Talks

Talks are grouped by theme — Getting Started, Everyday Talk.

Inside a talk — each speaker has their own voice, playable line by line.

What makes a Talk different

A Talk is a dialogue between two or more speakers — each with its own voice. You hears the conversation spoken aloud, line by line, then practices saying each line back. This is the bridge from recognizing Chinese to producing it.

Each speaker can be assigned a distinct voice in Settings → Talk voices, so a conversation between "Mom" and "Me" actually sounds like two different people.

Create your own talk

1. Make a category

   On the Talks page, tap 📝 New. Name it by theme — e.g. "Food", "Travel", or "Shopping" — and tap 📝 Create.
2. Start a new talk

   Open the category and tap 📝 New. Enter a Title (e.g. "At a restaurant").
3. Pick your speakers

   Under Speakers (pick at least 2), tap the people in the conversation — existing names appear as pills, or tap + Add to type a new one like "Waiter". You need at least two. In the New Talk editor, you can type dialogue lines directly — English first, then ✨ Translate to Chinese.

   

   Pick speakers — tap a name pill, or + Add to create your own (at least 2).
4. Add the lines

   Tap 📝 Create, then in the talk's Build mode, use Add line: pick a speaker, type or 🎤 speak the English, then ✨ to translate to Chinese, then tap Add. Between existing lines, tap the thin + button to insert a new line right there — no need to delete and re-add the lines below.
5. Edit any line in place

   Made a typo or want to reword a line? Tap the ✎ pencil at the end of any line in Build mode — the line opens as a small editor right where it is: pick a different speaker, retype or 🎤 speak the English, tap ✨ to refresh the Chinese, then 💾 Save. Nothing else moves.

✎ on a line opens the editor right in place — nothing else moves.

4. Or let AI draft it

   In an empty talk, scroll below Add line to find ✨ Generate with AI (optional). Describe a scene (e.g. "ordering food at a restaurant") and tap Generate. The AI writes 4–6 bilingual lines using your chosen speakers, which you can then edit.

Listening and speaking a talk — Immerse mode

Open any talk and toggle to 📖 Immerse to read it as a clean, distraction-free conversation. The same ▶ Play all, ⏱ Timer, and Speed controls from Stories work here too — and each line keeps its own ▶ button so you can replay any speaker. Toggle back to ✏️ Build to add, edit, or remove lines.

Immerse mode — a clean reading view with four display toggles.

Everything hidden — pure Chinese, nothing else. Full immersion.

Focus on sounds alone — hide the text

Immerse mode has four toggles in its toolbar. Turning them off does not silence the line — the ▶ play button always stays, so you can hear the sound and recall the characters themselves:

🔊 Sounds & tones — how many sounds does Chinese have?

About 400 syllables — that's Mandarin's entire sound inventory. Add the 4 tones (plus 1 neutral) and you get about 1,300 sounds. Every word in the language is covered by that set.

Same syllable, four tones, four words — tap to hear the difference:

• 妈 mā (mom) 🔊
• 麻 má (hemp) 🔊
• 马 mǎ (horse) 🔊
• 骂 mà (scold) 🔊

Wrong tone, wrong word — which is why tone combinations matter in every sentence. Words flow together and tones interact: two 3rd tones in a row flip the first one (你好: written nǐ hǎo, said ní hǎo — see tone sandhi below).

Compare with English: English pitch only carries feeling, and each word's pronunciation is memorized one by one — an adult English speaker has effectively memorized the pronunciation of roughly 20,000 words. Chinese reuses ~400 building blocks (~1,300 with tones) — the tone is what separates them. English even has a mini version of tones: stress — REcord (noun) vs reCORD (verb) changes the word. You don't learn hundreds of tones; you learn 4, then train your ear to catch them everywhere. Master that, and you can pronounce any Chinese word you meet.

🎵 Tone sandhi — two pinyin rows

A tone isn't always spoken the way it's written. When two 3rd tones meet, the first becomes a 2nd — 你好 is written nǐ hǎo but said ní hǎo. With Pinyin on, the app shows two rows so you sees the change:

• Green — the dictionary pinyin. Blue — how it's actually said (what the ▶ voice speaks).
• The blue row appears only when a tone shifts, and the exact syllables that changed are drawn red (for 我想买水果: wó and shuí).

A sample talk shows it on every line — here it is on a phone:

A sample conversation open, showing speaker lines.

Talks get the same treatment — 你好 is spoken ní hǎo, with ní in red.

This is automatic in both Build and Immerse modes. It applies to Stories too.

🧩 English vs Chinese — why the words don't line up

After you tap ✨ and your English becomes Chinese, the two lines won't match word-for-word — Chinese grammar is not harder, just different. One big pattern — Chinese tells the sentence like a story, in the order things happen — plus three small surprises cover most of what a beginner meets.

• Chinese tells the sentence like a story. English decorates a sentence — the, a, to, will. Chinese mostly drops the decorations: 我去商店 (wǒ qù shāngdiàn)🔊 — “I go store”🔊: who, what, where, already complete. Add time, and time comes first: 今天五点,我去商店 (jīntiān wǔ diǎn, wǒ qù shāngdiàn)🔊 — “Today 5 o'clock, I go store.”🔊 Two events? Tell them in order: 我和妈妈先去商店,然后吃饭 (wǒ hé māma xiān qù shāngdiàn, ránhòu chīfàn)🔊 — “I and Mama first go store, then eat.”🔊
• Little words sit in the middle. 也 yě (also) and 都 dōu (all) have a fixed seat: right after who, right before what. Say 妈妈「也」累了 (māma yě lèi le)🔊 — “Mama is also tired”🔊 — not ❌ 也妈妈累了 (yě māma lèi le). Pattern: who → also → what.
• No “is” before describing words. The word 饿 è already means “is hungry”, so 是 shì isn't needed: say 我很饿 (wǒ hěn è)🔊, not ❌ 我是饿 (wǒ shì è). That 很 hěn just keeps the sentence sounding natural — it doesn't mean “very” here.
• The question word stays home. 你吃面 (nǐ chī miàn)🔊 — “You eat noodles”🔊 → hide the noodles → 你吃「什么」 (nǐ chī shénme)🔊 — “You eat what?”🔊 谁 shéi (who) and 哪里 nǎlǐ (where) work the same way.

And you never have to study these rules: learn 妈妈「也」累了 (māma yě lèi le) as one phrase — your own mama, your own memory — and the correct word order comes inside it, free. That is exactly why Stories and Talks keep whole sentences rather than single words: each phrase you save is a grammar lesson you never had to take.

Tapping a word — ▶ Play and 📖 Pleco

Tap any word (even a hidden one) to open a small dictionary card showing its hanzi, pinyin, and meaning. Two buttons sit inside it:

Tapping a word shows its meaning, plus 📖 Pleco (look up) and ▶ Play (hear it).

📖 Pleco opens the full dictionary entry — dive deeper into any word.

Pleco is a third-party app and a trademark of Pleco Software Inc.

• 📖 Pleco — opens the word in the Pleco dictionary app (a free, leading Chinese dictionary) for fuller definitions and examples. If Pleco isn't installed, it offers to get it from the Play Store.
• ▶ Play — speaks just that word aloud using the Chinese voice, so you can hear its exact pronunciation.

So for pure listening practice, you can turn on Hide and turn off Pinyin and Translate — leaving only the speaker's name and the ▶ button on each line. They tap ▶, hear the line spoken, and try to recall the characters from sound alone. It's a powerful way to train the ear before the eye. (Tapping where a hidden word sits still opens this dictionary card — with its own ▶ and Pleco — if they get stuck.)

Like stories, the words in your talks automatically become flashcards — so every conversation you build also feeds their review deck.