Phone, Messaging & Social Media Flashcards

Practise 24 words with a matching picture on every card. Say the word before you look at the answer, then pick up your own phone and find the thing on the card: the screen, the battery icon, the signal bars, a link, the pause button. These are words you can practise every time you unlock it. Notice how many share a character — 电 (electric) in 电话, 电脑, 电池 and 电子邮件, 网 (net) in 互联网, 网站 and 网友. Use New shuffle for a second round, save the words you hesitate on for Review, then read the internet-slang and texting guides linked below.

This 24-card selection is the durable vocabulary of a phone and the internet: six devices, six words for calls and messages, six online actions and six for photos, video and social life. No platform names, apps, memes or short-lived slang. Look-alikes are drawn apart on purpose: 手机 is a phone showing its home screen, 铃声 the same kind of phone shaking with music notes, 短信 one message bubble on a phone and 聊天 two free-standing bubbles; 电脑 is a laptop with its keyboard and 屏幕 a bare glowing panel; 视频 and 暂停 share one video player and differ only in the play triangle and the pause bars. 表情 is drawn as the emoji it names in a chat; its dictionary meaning is a facial expression. The charger and headphones are in Airport & Hotel, taking a photo (照相) in Sports & Hobbies, and slang in the guides below.

• Read the Chinese slang and internet words guide
• Decode Chinese texting abbreviations and emoji
• Talk about your hobbies: music, games and photos
• Talk about work and the office
• Review your saved phone and internet words
• Choose another flashcard deck

Think you know them? The Chinese Picture Quiz says a word and shows it in characters, and you tap its picture — these cards mixed with every other picture deck.

Looking for graded vocabulary instead? The HSK flashcards run levels 1 to 6, and the HSK word lists have the full 5,000.