Using Ninchanese

The Chinese language is tonal

The Chinese language is hard, especially when it comes to speaking since Chinese is a tonal language. You’re not used to that way of expressing yourself that way; you need time to adapt yourself. You also need to be sure when you’re right or not. That’s why you can’t have a test giving you a half-true result of what you should do to be fluent. And yes, it’s not easy, and there’s a lot of tones to know, but with this design of the app, you’re sure to know your level.

Why can’t I get a 100% score? My Chinese friends say I’m speaking good Chinese!

You certainly do speak better Chinese than the average Joe if you can already discuss in Chinese with your friends! For sure, they will encourage you and won’t let your face go down. And that’s why you can’t have an honest opinion here. The truth is the app won’t lie to you :). Yes, we agree, it’s hard to get it perfect at first try (or in the beginning). But be sure that we’ve been testing all dialogues with natives Chinese, and they could get 100% perfect. But for you, learners, if you get 70 to 90 % right, it’s already a high score! So don’t hesitate to redo the stage to get that 100% correctness at the end of the dialogue stages.

We designed the dialogue stages to reflect how best you’ll speak Chinese in real conversation.

The goal is to get you to a level where your Chinese is fluid, where you get into the flow of speaking Chinese, where you become fluent. So yes, you may feel the need to slow down the voice, to have time to speak, and to say it correctly. And there’s a way to slow down the dialogue, and I’ll be explaining it to you.

How to slow down the dialogue speed?

When you’re in a dialogue, the speaking is on automatic mode. It will let you say the sentence and go directly to the next sentence. This way, you can be in the flow of the dialogue. But did you know you can stop the automation? Before saying the sentence, you can stop the recording by clicking on the red mic icon. Then you can play the sound as many times you want, and then, when you feel ready, give it a go. Don’t worry that much. It takes time to speak at an average Chinese speed.

Is your microphone working correctly? Is it good enough?

Also, perhaps, your microphone is what’s causing this here. What you could try is another mic to see if that changes anything. Hopefully, it will. If it doesn’t, check your microphone levels on your device.

The mic is stepping too fast. What can I do about it?

If you feel the mic is stopping to listening to you to fast, you can still do something about it. The mic stops when you stop speaking, so if there’s a noise, it will still listen. So you can try to put a little music in the background or like being in a cafe environment. You’ll have more time to speak, and it will be even more immersive :).

Then, once sorted, what you can try is to speak a little bit faster little by little. It does not matter if you did not say the right tone the first time around, as long as you keep trying and continue speaking. Just redo the stage again and practice. Don’t focus on every wrong tone or mispronunciation.

If you can do that, you’ll be sure to know how to pronounce every tone, with a correct speed (you’ll see that in China, they can speak even faster than the app) and be 100% sure that what you’ve trained on Ninchanese will be said correctly.

Doing the listening mode helps tremendously.

The last tip is doing the listening mode on the dialogue stage before doing the speaking part if you’re not feeling it yet. It helps your understanding, and you’ll be more attentive to the tones, which is useful for learning the tones on characters and identifying them correctly.

It’s normal to don’t make it perfect on your first try. As you redo the stage, your speaking will get better. We set the voice recognition that any Chinese citizen will understand you when you speak Chinese at a reasonable speed. It can seem hard, but as you redo it, you’ll find yourself more and more comfortable with it.

Take your time to do it again if you don’t get a perfect score. It’s all right to make a mistake as long as you progress.