Mandarin Language Guide & Audio - World Nomads

It’s nice that the phrases are categorized by social situations i.e. introductions, restaurant, etc but with no audio right beside it, it’s practically useless. As the Chinese guy said in the audio clip, intonation is everything because it determines the meaning of the phrase.

They went out of their way to insult our intelligence by inventing a new phonetic romanization just for this app, and left out the tones! I don't mind the slow but accurate pronunciation -- that can be useful, but anyone even half serious about learning to speak uses pinyin. And omitting tones is outrageous -- you will either not be understood, or be misunderstood, without them, and they cannot be learned just by listening.

Very shallow functionality and minimal vocabulary.

As everyone has complained, the lack of pinyin is annoying. They give you a sort of phonetic spelling of phrases, but is inconsistent. Some phrases ("The drugs aren't mine!") are a bit silly, as well. Not for learning the language, but not terrible in a pinch. Needs a lot more content.

Now won likes peepol hoo yooz fak pinyin. :( But the rest of the app is amazing!!!! 

I downloaded this app to check it out, but deleted it almost suddenly. This app does not spell Mandarin Chinese properly. In other words the pinyin spellings are wrong, I would suggest an app that uses proper pinyin which will help you out a lot more.

This is an ok app, in my books it would rank a 5 if it used standard pinyin-the pinyin taught in schools, taught to chinese people, and recognised by computer typing. I also find the standard pinyin very important not only because that is the language that is taught, but also it would help you understand the right way of saying it, which means you will look less like an idiot. USE STANDARD PINYIN AND THEN I WILL GIVE IT A 5!!!

Non standard pinyin (phonetic system for sounding out Mandarin) mixed with standard pinyin - confusing for the beginner

I have observed moderate terms in topics so you need to update lot of phrases to make it perfectly useful.

I found the language lesson dialogue to be a pleasure to listen to and I am so glad they implemented the playback controls there so one can rewind, etc to a specific point in the dialogue. I have not tried it yet, but I assume that the app will now remember where one left off in the dialogue if tha app is closed and relaunched. App could use some more content.