Mandarin Chinese
Learn Chinese with a course that adapts to you.
Four courses take you from zero to conversation, narrated by humans in a studio. Everything around them — flashcards, stories, audio, a partner to talk to — is written for your exact level and rewritten as you improve. Nothing to outgrow.
Generated for you, in real time
What nobody tells you
Your hard sounds are nearly free. Your easy ones aren't.
English deals you a strange hand in Chinese, and nobody tells you which cards you're holding. The consonants everyone warns you about are already in your mouth. The vowels that look trivial are where you'll actually go wrong. Sort that out in week one and you save yourself a year of sounding off.
The retroflex series is already in your mouth
zh, ch, sh and r are the sounds every guide tells you to fear. You already make them — they sit close to the sh in ship, the ch in chin, the r in red. The -ng ending is the one in singing. Spanish speakers build all of that from nothing. You don't.
Your vowels glide, and Mandarin's don't
Say see or more slowly and you'll feel your mouth move halfway through. English has almost no pure vowels; it slides. Mandarin finals hold still. That slide is the single loudest tell in an English speaker's Chinese, and it hides in the vowels you assumed you already had.
The grammar is the easy part
No conjugations. No genders, plurals, articles or agreement. The verb never moves: 我去 is «I go» and 他去 is «he goes» — same word, both times. What costs a foreigner years in English costs you an afternoon in Chinese.
Writing and sound
Four tones, one syllable
Pinyin lets you read and pronounce from day one; characters come later, in blocks that repeat. And the tone isn't decoration: it's part of the word, like another letter. These five are written with the same syllable and mean nothing alike.
It's the textbook example, and it's real. That's why Lemma starts with the ear: first you hear the tones apart, then you produce them, and only then does vocabulary stick.
- 妈māmother
- 麻máhemp; numb
- 马mǎhorse
- 骂màto scold
- 吗ma(turns the sentence into a question)
The full path
Four courses, from zero to conversation
One continuous story, narrated by professional voices in a studio — not a text-to-speech engine. The same characters follow you from the first lesson to the last.
- 01HSK 1
Chinese from scratch
Complete phonetics, the pinyin table and your first characters. Ten lessons: from knowing nothing at all to introducing yourself and holding an exchange.
- 02HSK 2
Chinese on the move
Your whole day in Chinese: your phone, the internet, the house, making plans. 王明 and 安娜 show up here and stay with you for the rest of the saga.
- 03HSK 2 → 3
Chinese in depth
You stop living in the present and start telling complete stories: how long something took, what order it happened in, what went right and what went wrong. 把 and 被 appear here.
- 04HSK 3
Chinese in flight
Nuance and naturalness: potential complements, the durative 着, separable verbs. You finish telling your own story in Chinese.
Already have some Chinese?
The intermediate problem: the material runs out.
Almost everything made for learning Chinese is made for beginners. Past HSK 3 the shelf empties out and strands you: the textbook is beneath you now and native content is still over your head. That gap is where most people quit, and it's the whole reason Lemma exists.
There is no last level
The material isn't pulled from a catalogue that runs out — it's generated for you. As your profile climbs, the content climbs with it, all the way to C2. There is no final lesson.
You start where you are, not at 你好
The placement test measures you skill by skill — vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening, speaking — and starts you there. If you already know Chinese, you never sit through greetings again.
Decks up to HSK 7-9
The preloaded decks don't stop at the beginner levels — they run to the top band of the HSK. You unlock each one as you master the last, and the advanced vocabulary is already sitting there waiting.
What's included
Everything else is in Chinese too
The courses are the backbone. Around them, Lemma generates new material at your exact level, every day, without running out.
Decks
The core of vocabulary. Flashcards by level and topic, with spaced repetition that shows you each word right before you'd forget it. Inside every card: an explanation in your language, examples, and answers — generated on the spot.
Spaced repetition + AIQuick Practice
Short readings and audio capsules, generated instantly, that mix the vocabulary you've already studied with new words to challenge you. Calibrated to your exact level.
Reading and listeningLibrary
Eight-chapter short novels, written by AI at your level, with cover art and an immersive reader. Pick the genre and the world. You'll never run out of something to read made just for you.
Immersive readingPartners
Create partners with different personalities and practice by text or voice. Real conversation that sharpens your expression — and gives Lemma a precise read on your progress.
Text and voice conversationWhy Lemma
This is not a streak app
The content is generated for you, not for everyone
A streak app hands you the same lesson it hands a million other people. Lemma measures where your Chinese actually is and tunes every card, every reading and every audio clip to what you know and to what's blocking you.
Spaced repetition, not a daily quota
Every card comes back right before you'd forget it. That timing is what makes it stick. You're building memory here, not a streak — miss a day and you've lost a day, nothing more.
You practise speaking, not tapping
You talk by voice or text with partners who have their own personalities. Chinese is one of the languages where Lemma scores your pronunciation, so you find out which tone actually left your mouth — not the one you meant.
Frequently asked
About learning Chinese with Lemma
Do I need to know any Chinese to start?
No. «Chinese from scratch» begins with phonetics: pinyin and the tones first, characters after. If you already know some, Lemma runs an adaptive placement test when you sign in and puts you at your real level, so you don't have to guess it yourself.
Do you teach simplified or traditional characters?
Both. You choose in your profile and the app shows the system you picked. The default is simplified, which is the standard in mainland China.
Is this useful for the HSK?
Yes. The courses follow HSK 3.0 vocabulary and Lemma ships preloaded decks for every level of the exam, from 1 upward. You unlock each one as you master the previous.
Is the audio robotic?
Not in the Chinese course: those are human recordings made in a studio with professional narrators. The material Lemma generates for you on the fly — stories, audio capsules, conversations — does use high-quality synthetic voices, because it's created in the moment.
Are the tones harder for English speakers?
The tones themselves are equally new to everyone, since English uses pitch for sentence meaning rather than word meaning. But one piece comes free to you: the neutral tone asks you to make a syllable short and weightless, and English does that constantly with unstressed vowels. Speakers of Spanish, whose vowels stay full, have to learn that from nothing.
Is this useful if I already have some level, or is it only for beginners?
It's useful, and it's where the difference shows most. The adaptive test places you at your real level skill by skill, and from there everything is generated at that height, up to C2. The classic intermediate problem in Chinese — that past HSK 3 the material made for your level runs out — is exactly the one Lemma solves: there's no catalogue here to exhaust.
How much does it cost?
Lemma Pro is 9.99 USD a month, or 109.89 USD a year, which works out to a month free. Lemma runs on a weekly usage allowance that resets each week; Pro removes those limits.
Can I study another language besides Chinese?
Yes. Lemma has ten languages, and with Pro you can carry several at once from the same account, each with its own profile and its own progress.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Lemma runs in the browser on your computer and your phone, and you can pin it to your home screen like an app. You sign in with your Google account.
Write your first character today
Sign in with Google. Lemma finds your real level of Chinese in a few minutes and starts there.
Blog
Articles about Chinese
Full guide
Learning Chinese as an English speaker
The consonants every guide tells you to fear are already in your mouth. The vowels you assumed you had are where you'll actually go wrong. Sorting that out in week one saves you a year of sounding off.
Chinese tones and pinyin for English speakers
Pinyin isn't a pronunciation guide, it's a spelling system — and several letters don't mean what they do in English. The traps, the syllables that hide a sound, and the third tone you'll almost never say in full.
What the HSK is and which level you actually need
There are two different HSK exams using the same numbers, and most of what's written online describes the one that no longer applies. What each level means now, and why you probably don't need the exam at all.
How long does it take to learn Chinese
The only serious number is 2,200 hours, and unlike most learners you're the exact person it was measured on. What it actually measures, why it still doesn't apply to you, and how long the goals you care about take.
How many characters you need to read Chinese
The famous answer is 3,500, and it misleads in two ways. What covering 98% of a text actually feels like, why counting characters measures the wrong unit, and which English habit genuinely helps here.