Learn Chinese Fast
with Lang Dojo

It depends on your goal. Chinese is rated one of the harder languages for English speakers — the US Foreign Service Institute puts it at roughly 2,200 class hours to reach professional working proficiency. But basic conversations come much faster: with 15–30 minutes a day you can introduce yourself, order food and hold simple conversations within a few months. Lang Dojo's 60+ lessons build that foundation step by step.

The tones and characters are unfamiliar at first, but Mandarin grammar is surprisingly simple: no verb conjugations, no tenses, no genders and no plurals. With clear explanations and lots of listening practice it is very learnable — millions of people have done it.

Yes — Mandarin has four tones, and they change a word's meaning. The good news: they are a skill you can train. Our first lessons and videos focus on pronunciation, and every word on Lang Dojo has clear Mandarin audio, so you hear correct tones from day one.

Both, in the right order. Pinyin (the Latin spelling) gets you speaking fast; characters unlock reading the real language. Every Lang Dojo lesson shows pinyin next to the characters, and the character-insight pages explain how each hanzi is built from pictures and ideas — which makes them much easier to remember.

You can start for free: the first video and the whole first lesson are open to everyone — no account needed. Create a free account and you also unlock lesson 2 plus more free sample lessons further into the course (look for the red envelopes on the lessons overview). The full course is $12.99 a month or $79 a year, cancel anytime.

Yes. Lang Dojo runs in any browser, and you can add it to your home screen like an app — audio, quizzes and flashcards included.

Most popular apps stop somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 words, which is roughly where conversations start getting interesting. Lang Dojo teaches close to 3,000 words across 60+ lessons, with intermediate and advanced vocabulary, grammar and expressions woven in wherever they fit naturally.

Because most apps teach words in isolation, and real Chinese arrives as connected speech at full speed. The cure is volume. Every example sentence and every line of every dialogue on Lang Dojo is voiced in clear Mandarin — more than 3,000 complete spoken sentences to listen to, replay and shadow.

Not by copying strokes until they stick. Characters are built from a few hundred repeating components, and once you can see them, new characters stop looking random. Lang Dojo breaks 1,500 characters into their radicals and components and explains the picture, the idea and often the history behind each one — then lets you practise reading them in games and in real sentences.

Both, in that order. Every sentence on Lang Dojo appears in characters with pinyin above them — and you can switch the pinyin off with one button. That turns the entire course, all 3,000-plus sentences, into graded reading practice the moment you are ready for it.

For Chinese specifically, we think so — but we would, so read our reasons. We published an honest comparison of the seven best Chinese apps and websites, including where our rivals beat us. Duolingo is unmatched at building a daily habit; HelloChinese is the best gamified phone app; both run out of content long before you can hold a real conversation.

Partly. The first lesson and first video are free with no account, and a free account unlocks lesson 2 plus sample lessons further into the course. Pleco's dictionary is free, and Anki is free. What free tools do not give you is a structured path — which is what a course is for.