Visit other sites in the Know Your Mobile network

Talk Chinese review

Peter Gibbons

We review Talk Chinese, an iPhone app that guides you through the most commonly spoken language in the world

Talk Chines is an iPhone application that helps you learn the Chinese language

Published on May 18, 2010

Talk Chinese is a quickie app that could be quite a life saver for those travelling business types struggling to get their point across to the natives.

Talk Chinese offers a pocket-full of quick and easy Mandarin one-liners that should see you through most social and business situations without too much bother, and if all else fails and you forget how to say the phrases, you can let your new Chinese friend simply listen to the app itself.

There are a good number of language learning apps out there, and undoubtedly even the most basic of them will provide more of an insight into actually speaking Mandarin.

But the point of Talk Chinese isn’t to teach you how to construct sentences and learn the correct grammar, but to put a digital Swiss Army knife of essential phrases in your pockets for those emergency moments.

The app is split up into half-a-dozen categories that hope to put an understandable tongue in your head by taking care of basic, yet commonplace situations.

Basics, leisure, emergency, business, relationships and travel headers lead you to a selection of phrases designed to get you by while rushing through China, and for the most part these phrases have been carefully selected.

Simple statements such as greetings and affirmative or negative declarations are the meat of what the app is all about, and tapping each one gives you a clear (very clear, considering the small size of the application) annunciation in perfect Chinese.

It might not allow you to strike up a meaningful cultural exchange, but at the very least you should be able to get your point across from the dictionary of around 80 phrases.

Beyond saying hello and asking for the post office are some very useful options, such as being able to order a beer, or telling the doctor where it hurts.

And should things go particularly well, you’re even given the option of telling someone you love them, telling them they’re very attractive or asking them to dance, so it’s a lover’s guide every bit as much as a business and travel companion.

If you’re looking to learn the language properly, then the complete lack of instruction in Talk Chinese means you’ll have to do it by ear alone, but that doesn’t really appear to be its function.

As a quick reference guide and emergency translator, anyone travelling to the Central Kingdom would do well to go there armed with Talk Chinese. Zaijian, wo hao pengyou.