Yes, well put, it’s time spent engaging with the language that counts! There’s plenty of time to do that before 2023, so I wish you the best of luck! 🙂

Hello again,

Thanks for reading my comment, I really appreciate that.

You’re definitely right about my school. I’m from the middle east and everything here is bad, especially education.

But i think it’s also about how learning languages is counted in hours, not years, as you said in one of your articles.

I just have seen that almost all the comments here was negative, and i just thought it wasn’t fair (although your article was pretty fair), and it might scare someone away from the app, effectively stopping them from learning Chinese, since Chineasy is easily the best app out there, IMO (most other free app made me quit after a day or two).

Anyway, i want to say thank you, because I’ve read in one of your articles about the Outlier dictionary, which have a short characters explanation, functional components and a relevent etymology (the same feature that i loved most about the Chineasy, because it makes it much easier to remember and create mnemonics for it).

My goal is to be able to read Wikipedia articles in Chinese by 2023, if that happenes, it’ll be all thanks to you and to Hackingchinese.

Hi Astro! Thank you for your comment! I should say first that this article is seven years old and relates to the product and marketing that was available back then, so it’s possible that things have improved since then. However, I think your comment tells me more about the dismal state of your experience in school rather than Chineasy! I think the reason many people working with Chinese language education dislike Chineasy is because of the disingenuous marketing rather than the product itself (see my comments in the article, which are still true). To really answer your question, I’d need to have a new look at the product, but it’ll have to fight for my time with hundreds of other resources I want to look at!

And i can tell you this,, i have learned more about the Chinese language in 1 month using Chineseasy than i did in 12 years in school while i was studying English.

The genious about the Chineasy approach is that they don’t explain too much, you just start and learn basics as you go, which is perfect for a beginner.

Psychologically, Chineseasy motivated me more to continue learning Chinese, even more so after finishing the 500 levels.

And that’s the reason i have started reading Hackingchinese in the first place.

I was really really disappointed to hear your opinion about someone who made me love the Chinese language.

She can connect with people & make people connect with the language, something not many people can do.

If you ever read my comment, i hope you give it a chance and take another look at it.

Thanks for your efforts here in Hackingchinese.

Traditional Chinese characters have more strokes than simplified.

为时不晚 – wéi shíbù wǎn – it is not too late…..

Wise words, isn’t it? To link with the (marvellous) article, please let me add that once we realize that Chinese is not actually a biblic monster, in the end is just a matter of getting started.