Audio-first Mandarin
One syllable.
Four meanings.
Get the pitch wrong and mā (mother) becomes mà (a scolding). ToneDeck trains the one thing Mandarin apps skip: your ear.
iOS & Android · works offline · free to start
The plateau, explained
Apps teach tones once, in lesson one. Native speakers hear the difference forever.
Tones are the meaning
Mandarin has ~400 base syllables stretched across 4 tones. Pitch isn't polish — it's vocabulary.
Your ear fossilizes
Skip ear training early and wrong tones harden into habit. Every conversation quietly confirms you're hard to understand.
Drilling fixes it
Minimal pairs, instant audio, spaced repetition. Twenty focused minutes a day beats three hundred Duolingo streaks.
Inside the deck
Four rooms. One job: make tones automatic.
Tones
Ear training, the killer feature
Minimal pairs drilled side by side with pitch contours, then a listen-and-guess quiz that scores your accuracy per tone. This is the muscle Duolingo never trains.
Review
SM-2 spaced repetition
The same algorithm behind Anki. Again, Hard, Good, Easy — each answer reschedules the word at the moment you're about to forget it. Streaks keep you honest.
Words
A soundboard for vocabulary
Tap any of 5,500+ words to hear it instantly. The full HSK 1–6 vocabulary, plus the 1,000 most common words by frequency. Pinyin is colored by tone, always.
Speak
Record. Compare. Repeat.
21 real two-voice dialogues. Play any line, record yourself, then A/B your pronunciation against the native audio until you can't hear the difference.
Pricing
Free to start. Pro when it sticks.
- · All 127 HSK 1 words, by topic
- · Full tone trainer + ear quiz
- · 10 spaced-repetition reviews / day
- · 3 conversations
- · 5,500+ words: full HSK 1–6 + frequency decks
- · Unlimited reviews
- · All 21 conversations
- · Record & compare your pronunciation
- · Per-tone accuracy stats
Questions
Why obsess over tones?+
Because tones aren't an accent — they're the meaning. Say mā with a falling pitch and you've called your mother a scolding. Mainstream apps cover tones in one early lesson and never return; learners plateau because their ears were never trained.
Does it work offline?+
Yes. Audio is generated on-device and all progress lives on your phone. Planes, subways, rural China — all fine.
What's in the free version?+
All 127 HSK 1 words, the full tone trainer and ear-training quiz, 10 spaced-repetition reviews a day, and 3 conversations. Pro removes every limit.
Is this for beginners or intermediate learners?+
Both. Beginners build the right habits from day one. Intermediate learners use the ear-training quiz to fix the tone deafness that's been fossilizing in their speech for years.