Noodle Chinese

I love this app. WAY better than Skritter Chinese in terms of review and study. The study function algorithm is excellent. It really picks up what you don’t know and makes you repeat it several times early on (in different ways) before introducing the next word (so if you have a long list you don’t have to wait forever for it retest you again, which by then you have forgotten)! Excellent way to study, especially when learning new words. Great for those who want to jump into learning chinese and don’t need someone to hold your hand. I also really like the ability to form your own custom list! BTW, traditional characters is supported. It can only be changed from IPhone Settings for Noodle app NOT within the app itself. Hopefully it can up updated later, but not a big deal. SUGGESTION: ability to import lists from other Chinese apps into this app would be really nice.

I learned Chinese in Taiwan. Consequently, simplified characters were a bit of a mystery to me—especially stroke order. With the advent of computers and personal devices, my writing had become so rusty, I was searching for something to refresh my memory so I can write by hand well again. Noodle is fantastic for helping me a) to brush the rust off my writing in general, b) to learn simplified stroke order, c) to really -learn- just about any characters I want to put in my list, reading, writing, pronunciation, and meaning—all in one simple, free app. Wishlist: 1) option to study BOTH traditional and simplified 字. 2) ability to export/share/airdrop lists.

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For an intermediate Chinese learner this is a pretty good app for learning writing and stroke order. Most of the features like offline, list creation are paid for features in other apps. They are included in this app. The user interface is easy to understand. In terms of Chinese learning this app is about memorizing characters (pinyin, definitions). It doesn’t teach grammar, sentences construction or speech. So it is useful for people who have some basic Chinese foundation and are looking to improve their vocabulary. There are some quirks with the app that bumps it down in rating. First there seems to be no developer support. Sadly, it looks like this is an abandoned project. There are no new updates for bugs. Second, there are some bugs that make the app a little annoying to use. The stroke recognition is a little off. The double tap to reveal is annoying because I tend to write quickly and it picks up some of my strokes as a double tap. Selecting the definitions is off too since the words are cutoff. There are other little bugs too that are annoying. For folks interested, to set the language to traditional, go to the setting app for the iPhone and change it from there. You cannot set it within the app.

Many chinese language resources really seem to miss the mark for me, starting by teaching all sorts of characters you are very likely to see in a textbook, but very unlikely to see out in your daily life. This app gives lists of most commonly used characters - ones you will actually come across on signage and menus. However, if you are a student or something and need to know how to write the the obligatory “teacher” and “nice to meet you” type of characters, they are included as well in the HSK lists. Really a wonderful app, a very good use of spaced repetition software. Making the act of remembering characters into a sort of game with instant feedback is such a good way to learn. The fact that it is offline makes it even more convenient. One thing - a few of the recordings are wrong but the pinyin (so far) is always right so do mind that. I also would love the capacity to make an account so that I can keep the same progress on my ipad and my iphone.

I have tried many apps for learning to write Chinese characters and this is far and away the best. The only other one that even comes close is Skritter, but that takes forever to re-test characters that you got wrong, the iPhone version is full of bugs, and you have to pay a subscription fee for it, whereas Noodle Chinese has none of those problems and it’s free! This is a truly outstanding learning tool.