Native Speaker Tries Drops (Chinese)

Is 5 minutes a day enough to learn Chinese? Will colorful visualizations and creative questions make up for pronunciation errors? Let's take a look at the Drops language app this week and see what we can find!
~TIME STAMPS~
0:00 || Intro
0:36 || Download + Setup
2:09 || Lesson 0 ("tutorial")
3:36 || Lesson 1 (Foods)
7:52 || Browsing and thoughts on Day #1
9:16 || Day #2 (Radicals, Travel Talk, Prison)
14:56 || Final Thoughts
TL:DR
Drops presents information in manageable sizes and uses nontraditional questions to keep things interesting. It also offers Cantonese and Traditional characters. However, a game-like interface that's great for reviewing vocabulary is not enough to make up for the low quality, computer-synthesized voice that makes pronunciation errors 5% - 10% of the time. I would only use this app if I'm an intermediate learner who knows how to read pinyin well.
Want to try Drops? drops.app.link/dR2hftdRq7
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#Dropslanguageapp #Chinese #foreignlanguage

Пікірлер: 90

  • @markusklyver6277
    @markusklyver62773 жыл бұрын

    Drops is mainly good for picking up vocab about specific things you might be interested in, like flowers or math or programming or skiing or whatever else you might be into. Just learning common phrases could hurt your motivation if you you aren't particularly interested in just learning that.

  • @kjamfam9612
    @kjamfam96123 жыл бұрын

    I've never seen a language app with a prison unit lmao 😂😂😂 "Baton" LIKE WHAT?? 🤣💀

  • @staymile372
    @staymile3723 жыл бұрын

    I'm using the Korean version and sometimes the pronunciation is a little awkward. For example 계란 sounded more like 뎨란 to me. It doesn't bother me, but it can be confusing to beginners. Other than that I think drops is a good way to learn topic based vocabulary.

  • @nathbarbosa83

    @nathbarbosa83

    2 жыл бұрын

    I began learning korean trought drops (+ duolingo + ttmik) yesterday and it really bother me every time I see an egg in the app :v

  • @karoisart9266

    @karoisart9266

    Жыл бұрын

    @@nathbarbosa83 as someone who has drops premium and uses it for a long time now, the aggressive will dissappear rather quickly 😂

  • @JoeSmith-db4rq
    @JoeSmith-db4rq2 жыл бұрын

    Agree with the other comments about it being very good for vocab… and also, you can get scripts (it’s essentially the same and run by the same people) which is one of the best ways by far to learn all of the radicals in my opinion

  • @kalayahnobles3653
    @kalayahnobles36533 жыл бұрын

    Im learning Chinese and Im a beginner and your videos have helped me tremendously I can’t thank you enough!🤍

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    3 жыл бұрын

    You're welcome Kalayah! That makes me so happy 😊

  • @kalayahnobles3653

    @kalayahnobles3653

    3 жыл бұрын

    ABChinese i appreciate it a lot 💘

  • @TaroMxlk
    @TaroMxlk3 жыл бұрын

    I love Drops! :D Using it for Japanese

  • @ilungelo

    @ilungelo

    3 жыл бұрын

    How is it going?

  • @radimgabaj4263

    @radimgabaj4263

    3 жыл бұрын

    Same downloaded it today

  • @CBR_squid06

    @CBR_squid06

    2 жыл бұрын

    How’s it going?

  • @TaroMxlk

    @TaroMxlk

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@CBR_squid06 Thanks for asking, God! Everything is going great!

  • @CBR_squid06

    @CBR_squid06

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@TaroMxlk nice. I hope you’ve made substantial progress!

  • @itz..anilu.chann-5635
    @itz..anilu.chann-5635 Жыл бұрын

    Well, thank you for telling me about this app. I really wanted to learn everything that has to do with vocabulary. I'm learning Mandarin Chinese with HelloChinese and Skritter. But a Chinese girl just moved into our school, and I wanted to know more about her. So vocabulary could help me a lot. Thanks for telling me about a few mistakes in the app, I will try to avoid them. Still, thank you so much for making us know about this app :)

  • @nomadicgamer9466
    @nomadicgamer94662 жыл бұрын

    I enjoyed Drops when I was using it for Japanese. I think it's great for building vocab. I really love how things are set up and how it works - I just think language apps should be fun, and for me, Drops was.

  • @xinliu7885
    @xinliu78853 жыл бұрын

    I totally agree with you. The pronunciation is really off for some words. I am using Drops to learn Italian, and now I am wondering if the same problem is present there as well...

  • @JeddAhyoung
    @JeddAhyoung3 жыл бұрын

    Nice video. Very helpful. I'm currently learning Mandarin (it's been about a month and a half or so) and while I use a lot of different tools for learning, I use Anki for memorization of vocabulary and characters (and also stroke order). Anki's pretty annoying to administer, though, and lately I've felt as though I've been spending more time creating and editing cards (and dealing with issues) than I have been spending time studying. I wanted to try Drops because it seems pre-built for vocabulary, but based on this video I think I'll wait until later to try it. I don't want to internalize bad pronunciation. There are two other issues that I see with this app: 1. The writing practice seems really cool, but written characters don't actually look like computer fonts. I think this was a design choice by the app designers, and while it does look good, I don't think it's good to fundamentally learn to write this way. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I know that script proportions are very important for Hanzi. 2. The "spelling" exercises don't seem to really take Pinyin into account at all. It'd be great if the Pinyin was split between initials and finals "q + ing" but instead they're split arbitrarily, which kind of seems dumb to me "qin + g", "mi + an + ba + o" (plus the tone marks). If the Pinyin were split between initials and finals with tones, it'd make that exercise a lot more useful (for instance, for a word like 出去, you'd have to get the tones correct and you couldn't cheat it). I'm also not convinced about the five-minute thing and I know that they're aiming for subscriptions, but based on what I've seen I'll have to keep looking for a good alternative to Anki that requires less administration time. Thanks for the video!

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    3 жыл бұрын

    Yes! I completely agree with your 2 points as well

  • @saniscuddleshaped

    @saniscuddleshaped

    2 жыл бұрын

    ive been using the Immersive Chinese app lately and its been one of my favorites! its had the most natural-sounding sentences and imo the pronunciations are pretty awesome. the only thing is that, unlike these popular language learning apps, it absolutely does NOT feel like a game - it feels like studying. which might be a drawback for those who struggle to concentrate without a lot of sensory input. but i feel like ive made more progress with Immersive Chinese than any other app, and i highly recommend giving it a shot!

  • @65uuu
    @65uuu3 жыл бұрын

    I love your positivity!

  • @ellie-oaks
    @ellie-oaks9 ай бұрын

    Drops isn't really to learn a new language, but to build new vocabulary. I think is really good for me, because I want to read manhwa and novels in korean. So I'm not worry to much with the pronunciation. It have a good up side, because isnt to burdensome to learn new words and revise them. In duolingo things started to be really hard, i had too much to memorize, the flow of things didnt worked for me. I dont like to study grammar and other things hahah, i learned english basically knowing a vary basic vocabulary and then started to read manga. When i started reading manga i just read without worrying about the exact meaning. Eventually everything made sense and i just improved like that. So for everyone that is trying to learn a new language and keep dropping apps, books and videos about the language, try to do this way, find a easy app to learn vocabulary, like drops, and when you learned at lest 1000 words, try to consume the content you like, without worrying if you understand everything. If is a content you engaging with, you will understand some parts, and if is a visual content is better, because will help to understand the big picture. eventually you brain will understand the meaning of everything, without the tedious process of studying or translating. Of course, after some time, and you already understand most of the content you consuming, you will come across words that yo dont know, and you need to know to understand what is happening. Because isn't very frequent in this stage, is good to translate and se the meaning. Translating one or another word isnt that difficult, but translating everything is.

  • @Dreamoen
    @Dreamoen3 жыл бұрын

    Thanks! Please review more apps😊

  • @collinwiyoto
    @collinwiyoto2 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for making this video. Great quality. Very informative and entertaining at the same time. I enjoy watching your content :) Ignore the hateful comments ahah! Keep doing what you're doing. Xie xie!

  • @chhengsaron6580
    @chhengsaron65803 жыл бұрын

    I like your explanation.

  • @francegamble1
    @francegamble1 Жыл бұрын

    I use drops to learn to read vocabulary. I have it for Spanish, French, Esperanto, Chinese, Japanese, German and Indonesian.

  • @Selfless_Living
    @Selfless_Living2 жыл бұрын

    I was using drops for learning korea and it helps me a lot to understand hangeul

  • @marianogueira8653
    @marianogueira86532 жыл бұрын

    thank you so much for your content!

  • @CarlosOrtiz-ht6rn
    @CarlosOrtiz-ht6rn3 жыл бұрын

    Wassup man! I love the shirt! You are an excellent Mandarin teacher and I really enjoy learning from your videos. You have a calm relaxed articulate way of presenting the material that makes it easy to digest and understand, for example when you talk about pronunciation. Keep doing your thing 👍

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    3 жыл бұрын

    Thank you Carlos!

  • @icakali3158
    @icakali31582 жыл бұрын

    learning japenese with drops, it's funny how there seems like an order for words that needs to be learned first because the sequence of the words which appear first is similar, bread, breakfast

  • @catgirlx12
    @catgirlx123 жыл бұрын

    Could you do a review for Lingodeer plus in the future.

  • @angelagilbert
    @angelagilbert3 жыл бұрын

    Lingodeer is great too but you need a rudimentary foundation of Chinese

  • @petrokemp1567
    @petrokemp1567 Жыл бұрын

    Your English is so good. 你说英语说得非常好

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    Жыл бұрын

    I'm bilingual haha... my English is better than my Chinese

  • @Maximilianos_shorts
    @Maximilianos_shorts Жыл бұрын

    I have that app too!

  • @winterbalm
    @winterbalm Жыл бұрын

    you are so cute! and your Chinese language videos are very interesting too

  • @skarab5502
    @skarab55022 жыл бұрын

    A year later and they still haven't fixed the pronunciation... I have been doing mandarin on duolingo for abour a year and started doing drops to boost vocab & get basics of writing and it was already noticeably bad for me :s Another thing that I noticed that was a strange choice was that drops in sits that 是 means "yes" and 不 means "no", which from my understanding so far is like. Kinda true? But also kinda really not. Thanks for all your videos, I'm definitely going to be watching your back catalogue to help my mandarin learning journey!

  • @FUSIONJAZZMAN420
    @FUSIONJAZZMAN4203 жыл бұрын

    "it's a lot more nontraditional" Is literally the most traditional form of language learning(flashcards)

  • @qeo8946

    @qeo8946

    3 жыл бұрын

    They are talking about how most Chinese learning apps use the definition/character way. Not learning a language in general.

  • @ameliehodge6584
    @ameliehodge65842 жыл бұрын

    Don't think I'll use this for Chinese due to the pronunciation part, but might try using it for Spanish at some point!

  • @lunaradin4361
    @lunaradin43612 жыл бұрын

    So apperantly we should use this app withou using the sound xD

  • @kasianowakowska7984

    @kasianowakowska7984

    2 жыл бұрын

    I guess it depe3on the language. I am a Polish and Spanish native speaker and I can tell you those 2 languages sounds good to me.

  • @svc6550
    @svc65502 жыл бұрын

    I think it’s useful for people more advanced who want to level up

  • @Anonym-wz6mm
    @Anonym-wz6mm3 жыл бұрын

    Drops is the best app ever for me I already learnt enough in a month to talk with my Korean idols =/ Just because not every language and choosen option such as for career. Is completely right in your eyes it's still enough to an actually beginner. It's a fun app you can memorize the picture to know what it is you get to type it you get to start conversation on your own later on depending what settings you choose and you can basically learn the whole language. =/

  • @subashree7800

    @subashree7800

    3 жыл бұрын

    Do u have the premium ?

  • @leequ4649
    @leequ46492 жыл бұрын

    if u want to use drops for more than 5 minutes a day, get its sister app droplets which is for kids, its the same thing but u can changes the amount of time ur allowed to study on it!

  • @bluesSGL
    @bluesSGL Жыл бұрын

    I'm curious about the Ainu course, but I would have no idea if it was inaccurate.

  • @veryeasytitletoread5696
    @veryeasytitletoread56963 жыл бұрын

    why u so underrated ???

  • @elchavoese
    @elchavoese3 жыл бұрын

    Pretty useful content! Could you try Memrise and Busuu? If you have already tried them, can anybody show me the link? Can't find it in your videos!

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    3 жыл бұрын

    I haven't yet, but thanks for the suggestion!

  • @soccereditshd7438
    @soccereditshd7438 Жыл бұрын

    I am learning both Cantonese and mandarin

  • @gabbystudley9751
    @gabbystudley97512 жыл бұрын

    The separate apps are for writing I think

  • @asylation0476
    @asylation04762 жыл бұрын

    Ive been using drops for filipino for 4 months and I know the words but I cant memorize them when talking to a native speaker

  • @MrBCorp
    @MrBCorp2 жыл бұрын

    Unfortunately Duolingo doesn't have Cantonese so I'm stuck with Drops. I'm told that some of the words it tells me are not accurate.

  • @hugonegrete6325
    @hugonegrete6325 Жыл бұрын

    I'm doing the Russian version & the thing tends to pronounce ы really similar to how you pronounce и they are both different sounds yet in the app they sound the same, also I just saw that they teach you somewhat of the same vocab throughout all languages which is cool, not like Duolingo that each community chooses what phrases to teach ya which can lead to some pretty weird ones.

  • @hugonegrete6325

    @hugonegrete6325

    Жыл бұрын

    Also something I like about the app it's that it sections off topics instead of Duolingo just throwing you random things & you needing to pass those things in order to reach more usefull shit, like what if I'm traveling & need to learn some greeting, appreciation, asking & maybe some restaurant vocab? In Duolingo you'd need to pass certain levels in order to reach certain topics but here they're sectioned off nicely I like that.

  • @shanchahua
    @shanchahua8 ай бұрын

    Rosetta stone please

  • @karankawa1703
    @karankawa1703 Жыл бұрын

    You may as well go work for drops because pronounciation is everything lol thats how i learn

  • @yournonportuguesecousin6286
    @yournonportuguesecousin62863 жыл бұрын

    I love drops. I use it to learn Portuguese, it offers two versions of Portuguese. My chancel is me learning portuguese.

  • @phelaja

    @phelaja

    2 жыл бұрын

    Cool. im a native Portuguese speaker. It’s hard but I think it’s worth it. Good luck for ya!

  • @radimgabaj4263
    @radimgabaj42633 жыл бұрын

    I think it starts with food just because they show you how it works

  • @thevero1042
    @thevero10422 жыл бұрын

    Fun Fact::::: if you want to get more time download Drops and as well as Drops Chinese... This will give you 10 minutes 😊

  • @timothylee5089
    @timothylee50892 жыл бұрын

    I use drops almost through 700 words in Cantonese and noticed just like you did a lot of discrepancy in pronunciation also sometimes the romanized aid didn't even match what was said

  • @soccereditshd7438
    @soccereditshd7438 Жыл бұрын

    I love both Cantonese 🇭🇰and mandarin🇨🇳 but I think Cantonese is more AMAZING AND COOLER THAN MANDARIN. CANTONESE FOREVER 🔥🇭🇰

  • @dumalun8388
    @dumalun83883 жыл бұрын

    I tried drops and one day I just dropped it.

  • @petra1995
    @petra19952 ай бұрын

    Do you know if they've fixed the pronunciation yet?

  • @petra1995

    @petra1995

    2 ай бұрын

    Actually nevermind I don't wanna learn prison words 😂

  • @cloudcastle338
    @cloudcastle338 Жыл бұрын

    Can somebody PLEASE tell me if I need to learn “Chinese (Cantonese)” or “Chinese (Mandarin)” on the Drops app if I’m trying to learn “Taiwanese Mandarin”? I’m so confused and nobody will give me a clear answer 😭

  • @batuanhoang3791
    @batuanhoang37912 жыл бұрын

    I like Duolingo

  • @megahamster3147
    @megahamster31472 жыл бұрын

    I use droplets it is the kid version of drops but it's Better you can change to unlimited time for free

  • @yvelisse_yu
    @yvelisse_yu2 жыл бұрын

    I learn 逮捕 in duolingo japanese

  • @janeyue7491
    @janeyue74913 жыл бұрын

    我覺得Learn Chinese- Chinese Skills的App比drops更好。。你呢?

  • @manab6365
    @manab63652 жыл бұрын

    I think you meant "text to speech voice" xD

  • @luizychoe5018
    @luizychoe50183 жыл бұрын

    he said nobody likes mushroom 🤣

  • @UczuciaTM
    @UczuciaTM2 жыл бұрын

    The Korean pronunciation is better, but it has a hard time with the like… flow?? Like when consonants carry over. They suck at that.

  • @julialee844
    @julialee8442 жыл бұрын

    id say drops is good for cantonese but not that good for much else. i wouldnt use drops by itself instead id use it with other apps

  • @alexgeeves7096
    @alexgeeves70962 жыл бұрын

    Text to speech

  • @chaowang8465
    @chaowang84653 жыл бұрын

    你要不要考虑一下加上中文字幕=。=

  • @ABChinese

    @ABChinese

    3 жыл бұрын

    谢谢你的建议!我会考虑的,没想到会有中国人也看这些视频。🙊

  • @angelajotopurnomo468
    @angelajotopurnomo4682 жыл бұрын

    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa what drops heh🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦.

  • @blueberrysky7599
    @blueberrysky75992 жыл бұрын

    SOMETIMES APPS ARE CRACKHEADS AS HUMAN BEINGS...

  • @jeremydavie4484
    @jeremydavie44843 жыл бұрын

    You wasted time. It only lasts five minutes!