On our mission to deliver the best Chinese learning app, we’re thrilled to announce that Ninchanese is out of beta!
Maybe you noticed a slight change in Ninchanese? No more little “beta” next to the logo… That can only mean one thing: Ninchanese is now out of beta!
Wow, that makes us look back fondly on how “The Project: Ninchanese” started…
Back Story
Got two minutes for a story?
We had difficulty finding good Chinese courses (offline and online) around us back in the day at an excellent price. So at that point, we asked ourselves, what if we made a tremendous Chinese learning app? A fun gamified app that would use the latest in science, language, and technology to teach us Chinese. Oh, and yes, cats were planned from the start.
First stage: Prototyping to Beta
We all remember perfectly the first time we started using our prototype in our “basement”! 🙂 It was still a small project centered on vocabulary learning then! Wow, how things have changed since then!
After the prototype, everything went fast. First, we invited a select few to the Alpha. Then, we launched a Kickstarter campaign and opened the Ninchanese Beta to everyone; what an exhilarating experience this all has been! We worked relentlessly. We met people from all horizons. We spoke and collaborated with Chinese teachers and natives. We consulted with experts on the Chinese language, challenged our notions, and went into more depth with language acquisition researchers. Along the way, we all learned a lot more than we had initially expected about the beautiful Mandarin language. Its structure, history, how it works, and what we need as learners.
All led, step by step, to the Ninchanese you know now. We’ve come a long way!
Second stage: Community-based development
Regardless of when we were only 10 to use the app to now, where thousands and thousands of Chinese learners use the app every week, our commitment to you has stayed the same. You have been at the heart of every development stage, leading Ninchanese to be the way it is now.
Thanks to an essential ingredient: love, from us and you. Ninchanese has become a loving Chinese learning app. We are where we are now because you helped. Your love and support sealed the deal. You put your paw into shaping what Ninchanese looks like now.
We feel tremendously empowered by you. Making an innovative, creative app and a startup simultaneously is hard, sometimes, but it also brings so much happiness that you forget quickly about the more challenging times. You drive us to continue making Ninchanese meowsome.
We’ve made friends with a few of you. It’s a great feeling that we’re glad to have. We appreciate each and every email or message we get from you, whether they’re comments on how things are (or could be improved) or love notes. 😆 Alright, love notes are the best. They’re what get us up in the morning, and they put a smile on our faces. They’re what makes Ninchanese Ninchanese.
Thanks for being such a supportive and awesome community!
The result: can we learn Chinese with Ninchanese?
We knew we had everything to prove when we started the app. And we are thankful to everyone that believed in us.
Over the past years, we have steadily added content and new features to Ninchanese to make sure you were making real progress in Mandarin and saw results in your learning.
Loyal users that have been there since the start. Students that have been gone on to become teachers themselves (true story!) and the tens of thousands that have improved their Chinese on Ninchanese are proofs of how effective Ninchanese’s method is in learning Chinese. Our trusty Ninchas have accomplished the mission they set out to do: create a rich environment in which you could enjoyably and effectively learn Chinese. With tangible results to boot.Â
On Ninchanese, you can learn:
Everything you need to pass the HSK, from levels 1 to 5, with a tremendous story full of Chinese culture to follow along.
The key grammar points that make up the structure of the Chinese language, with over 100 Chinese grammar lessons organized online and stages to practice
Every day, basic content, seriously advanced professional learning material, and everything in between
You also have access to many useful tools to help you with your Chinese learning.
New content gets added regularly to your Chinese learning platform, and if there’s stuff you want to learn on Ninchanese, we’ll do our best to deliver and add it! For instance, we added the Geek and Computer Worlds based on user requests.:)
In the last months alone, we added and finished the content for these worlds:
You can also learn Simplified Chinese and in Traditional Chinese because, depending on your needs, you might need to know Mandarin more for Taiwan and Hong Kong or for Mainland China. No need to pick!
 Final stage: What’s next?
What does that mean? Is our friendly relationship stopping? Of course not! Why would we stop here?!
Going out of beta says that all the critical bugs we had during the Beta on Ninchanese are solved. Ninchanese is now the quality Chinese learning app we wanted to achieve and is working puurfectly under its current scope of features. 💪
Plus, the bosses are here!
Ninchanese could not be finished without an ending for each world! We promised you a way to test if you knew well the vocabulary, grammar points, how to make sentences, and so on you learned in each world. We promised you bosses: they are finally here! You can now do new ending stages in each world that will test you on what you’ve learned.
Let us know what you think of this new part of the story! If you feel these test stages are challenging, it’s time to redo stages and master them. What’s even cooler? If you can finish them, then you’ll gain Master Badges!
Master badges that prove you finished those courses and have the HSK level that matches each world. If you gain these badges, congrats! You can be proud of yourself, so tell your friends and share these badges! 😎
Prices…
Ninchanese has always been there to make Chinese learning accessible, not $75 an hour private courses few can afford (another true story!). So one thing remains the same: our subscription prices. Learning Chinese on Ninchanese costs $10 a month. Sometimes that’s not even the cost of two drinks at Starbucks and as little as $ 8 a month with our plans. With Ninchanese, your Chinese education is not expensive, and it will never be. So coming out of beta means no increase in the cost of premium membership on Ninchanese, and that’s always nice to hear, right?
You may also be happy to know the money you pay when you subscribe doesn’t go to waste. It’s the sole way Ninchanese functions and runs. We’re a small indie company and not a big VC-backed engine—a handful of humans and cats, of course. 🙂 We truly appreciate every contribution you make. Please support us by subscribing or sharing Ninchanese as much as you can. Your support makes Ninchanese the app it is now and what it will be in the future.
Lastly, moving out of Beta is all about commitment! To you. It means we will stay around for as long as you want us to be. Discussing it with you! Making Ninchanese always better! There are way too many things we still want to develop and create. Listening to you and improving the app is our top priority.
On that note, my friends, see you in Ninchana! Long live Ninchanese.
3 comments
Join the conversationSam - December 19, 2018
Congrats!!!
Ninchanese - January 9, 2019
Thanks Sam! 😀
Ninchanese - March 28, 2019
Thanks Sam! 🙂
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