Cantonese Apps

Apps can be a great and fun way to increase target language exposure at home but with so many options available, it’s hard to know which ones will work with your child. What’s even more challenging for Chinese in particular is whether the audio language is in Cantonese or Mandarin, as I’ve seen many apps marketed as a great way to learn Chinese without any indication of which language. Here’s hoping to save you the trouble, headache and disappointment of downloading tons of apps.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of choices out there with Cantonese audio option or at least they have been well hidden from my searches. Here I am including what I consider to be the best ones from my search. There are still few more but are not included on the list due to downloading issues, app speed, and limitations on the app. The apps included on this list include fun mini games and showcase the language in a more fun positive way.

If there are any other amazing Cantonese apps that I missed, please let me know in the comments or send me a message! I am still on the hunt for a fun Cantonese games that my kids can enjoy that doesn’t focus on learning Cantonese but playing games while practicing the language.

Please note:

• The apps mention below for kids focus primarily on reading, writing and listening. None of these games teach kids how to speak Cantonese.
• My children play the iPad occasionally (once a week, sometimes once a month). I will be commenting on their experience as I have seen it over the last year or so.
• I only have access to apps compatible with apple. Some apps are only available on apple store. I do not have access to an android device.
• This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and ideas are my own.

Let’s get started! I will divide the apps based on what the apps main objective.

Reading and Recognizing Chinese Characters in Cantonese

• 認字識詞
• 多多識字
• 賽馬會友趣學中文
• Maomi Stars
• Living Chinese

Writing Chinese Characters

• Maomi Stars
• Kids Write Chinese
• 認字識詞
• 賽馬會友趣學中文

Listening and Vocabulary Building

• Occupations & Transportation
• Gus on the Go
• 樂語路故事列車
• 賽馬會友趣學中文

Other Notable Cantonese Learning Apps for Adults

認字識詞

• Spoken Language: Cantonese, Mandarin
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese
• Target Age Group: 4-8 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free (limited characters), $2.99 – $29.99 CAD for specific categories or complete full version
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: Learn characters and its stroke order. There are currently 9 categories covering 15 characters each (total of 135 characters). Characters are introduced in a way to build upon each other to create full sentences. First learn to write the character with correct stroke order. It will introduce a sentence and you will have to match the correct characters together to build the sentence. There is a quiz every 5 characters where you will need to complete the sentence with the correct character with accompanying audio. The interface is only in Chinese. It might take some time to get your account started. After your account is started, the game should be straight forward.

Our Opinions: Both my girls really enjoy this game! They love the activity where they match the characters together. There is audio every time they touch the character so it helps with learning the characters. Writing the character can be tricky especially on smaller screens. Definitely play this game on a tablet. Unfortunately, this game no longer works on my older tablet (iPad Air 2) but still works on our iPad mini 4. This game focuses on standard written Chinese. There is no explanation of the meaning in colloquial Cantonese. If your child is learning both Cantonese and Mandarin, with a click of the audio button on screen you can easily listen to both pronunciations.

Another note about this game is progress is not transferable across devices. Also, if you were to download on a new device, you would have to start the game from the beginning which could be discouraging for kids. In each category, the characters must be completed in order. This is good if a child is first starting out and needs to learn characters in order to build a sentence. However, if you re-install the game on a new device, each category will still need to be completed in sequence. There is no skipping ahead. Another thing to note is that each child can have their own account with their own progress.

Categories and Characters

• 我的家： 我，媽，和，爸，的，家，人，有，大，是，這，狗，小，孩，在
• 小狗和小鳥：不，車，上，地，鳥，天，飛，來，到，樹，下，走，起，去，了
• 好朋友：個，女，子，男，他，們，好，朋，友，兩，牠，中，球，玩，會
• 我比媽媽高：鼻，很，口，比，眼，耳，手，隻，長，也，高，得，腳，美，要
• 去公園：老，公，婆，山，園，草，花，坐，看，白，紅，黃，開，都，心
• 下雨天： 雲，黑，風，吹，力，把，見，雨，回，跑，太，門，停，陽，出
• 小魚兒：魚，色，尾，水，游，綠，裏，那，藍，同，四，五，十，多，麗
• 上學去：學，校，師，課，室，字，文，英，數，畫，寫，書，教，後，真
• 郊遊落：動，物，果，吃，愛，可，食，喜，香，味，做，給，道，每，以

多多識字

• Spoken Language: Cantonese, Mandarin
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 4-8 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free (limited characters), $9.99 CAD per month, $29.99 CAD per year, $49.99 one time payment
• Download: Apple

Description: Learn up to 500 characters through stories and games. This app contains 3 main components: learn characters 識字，games 遊戲，and stories 故事. In the learn character component, one character is introduced and then is used in a word or sentence to help learn its meaning. These sentences are not connected to make a story. They are merely to show you an example usage of the character. There are animations to help understand its meaning. In games section, there are mini games where you need to find the characters or listen to a character and identify the character that matches. In the stories, there are short stories that highlight specific characters that were learned in the lessons.

Our Opinions: My girls enjoy the game sections and if it were their choice, it would be the only section they complete. The stories and sentences are just okay in terms of excitement. This game would be for families with the goal to learn reading. There are no colloquial explanation of any of the sentences. Audio reads the text which is in standard written Chinese. Kids would need some basic knowledge before starting this game. The game can be slow at times. Kids will need to exercise some patience as the animations and audio load. Overall, its a fun little game for additional exposure for reading and listening practice.

Things that are not obvious in the app is that you can look up characters. It will give an animation of the stroke order, tell you the radical the character has and pronunciation guide (jyutping and pinyin) for the characters but no audio pronunciation. If the character is included in the game, it can bring you directly to that lesson. Another not obvious feature is that you can pause the story by clicking the screen. It reads the story rather quickly so if your child wants to stop and look at the pictures of the words, they need to click the screen to pause the story.

The character the child will be learning is also a surprise. It will show the Chinese character when it’s completed but when you are choosing a lesson, you cannot pick the character that you want to learn. This is an odd feature. My kids obviously want to practice the characters that they don’t know but with this, the target character is a surprise. After completing a lesson or game, the child will earn coins that can be used in a game room to buy things. This is the motivating factor to complete the lessons. Progress is saved between devices so it can be played on multiple devices. If you need to reinstall the app, your progress should be saved so you don’t have to start from the beginning again. There is a limited number of characters available in the free trial. I would test those to see if your kid enjoys the game before purchasing into it. I think the one time fee is worth it over the monthly subscriptions.

Maomi Stars

• Spoken Language: Cantonese, Mandarin, English
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English
• Target Age Group: 4-8 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free (limited characters), $7.99-14.99 CAD per month depending on membership tier
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: Learn up to 1000 Chinese characters in this game. Practice recognizing, writing and saying the words with fun mini games. What sets this app apart from other apps is its English interface making it inclusive to more families. The game is customizable to fit your child’s level (speaking and writing). Kids collect coins after completing each activities which they can use in a playroom to feed or play with their kitty.

Our Opinions: My kids love this game. They love the animations, the mini games, and they feel a sense of pride when they complete a character. The games has evolved to incorporate more reading opportunities. The kids did not get a chance to fully test their new features but they look very promising! In my detail review, the one thing that I thought the game was lacking was teaching character meaning and comprehension. It looks like they added phrases into the game. I see that as bonus to learning.

Kids can have their own account in the highest tier. Progress is saved between devices and if you need to reinstall the app, you can continue from where you left off.

The only thing holding me back from continuing to play this game is the subscription fee. As mentioned earlier, the kids only play their iPad once a week, sometimes once a month. It does not make sense for me to subscribe for an unknown amount of play. If your kids play regularly, it would be worth it to pay the subscription fee. Although I would still prefer a one time payment fee.

Kids Write Chinese

• Spoken Language: Cantonese, Mandarin, English
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English
• Target Age Group: 3-5 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner
• Price: Free (limited characters), $0.99 CAD for full version
• Download: Apple

Description: A simple game to learn how to write 50 basic characters. Interface is in English for easy navigation. Learn to write numbers, and basic strokes that contain one to five strokes. Follow the stroke order. Take the animal and follow its path of food.

Our Opinions: The kids enjoyed this game when they were younger. It was a great start to writing. The game was pretty forgiving on the strokes and if you missed one food you could just connect the lines rather than starting back from the beginning. My kids no longer play this game. It has a very simple design and the kids have already learned all 50 characters. One feature the kids enjoyed was that they could change the colour of their writing strokes in settings.

Characters:

• Numbers: 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十
• Two-stroke characters: 人, 力, 了, 刀, 又, 丁, 入
• Three-stroke characters: 上, 下, 口, 土, 大, 女, 子, 小, 山, 工
• Four-stroke characters: 不, 中, 天, 太, 心, 手, 日, 月, 木, 水, 火, 王
• Five-stroke characters: 主, 左, 右, 半, 出, 去, 古, 正, 永, 本, 立, 田

Gus on the Go Cantonese

• Spoken Language: Cantonese
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 3-5 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner
• Price: Free (limited characters), $4.99 CAD for full version
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: A simple game to learn up to 90 words in Cantonese from various categories. Tap on objects and learn their names. Test your knowledge with little quizzes and games.

Our Opinions: This was one of the kids first games in Cantonese. They enjoyed it when they were toddlers. They no longer play this game. It’s a great first game to introduce your kids to a variety of vocabulary such as animals, food and transportation. There is no phrases being learned in this game, just single vocabulary. The game must be completed in order to unlock new categories. Progress is not saved between devices.

Occupations and Transportation

• Spoken Language: Cantonese, Mandarin (version on a different app)
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 3-7 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free (with ads), $0.99 CAD for full version
• Download: Apple

Description: This is a matching game to learn a variety of vocabulary related to occupations like firefighter and police officer and transportation. Match objects to its silhouette to complete the picture while learning the vocab in Cantonese. Paid version removes ads during the games.

Our Opinions: This is one of my kids first and favourite app to date. The vocabulary is not every day language. It’s specific to the field that they want to play in (firefighter, construction, etc.) which still challenges my kids now and they love it. The matching to the silhouette is fairly easy to do for a toddler. You don’t even need to understand Chinese to play this game which makes it so inviting. There is no English in the app but it’s easy to navigate. You definitely want to get the full paid version. The ads are quite annoying and sometimes difficult to close for a child. This is one I definitely recommend for ages 2-5 years old. The developers do have other apps (Cantonese Game for Kids,
Learn To Brush Teeth Game). Some have stopped working on my newer iPad (mini 4) but still work on my older ipad (Air 2).

樂語路故事列車

• Spoken Language: Cantonese
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 3-7 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: This is a completely free app. There are 7 fables such as the Tortoise and the Hare to listen to. There are standard written Chinese text in the stories and the audio is in spoken Cantonese. There is a little remote to control the train to drive to each story. Each story has three level for completion. In the first level, listen to the story and answer some easy questions about the story elements (character 角色，triggering event 引發事件，event 實際行動，story ending  故事結局) . In the second level, it is the same story but you are looking for conjunction words to collect coal for the train. There are more questions at the end of the story: time 時間，setting 地點，final reaction 最後反應. In the third level, you will look for the conjunction words again and will answer a few more questions at the end of the story. In addition to the questions in level 2, you will also answer: internal reaction 內在反應，and action plan行動計劃.

Our Opinion: My kids love driving the little train around and love the new AR feature. The kids enjoy the stories. There is no audio for any of the instructions, so without support the kids are guessing the answers and clicking everywhere to find the conjunctions. The story audio is great and the app is free. I love what it has to offer but I need to explain some of the concepts and questions to the kids.

A new feature that has been added is the AR function. Download the colouring sheets. Colour and use the camera to capture the picture in AR. The AR image will mimic the colours the children have used in their pictures. There is no Cantonese learning here but it’s a fun thing for kids to try out.

賽馬會友趣學中文

• Spoken Language: Cantonese
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 4-8 years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: This is app is completely free with no ads. Listen to stories and learn a variety of words and characters. This app has three sections: 1) stories where you can listen and learn in various steps starting from colloquial to standard written Chinese, 2) radical learning where you will learn a variety of radicals, it’s placement in the character and a variety of words that contain that radical, and 3) writing.

Our Opinion: The radical learning is my and my kids favourite section of the game. It shows the evolution of some basic radical characters from oracle bone script to the current Chinese character. The learning involves short videos and mini games. The videos are not interactive but the kids enjoy watching them and they are very short. The mini games are not difficult at all and involve finding the target radical in a character and finding the character with the target radical. The short videos show the radical in some characters and teach its meaning. In the mini games, there are other characters that contain the radical, but it does not teach its meaning. Other than identifying the radical, there isn’t a lot of learning opportunities to expand vocabulary.

This game also contains a story section. My kids and I are not fond of this part of the app. The story and game section is slow so there is a lot of transitional periods of waiting for things to load. It’s not terribly slow but the game is not instant. Loading time is probably less than 10 seconds but feels much longer. There is a lot of activities to do before unlocking or fully completing one story. We have not even finished the first story yet since there is so much that my kids lose interest in it.

I believe the remaining section of the game are locked towards the story. Because we have not finished the first story, we have not unlocked the writing section and it looks like radical learning is locked until we finish more stories. I can’t say if this is true or not. I don’t know how to unlock the writing section. Radical section looks like there should be more pages but we cannot access it. Since this game is free, it’s worth a shot to see if this will fit your family needs.

Living Chinese 生活學中文

• Spoken Language: Cantonese
• Written Language: Traditional Chinese
• Target Age Group: 8+ years old
• Difficulty Level: Beginner, Intermediate
• Price: Free
• Download: Apple, Android

Description: This is app is completely free with no ads. Listen to stories and learn a variety of words and characters. Stories are written and read to in standard Chinese. There are no colloquial explanations. The app has a conveniently built in a translator for English, Hindi, Urdu and Nepali. Stories are sorted in to categories. Each topic has three levels of stories. Listen to stories and answer comprehension questions in the end and practice writing Chinese characters.

Our Opinion: This is not an app my kids use. It’s geared towards older kids and adults. It would be most effective with someone who can already read in one of the 4 above languages. This app can be also quite slow. Need to wait for animations, audio, video and pages to load. I’m adding this to the list because 1) it’s free and 2) it has a lot to offer and learn. You can click on individual characters to find its meaning. It can translate the entire text to English so it’s a great way to gauge your comprehension level. If you (the adult or older child) are already a decently fluent speaker with some Chinese characters in your repertoire and want to learn how to read Chinese characters in a whole language approach, this might be a good app for you.

Other Notable Apps

Here are a few other dictionary and translation apps to help learn Cantonese. They are targeted to adult learners. My kids do know how to use Pleco to search up words. Beware that there can be profanity on these apps if you are looking up certain words.

Cantonese Learning Apps

If you are looking for options to learn how to speak Cantonese, here are some apps that might help. I don’t personally use these apps often as I don’t find it engaging. These are targeted more to adults and cover some of the basics starting from the beginning.

That’s all the apps that I have to recommend now. Will update this post if I find any more notable Cantonese apps. Was your favourite app missing from this list? Please comment or send me on social media! If you’re looking for more resources, check out the links below and browse all the printables available on my shop.

More Cantonese Children Resources

• Cantonese Children Music
• Books with Jyutping 
• I Taught My Daughter 500+ Chinese Characters 
• Little Explorers Cantonese Virtual On Demand Program 

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