Look around
Browse the entire starter set in real sentences, with characters, tone-marked pinyin and English meaning.
See the lessons →A language garden, one word at a time
Make room for Mandarin in your everyday life.
Lanki gives beginners a small, original Mandarin starter: 100 useful terms, sentence examples, and a simple place to practice recalling them. Start without an account.
Free to study · Optional account for basic sync and export · No ads or paid features active
我 · wǒOne word can open a sentence.
A gentle place to begin
From first words to your own sentences.
The curriculum is grouped into ten short lessons. Read the examples here, then use the study app to practice remembering instead of just recognizing.
Say it aloud
Learn what pinyin and tones indicate. Try a sentence before you reveal its English meaning.
Learn about tones →Come back to it
Review a few cards at a time. The app lets you self-rate recall and revisit terms over time.
Build a study habit →A real starter, not a promise
Useful pieces, chosen for beginners.
People and questions, everyday actions, time, places and polite exchanges: each lesson gives you words to combine. The sequence is editorially curated, not an exact corpus-frequency ranking. Examples and translations were newly authored for Lanki and received AI editorial review, not native-speaker verification.
Where the idea began
Start with words you can use.
Inspired by Tim Ferriss’s essay “How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months”: prioritize frequently used words, choose material that matters to you, and use a process you can keep up. Lanki applies that idea as a small, editorially curated beginner curriculum—not Tim’s word list, an endorsement, or a fluency guarantee.