🐼 Chinese for Beginners

Start with pictures and sound, before you can read a single character. 52 words, three games, and ten characters to trace — free, no sign-up, nothing to install.

Start

Start here if you know nothing at all

Every other beginner page on this site asks you to read a character on the first screen. This one does not: each word here carries a picture, so you can learn and test yourself with no reading at all. Work through the word packs, trace the first ten characters, and once the characters stop looking like decoration, move on to the Chinese from Zero path or the HSK 1 word list.

🎮 Practise with a game

🖼️

Picture Match

See a Chinese word — tap the right picture. Ten questions, then a score.

👂

Listen and Tap

Hear a word — tap the picture you heard. Ten questions, then a score.

✏️

Trace the Character

Write 一二三人口 stroke by stroke.

📚 Word packs

✏️ The first ten characters

Trace them

These ten are where handwriting starts: one to three strokes each, and every one of them began as a picture of the thing it means. 人 is a person walking. 口 is an open mouth. 木 is a tree. Learn these and the logic behind the other few thousand stops being a mystery.

Ready for more? Stroke Order Animator · Character Writing Practice · printable 田字格 sheets

🎵 The sounds of Chinese

Chinese has only about 400 different syllables, and every one of them is on the pinyin chart — click any square and hear it. You do not need to memorise the grid; working across one row at a time and repeating it out loud is enough to tune your ear.

The four tones are the part beginners worry about most. The Tone Trainer plays one syllable in each tone and asks which you heard, which is the fastest way to stop guessing — and the tone rules explained covers the theory, including why 你好 is not pronounced the way it is written.

Where to go next

I know these 52 words — what now?

Move to the HSK 1 flashcards — the official first 150 words, and the standard next step. If you would rather follow a set order than pick tools yourself, the Chinese from Zero path lays one out end to end.

I want to read something real

The graded stories start at HSK 1 with pinyin above every line and tap-any-word definitions, so you can read before you can read fluently.

Do I have to learn characters?

Not to speak, and not to start — everything on this page works from pictures and sound. But characters stop being arbitrary once you know a few dozen building blocks, which is what the radicals hub is for.

Is anything stored, and do I need an account?

No account, and nothing to install. Scores stay in the page unless you choose to put one on a public leaderboard, which never asks for your name or email address. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is and is not collected.