Learn Chinese 
with comics and movies

Learn Chinese characters with comics

Mnemonics are one of the best ways to learn and remember Chinese characters. Mnemonic comics take the concept to the next level!

The challenge: The character "勺" is proncounced "shao2" and is translated as "spoon" or "ladle". It's made up of the characters "勹" and "丶". That's a lot of information to remember!

The solution: All of this information is encoded in a ridiculous, cringy comic. If you can remember a comic panel, you can remember Chinese characters!

Find out how or Visit the first comic

Most recent mnemonic comic: 亍

Translation for 亍, pronounced chù = chu + Ø4: step with the right foot / see 彳亍[chi4 chu4]

Mnemonic story: Mnemonic symbol: a step with the right foot is a kick of a righteous knight, who wears a full armor boot on his right foot. Someone is playing music on a flute (一) for Chantal Chicken (chu) in the space station's bathroom (Ø4) so that she can practice pole dancing on a huge nail (丁). She's working on her step with the right foot (亍) while wearing a full armor boot (mnemonic symbol for 亍).

Visit the most recent comic

Learn Chinese characters with movies

New information is best learned in context. Reviewing Chinese characters in isolation does not provide any context on how to use a character. Instead, watch movies with sentences showing you how to actually use a Chinese character!

MandarinBanana tracks your learning progress for each Chinese character. If it's time to review, MandarinBanana prefers to show you a sentence containing the character instead of just the character in isolation.

Go to the movies

Review effectively

Spaced repetition is one of the key elements of remembering Chinese characters. There are some basic principles you'd want to follow when reviewing Chinese characters:

  • Review due components before due characters they appear in.
  • Review due characters before due words they appear in.
  • Prefer reviewing characters in sentences instead of in isolation.

If you forget a Chinese character, you'd probably want to follow these principles:

  • Review all the components it's made up of.
  • Review all Chineses characters you know that use this character as a component.
  • Review all compound words you know this character is used in.

MandarinBanana takes care of all of this for you.

Learn more

Write your own mnemonics

Don't like Sherlock Holmes? Create your own mnemonics with your favorite heroes. Upload SVG comics with your heroes to reuse them in your own comics.

Remix and create new comics

Remix content from other comics to create your own comics!

Upload your own movies

Learn Chinese using your favorite movies. Just upload a video file and a matching subtitle file and MandarinBanana does the rest for you, most importantly: splitting the movie up into individual sentences and finding all vocabulary items for each sentence.

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Guest account

Free of charge!

  • Track your progress!
  • Unlimited reviewing!
  • Access to all translations, mnemonics, and comics!
  • Access to selected decks!
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Full membership

All guest privileges, plus:

  • Access to all public decks!
  • Create your own mnemonics!
  • Leave comments or ask questions!
  • Create your own decks!
  • Create your own comics!
  • Create your own character breakdowns!
  • No ads!

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