Learn Mandarin by reading.

The best way to learn Mandarin is to read real Chinese with instant tap-to-translate and pinyin above every word, learning the most frequent words first and holding them with spaced repetition. Chinese writes no spaces, so a reader that splits each sentence into words is what turns a wall of characters into something you can look up.
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Lector reading a Mandarin passage with pinyin above each word, colour-coded word states and click-to-translate
Native speakers
~990 million
Difficulty (FSI)
Category IV
To proficiency
~2,200 hours
Why Mandarin

Reasons to start.

01

Around 990 million native speakers and roughly 1.18 billion in total — more first-language speakers than any other language on earth.

02

One written standard across the whole Chinese-speaking world, and the same characters sit under a large share of Japanese and Korean vocabulary.

03

No verb conjugation, no noun cases, no grammatical gender, and no plurals. Mandarin grammar is far simpler than its reputation suggests. The script and the tones are the work.

Bonus: Spoken Mandarin is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese, Hokkien or Shanghainese, but they share the written language, so reading carries across the Chinese-speaking world. Lector keys entries on Simplified and resolves Traditional to the same entry, so 這 and 这 both answer zhè.

Is it hard? How long?

The honest version.

FSI Category IV (~2,200 hours), the hardest tier for English speakers, alongside Japanese, Korean and Arabic. The grammar is not the reason. Two other things are: four tones that change meaning, and a script where a character does not tell you how it sounds. Reading is where both get solved, which is why Lector prints pinyin above every word and retires each reading once you mark that word known.
Whatever the category, the method is the same: read a lot of Mandarin, learn the most common words first, and let a spaced-repetition system resurface them right before you forget. See the method.
A line of Mandarin

傍晚的时候，太阳落到山后面，人们坐在门口聊天，看孩子们在街上玩。

In the evening, when the sun drops behind the mountain, people sit in their doorways chatting and watch the children playing in the street.

How Lector helps

Read it. Practice it. Remember it.

The reader (above) turns any Mandarin text into a lesson — tap any word to translate it, hear it in a native voice, and track what you know. Then frequency-ordered cloze practice locks the core vocabulary in, and mined words push straight to Anki.
Practice

Drill the words that matter first.

Frequency-ordered cloze sentences build the core of Mandarin vocabulary, scheduled by spaced repetition so each one returns right when you're about to forget it — in multiple-choice or typing mode. Practise listening to native pronunciation on every word and sentence, powered by Google text-to-speech.
Mandarin cloze practice in Lector with multiple-choice options
Free resources

Free resources to get you started.

The Mandarin reference data below is free to use on its own. To turn it into a full reading course, self-host Lector for free or start on the cloud from $5/mo.

Mandarin reference data

Where the Mandarin dictionary and cloze bank come from, with counts and full licensing.

Browse the data

New to Anki?

A from-scratch guide to spaced-repetition flashcards and loading your first Mandarin deck.

Getting started with Anki
Questions

Learning Mandarin, answered.

More on the method, or jump into the docs.
Is Mandarin hard to learn?

Mandarin sits in the FSI's hardest tier, though not because of its grammar. There is no conjugation, no case, no gender and no plural. The difficulty is the tones and the writing system, and both are learned by meeting the same words again and again in context.

How long does it take to learn Mandarin?

The US Foreign Service Institute places Mandarin in Category IV, at roughly 2,200 class hours (about 88 weeks of intensive study) to reach professional working proficiency. Reading with pinyin support and lookups a tap away brings simple texts within reach long before that.

How many Chinese characters do I need to read?

Roughly 2,500 to 3,000 characters covers most everyday text, and the most frequent 1,000 do the bulk of the work. Frequency-ordered practice is the shortest way through that list, which is exactly what a cloze bank ranked by frequency gives you.

What is the best way to learn Mandarin?

Read real Chinese with word segmentation, pinyin above each word, and a tap-to-translate dictionary. Learn the most frequent words first and let spaced repetition return them. Because the reader retires the pinyin once you know a word, the support fades on its own as you improve.

Can I learn Mandarin for free?

Yes. Mandarin has an enormous free corpus — public-domain literature, open courses, news, podcasts and video — and free or self-hosted reading and flashcard tools cover the practice side, so no paid course is required.

Get involved

Learning Mandarin? You're in good company.

Come chat with other learners on our Discord — swap resources, compare progress, ask questions, and stay motivated while you read your way in.
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Start reading Mandarin today.

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