🐉 ChineseIsEasy — Tools to Learn Chinese Efficiently

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Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Repositories

  • RandomConversation — French → Chinese Training With Real Dialogues
  • AnkiWords — Large Vocabulary Decks by Frequency
  • HSKWords — Structured HSK Decks with Audio + Animations
  • MinimalExample — Clean Architecture for Stroke Animation + Audio

• License

• Author

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Introduction

ChineseIsEasy is a collection of tools that I (Axel) built to accelerate my Mandarin studies as a French learner. It contains:

• tools to practice conversation & translation
• generators for large, structured Anki decks
• infrastructure for HanziWriter stroke animations, gTTS audio, and shared JS pipelines
• clean templates for Anki Desktop, AnkiDroid, and AnkiMobile

Most tools were initially made for French → Chinese learners, but the code is fully adaptable to other languages.

⚠️ These are personal-study tools, shared to help others, without guaranteed maintenance.

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Repositories

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RandomConversation — French → Chinese Training With Real Dialogues

A lightweight script that displays random French conversation snippets from large corpora (e.g., OpenSubtitles), so you can:

1. read a natural French dialogue
2. refine it using an LLM (optional)
3. translate it into Chinese
4. ask the LLM to correct + explain your translation

This process improves: ✔ vocabulary recall ✔ idiomatic phrasing ✔ fluency ✔ cultural intuition ✔ bidirectional thinking (FR ⇄ ZH)

Example

$ python RandomConversation.py -n 7

→ returns a real dialogue snippet → you expand it → translate it → refine with an LLM

A full example is included in the README.

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AnkiWords — Large Vocabulary Decks by Frequency

Generates two large Anki decks covering ≈25k most frequent Chinese words, enriched with:

• Simplified + Traditional
• Pinyin with tones
• French meaning / explanation
• Example sentences (CH visible → Pinyin + FR revealed on click)
• HanziWriter stroke animations
• Word audio via gTTS
• Category-based deck structure
• Shared JavaScript for performance
• Split into 2 decks to stay < 250 MB (AnkiWeb limit)

Prebuilt decks

Download directly here (no coding required):

👉 https://github.com/AxelDlv00/ChineseIsEasy/releases/tag/v1.5

• ChineseIsEasy-Words-CharToPinyin.apkg
• ChineseIsEasy-Words-PinyinToChar.apkg

Preview

Left: category-based structure — Right: card with stroke animation + audio + reveal

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HSKWords — Structured HSK Decks with Audio + Animations

Generates fully interactive HSK vocabulary decks, grouped by:

• HSK level (1–5)
• chapter
• chunks of 100 cards (for performance)

Includes:

• Simplified + Traditional
• Pinyin
• Meaning (French)
• Example sentences (Chinese + audio + reveal)
• Stroke animations
• Word audio
• Clean templates compatible with Desktop, Android, iOS

Current coverage (v1.5)

• ✔ HSK1 Lessons 1–15
• ✔ HSK2 Lessons 1–15
• ✔ partial HSK3
• ✔ partial HSK5

Preview

HSK deck browser — Sample card with full animation + audio

Download

👉 https://github.com/AxelDlv00/ChineseIsEasy/releases/tag/v1.5

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MinimalExample — Clean Architecture for Stroke Animation + Audio

A minimal, production-ready demonstration showing how to build Anki cards that have:

• ✔ HanziWriter stroke animation
• ✔ gTTS audio
• ✔ replay button
• ✔ custom audio button
• ✔ no duplicated JS (shared media files)

This mini-module is the reference architecture used in the larger decks.

It explains:

• why embedding JS fails
• how to load _hanzi-writer.min.js correctly
• how to write _shared_hanzi.js
• how audio buttons trigger Anki’s hidden replay engine
• how to avoid caching issues across card generations

Perfect for anyone wanting to create custom animated Anki cards.

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License

Released under the MIT License. Free for personal, research, and educational use.

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Author

Axel Delaval (陈安思)