Give your Chinese a voice
You can read and understand Chinese, but when someone speaks to you in Chinese, you freeze up. Tonghua gets you producing Chinese out loud, one sentence at a time.
Speaking is another story.
A call to the bank. A toast at your cousin's wedding. Explaining symptoms to a doctor. The words are right there, and they won't come out.
There's a name for that.
Linguists call it being a receptive bilingual: native ears, out-of-practice mouth. Understanding and speaking are different muscles, and every app you've tried trains the one you already have. Tonghua trains the other one.
A course that's a story
One Shanghai lane. You arrive at your grandmother's door, and the only person there who knew you before is a childhood friend you have not seen in seven years. The scenes are the conversations you'd actually have to have.
Two episodes are live, 外婆's and 陈曦's. The rest of the season is being written.
What Tonghua won't do
No guilt mechanics. The story is the reason to come back.
Feedback tells you what to say, not which aspect particle you violated.
Being understood is the bar. You are never marked down for not sounding like a newscaster.
It won't re-teach what you grew up hearing. Strong ears, stuck mouth, it starts there.
Say it, don't tap it.
Two episodes, plus 30 standalone practice scenes. Graded out loud, in your browser.
Lane photograph by Haugenzhays Zhang, Hongkou, Shanghai. Unsplash Licence.