Play & Learn Chinese

Genre: Educational

Players: 1

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Review:

Play & Learn Chinese is an Educational Application released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2011, as well as being released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. This software aims to help English-speaking players to learn words in Chinese (technically Mandarin).

I should note that this software is virtually identical to Play & Learn Spanish, even using the same visuals. As such, I will be using the same text for both reviews.

I should make it a note to say that this game is specifically about learning words, not about giving players a working understanding of the language. There are some simple sentences for players to learn here, but there’s nothing to indicate to players how sentence structure differs from English, or how words change based on context.

The presentation here is fairly straightforward, giving players a few simple categories to choose from, and then sub-categories within those to indicate the types of words contained within each section. Clicking on one of those sections, you’re taken to a page full of 2D images, and touching one of these on the touchscreen will show you the English and Chinese words for that thing, and play a voice clip of someone pronouncing that word.

As far as I can tell, this game doesn’t even attempt to try to judge your pronunciation, but there is a “game mode” where you can test your memory within a section to see if you remember which words mean what. It’s not all that much of an actual “game” any more than flash cards would be, but at the very least it’s some form of interaction.

I have to be honest, I feel a bit silly having bought this game to review in 2023. It’s pretty clear that if someone genuinely wanted to learn a new language, there are multiple better tools available to you right now. Duolingo comes to mind, for one. As such, I’m not sure there’s any good reason to get Play & Learn Chinese now. But I did. So… you’re welcome?

tl;dr – Play & Learn Chinese is an Educational Application to learn to speak words in Chinese (specifically, Mandarin). This software focuses far more on basic dictionary vocabulary than practical sentence structure, and if you’re trying to learn this language you’re better off just going with Duolingo instead.

Grade: C-

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