Alternatives
Products that do what WEN-Chinese Writing for HSK does
Beautiful, minimalist Chinese writing for iOS & Android
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Hi HN! In trying to improve my Chinese skills, I built this tool that lets me write a mix of Chinese and English, then recommends a proper Chinese expression. This is super helpful when I want to write something in Chinese but I don't know all the vocab/grammar - I can enter my best effort and use English for the parts I don't know. Really, the fundamental benefit of the tool is that it encourages me to exercise the writing muscle, rather than defaulting to translating from English. My goal was to build something that is fast, relatively inexpensive, and not prone to misleading people.…
2024 · unscrambler.dpw.me
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I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News. Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention. There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com. It's only for Android so far. The free version includes…
2012
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Chinese vocab, drilled into long-term memory. Free, offline.
May 2026 · wordbrushchinese.com
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Hey HN! I’m Alex, and one of my favorite ways to learn languages is by reading novels. Currently I’m reading 三体 (3 body problem), but one problem I've always had is it takes ages to look up words, and add them to Anki flashcards so I can remember them. 三体 is especially brutal with so much sci-fi vocab. That’s why I built Readly. I snap a pic of the page I’m reading, it loads the text in-app and lets me lookup words, add to Anki-style flashcards, or ask AI questions about the text, all in a single tap. It's a huge time saver. My specific learning strategy, if anyone wants to replicate it: 1.…
2025 · readly.ink
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Unlock Mandarin with Shengci: Daily HSK Vocabulary Mastery!
Aug 2026 · apps.apple.com
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I've recently launched a startup called Native Tongue. Our vision is to make language learning fun, fast and effective. We've released our first product "Mandarin Madness", which is to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary. Its available on android and iOS. Its for beginners to intermediate, including those with no experience. Please go here for more information and to download the app: http://mandarinmadness.com/ Our company website is http://nativetongue.com/ We would love to get some feedback on our mobile apps. We would also like to speak to people interested in language learning and…
2012
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I've built mandoBot, a web app that segments and translates Mandarin Chinese text. This is a Django API (using Django-Ninja and PostgreSQL) and a NextJS front-end (with Typescript and Chakra). For a sample of what this app does, head to https://mandobot.netlify.app/?share_id=e8PZ8KFE5Y. This is my presentation of the first chapter of a classic story from the Republican era of Chinese fiction, Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun. Other chapters are located in the "Reading Room" section of the app. This app exists because reading Mandarin is very hard for learners (like me), since…
2025 · mandobot.netlify.app
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I spent ten years trying to write a novel. Every time I sat down, I'd write a sentence, decide it wasn't good enough, and rewrite it. The problem wasn't discipline — it was that I could always see what I'd written and go back to change it. I tried other approaches. Apps that delete your words when you stop typing — they fight fear with fear. That just made me panic. I wanted the opposite: not punishment, but permission. "Tomoshibi" is Japanese for a small light in the dark — just enough to see what's in front of you. You write on a dark screen. Older lines fade, but not when you hit return.…
Feb 2026 · tomoshibi.in-hakumei.com
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Tap on a character to reveal the strokes, radicals and components it has in common with the character you're trying to guess. This was designed mainly for learners but I'm curious to hear from fluent hanzi readers whether the game is too easy. The vocabulary is from the Chinese Vocab List project [1]. Character graphics and data are sourced from Make me a Hanzi [2]. There are 95 pre generated games at the moment which are randomly chosen, more will be added soon. Suggestions welcome! [1] https://github.com/kerrickstaley/Chinese-Vocab-List [2]…
2022 · hanzi.gg
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Just for fun, I built a language learning tool. It represents Chinese and Japanese as graphs of characters, with connections indicating given characters can form a word. It can also decompose characters to give clues on how they're pronounced, analyzes words to understand which ones are commonly used together, and more. It's fully interactive, supports offline use, generates flashcards, has sentences from humans and from AI, and plenty of other features. Check out the README for details. https://github.com/mreichhoff/HanziGraph
2024 · github.com
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Learn Chinese from your Lockscreen, AI quiz, story and more
Jun 2026 · apps.apple.com
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