Listening-first · spaced · spoken

Hear it. Say it. Keep it.

Scenarios, stories, grammar patterns, and anything you import all land in one Library — and a single engine decides what comes back and when. Start with the meanings you'll meet most; add your own whenever you like.

Coming to iOS · Free to start · Simplified & Traditional Chinese

The LinguaBattle red panda mascot, holding a phone.
  • Mandarin (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional · Taiwan standard)
  • More in the works

Your arsenal

One engine underneath it all.

Everything in LinguaBattle either makes Chinese for you or collects it — and all of it lands in the same place, where one review engine decides what comes back and when.

Everything that makes Chinese for you

Scenarios

Walk into a situation with a goal — buy the ticket, order the meal — and talk your way through against an AI partner.

More on Scenarios

Each one opens with a brief: where you are, who you're talking to, and the few concrete things you need to get done.

You speak your turns out loud and your partner answers in character. It improvises rather than reading from a script, so the conversation goes where you take it — and you're scored on whether you actually got what you came for, not on hitting exact words.

You don't have to dive straight in. Listen plays the situation as a dialogue first, so you meet it by ear — slow it down, and pick out the words you caught. Plan lays the whole conversation out as a branching script — the turn you intend to say, the alternatives, and where each one rejoins the main thread — before you ever open your mouth.

And when you want the real thing, a battle takes the text away altogether: the setting fills the screen, your partner speaks, and the mic arms itself when your turn comes. You just talk — and stop talking — the way you would standing there.

Anything useful that came up goes into your Library in a tap, and from there into the same review schedule as everything else.

  • The brief, and three ways in
  • Listen — meet it by ear first
  • Plan — map out the conversation
  • Speak — talk it through live
  • Battle — no text, just the conversation

Journeys Plus

Story-driven lessons that feed you language just above the level you're already at.

More on Journeys

A Journey is a story told over several parts, written around the vocabulary you personally already have — mostly words you know, with a controlled handful of new ones layered in.

That keeps each part a small step up instead of a wall of unknowns, and it means no two people get quite the same story. New words you meet along the way go into training with a tap.

Between parts you're checked on what actually happened — by ear, not by reading — so the story stays comprehension practice rather than scenery.

  • The story, part by part
  • Checked by ear, not by reading

Structures

The grammar patterns underneath what you're reading, pulled out and drilled on their own.

More on Structures

Point at a sentence you can read word-by-word but still don't quite follow, and LinguaBattle names the pattern holding it together — then builds you fresh examples of that pattern out of words you already know.

Then you drill it: rebuild the pattern from scrambled pieces, or say it out loud, with the audio and a hint always a tap away. Once the shape is familiar it joins the same review schedule as your vocabulary, so it keeps coming back until it's automatic.

  • The pattern, in your words
  • Build it back yourself

Your imports

Articles, podcasts, YouTube videos — even a photo of a menu, or a transcript sent over from the browser companion.

More on imports

Paste a link, share something in from another app, or point your camera at a page of text. Whatever comes in gets split into words, with the ones you already know marked as known.

Longer pieces land in an editor first, so you can cut them down to the part you actually care about before anything enters your training.

A video keeps its audio: the transcript sits under the player, each line plays back on its own, and any line worth keeping goes into your training with the plus beside it.

  • Paste a link, or share one in
  • It comes back as study material

Material can come the other way too. While you're watching something in the browser companion, trim its transcript to the stretch you actually want and send that straight to your Library — it arrives as an ordinary import, ready to drill. Words you mark as you watch go to the same place, so the card is waiting for you on your phone.

See the browser companion

Library

chosen by you

Everything above lands here, next to whatever you brought yourself. Star what you want to drill and it joins the pool.

More on the Library

Scenarios, journeys, structures and your own imports all sit in one list, filterable by kind and searchable as a whole.

Each item carries a difficulty tag and a coverage reading — the share of its words you already know — so you can pick something at the edge of your ability instead of guessing.

  • One list, filterable by kind

High-frequency band

app recommended

A ranked core of the meanings you'll meet most, ready on day one. Nothing to import before you can start.

More on the high-frequency band

The band is ranked by sense, not by word — a word carrying three common meanings enters the ladder three times, each one ranked on how often that particular meaning turns up. It's split into Levels of 100 senses, grouped into tiers from Beginner up to Advanced so you can see roughly where a level sits against CEFR.

You can browse any level and see exactly what it holds — every sense sorted by part of speech, with pinyin, colour-coded by where you stand: green for what you already know, orange for what's in training. Tap one to read it, or add it straight to your drills.

And Stats shows the band filling in behind you: how many meanings have reached each stage on the way to known, plus the ones that keep slipping back, so the senses quietly costing you the most time are named rather than guessed at.

  • Level 1, sense by sense
  • What's reached known, and what keeps slipping

One dial sets the mix of new cards — all recommended, all yours, or anywhere between.

The training engine

One schedule for all of it. Anything in your Library enters the ladder in a tap: listening-first drills, speech scored on the spot, and FSRS spaced repetition deciding what comes back and when.

Listen Speak Mixed

See the full ladder

…and what you've learned shapes what gets made next.

Ask AI

Alongside all of it: ask why a sentence works that way — by typing or by voice — and get an answer grounded in the word you're actually looking at, with examples built from vocabulary you already know.

The training ladder

Every word climbs the same ladder.

Most apps make you read and tap. LinguaBattle trains the two skills that actually make you conversational — listening and speaking — in that order, then keeps both alive.

  1. 1 Listen

    Catch it by ear.

    Every new word starts as a listening drill. You hear real sentences and learn to pick the meaning out of the stream — no reading crutch. A spaced-repetition engine (FSRS) brings each one back right before you'd forget it.

  2. 2 Speak

    Now you say it.

    Once your ear is reliable, the word flips to a speaking drill. Talk into the mic and get scored on the spot — hesitate, and the app knows to bring it back sooner.

  3. 3 Mixed

    Keep both sharp.

    Solid words move to maintenance: listening and speaking drills alternate on the same card, so neither skill goes stale. Stay reliable long enough and it turns Mature — the same mixed practice, just spaced far enough apart to stop competing for your attention.

Climb through 100 Levels built on the most-used meanings first, so everything you learn shows up in real conversation immediately.

Stats turns that into a number you can watch move: the share of everyday Mandarin your vocabulary already covers, marked on the curve that makes the early levels worth so much.

A balanced course

Four kinds of practice.

Research on language learning keeps landing on the same conclusion: you need input, deliberate study, real output, and speed — in roughly equal measure. LinguaBattle is built around all four.

Meaning-focused input

Meet real Chinese.

Import a video, an article, or a screenshot into your Library and read it with tap-to-look-up. Journeys build graded stories around the words you already know.

Language-focused learning

Study the pieces.

A phased spaced-repetition engine decides what comes back and when, and Structures pull out the grammar patterns underneath what you're reading.

Meaning-focused output

Say something real.

Scenarios drop you into a situation with a goal — buy the ticket, handle the follow-up question — and score what you actually said, not what you tapped.

Fluency development

Make it automatic.

Battles push you to use what you already know at conversational speed, so the words you've studied stop needing a translation step first.

Applied linguists call these the four strands. Skip one and progress stalls in a way more review can't fix.

Local AI that runs on your phone.

The free tier runs its AI entirely on your iPhone — practice on a plane, in the subway, anywhere. No account required to start, and your training data stays on your device.

  • On-device AI
  • Works offline
  • No account needed to start

Browser companion

Take the fight to the real web.

Most study tools quit when a video has no subtitles. This one keeps going. It's a Chrome extension that gives you a follow-along transcript for anything you watch or listen to — reading the site's own subtitles where they exist, and transcribing the audio live where they don't. That's most vlogs, most podcasts, and every video where the auto-captions never showed up. Tap a word for its definition, tap a line to send the player back to it, and the words you already know show up in your colors.

  • Live transcription for videos with no subtitles — not just the ones that have them
  • YouTube, Netflix, Bilibili, Youku, iQIYI, WeTV, Viki, Apple Podcasts, Spotify
  • Known-word highlighting stays in sync with your LinguaBattle progress
  • Send a transcript — or just the stretch you want — to your Library to drill on your phone

Live transcription and sending to your Library are LinguaBattle Plus features — live transcription includes 10 hours a month.

Following along on YouTube — pinyin above every line, words colored by how well you know them, and one tap for a definition.

Pricing

Start free. Upgrade when you're ready.

Free

$0

Everything you need to build a real practice habit.

  • Full training loop (Listen → Speak → Mixed)
  • Scenarios & Ask AI
  • Structures & Library imports
  • One-tap flashcards, with Anki export
  • On-device AI, works offline
Get notified

Prices in USD; regional pricing may vary. Managed through your App Store account — cancel anytime.

Questions

Good to know.

Which languages can I learn?

Mandarin Chinese in both Simplified and Traditional (Taiwan standard), with more in the works. Each language is a separate track with its own progress.

I already know some Chinese — do I have to start from scratch?

No. Settings lets you set your high-frequency level directly, so the ladder starts where you actually are instead of at word one.

From there, one dial sets how much of your new material comes from the high-frequency band versus from things you've added yourself — lean entirely on your own imports if you'd rather. And everything in your Library shows what share of its words you already know, so you can pick material at the edge of your ability rather than working up from the bottom.

How is this different from a flashcard app?

The scheduling idea is the same; what's on the card isn't. A flashcard tests recognition — you see a word and try to remember what it means. Here every word starts as a listening drill and has to survive a speaking drill before it counts as known, so what actually gets rehearsed is catching it at conversational speed and producing it out loud.

Do I need an internet connection?

Core training runs on-device, offline. Plus features (cloud AI, sync, premium voices) need a connection.

Is it really conversation practice?

Yes — Scenarios put you in goal-driven dialogues with an AI partner; speaking drills grade your pronunciation and recall automatically.

What happens to my progress if I cancel Plus?

Nothing is lost. Your cards, your Library and your history stay on the device, and you carry on training on the free tier with exactly the same data — cloud sync and the Plus AI features are what stop, not your progress. You can also export your cards to Anki whenever you like, on either tier.

The LinguaBattle blue fox mascot, cheering with both paws up.

Be first into the dojo.

LinguaBattle is in the last stretch before its App Store release. Leave your email and we'll tell you the day it lands.

One email at launch · No spam, ever · Unsubscribe in one click