Voices -> Chinese)