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: 重

Translation for 重, pronounced zhòng = zhu + (e)ng4: heavy / serious / to attach importance to

Mnemonic story: Mnemonic symbol (from the shape of the character): this one looks like a space elevator. The two top strokes are the heavens, the two bottom strokes are the earth, and the part in between is the cabin (or climber) of the space elevator. Julian Giant Squid (zhu) installed a space elevator (重) in the engine's bathroom ((e)ng4). For the maiden trip, and as a stress test, he loads one thousand (千) one kilogram weights (千) and decorates them with sun flowers (里) to celebrate the occasion.

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.

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