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Which Chinese is this?

This course is Mandarin Chinese in simplified characters (zh-CN): the standard of mainland China, not Cantonese, not traditional-character Taiwan materials, and not a pinyin-only toy. Pinyin appears as training wheels; the sentences you practise are Chinese.

Who it is for

Beginners, people working with mainland China, and learners who know pinyin but cannot hold a simple exchange. If your only practice is character apps without audio, you have been studying a writing system, not speaking.

How HyperLingua teaches Chinese

Tones are not a week-one unit you “finish.” They live on every sentence. You hear native audio, shadow the whole line — tone included — then recall it. Islands (greetings, food, directions, study/work) keep the vocabulary useful. We do not start with 2,000 isolated characters and a promise that speech comes later.

The same loop on every course: shadowing, active recall, vocabulary first, and language islands.

Pronunciation

The four tones plus the neutral tone, initials like q/x/j vs ch/sh/zh, and ü are the usual failures of “I’ll just use English letters.” Shadowing native Mandarin is the fix. If you skip audio, you will memorise the wrong word.

Example sentences

• Good morning!

  早上好！

• How are you?

  你好吗？

• I am a student.

  我是学生。

• Where is the library?

  图书馆在哪里？