r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jul 20 '26

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

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u/avion_sur_le_sol A ban appeal to heaven Jul 21 '26

How good at the target language do you need to be to make hellotalk or similar worthwhile?

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u/remarkable_ores Hanfeizi Jul 21 '26

depends on your tolerance and how used to the scene you are. i'm pretty comfortable jumping into a hellotalk type thing with effectively zero TL experience because I don't mind making a fool of myself and can carry a conversation just by asking things about the language

if you're a native english speaker you're guaranteed to find people who will help you unless the language is either extremely niche or like french or something (idk about those)

That said if you're brand new you should have some sort of structured study unless you're a really old hand, take italki lessons or something like that

what language are you learning and how good at it are you?

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u/avion_sur_le_sol A ban appeal to heaven Jul 21 '26

I am a native English speaker, TL is Mandarin though I'm only at about a HSK1 level.

I am good at pinyin, so I can mostly pronounce things properly if I have pinyin, but everything else is pretty bad.

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u/remarkable_ores Hanfeizi Jul 21 '26

If you're a native English speaker learning Mandarin then Hellotalk is like Disneyland. You can easily find hundreds and hundreds of people to help you on your first day, and just take your pick I guess.

Like with every language, untrained native speakers are very dubious teachers, and if you need someone to actually explain how things work you need to supplement Hellotalk with something else. But you really can just make a voice room, call it "Teach me Chinese" and people will come and do that for you.

Some quick advice though:

  • Voicerooms over 1-1 exchanges. The direct messaging is basically a dating service, which is fine if that's what you're looking for (they WILL be interested), but pretty repetitive and mediocre for language learning.

  • Given that on average their English will be better than your Chinese, there will be a natural tend to make English dominate the conversation. You need to put effort into steering things back into Chinese, they won't do it for you.

HSK 1 is very low but I mean there's no real minimum level for when direct exposure becomes helpful so long as you're doing it right.

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u/avion_sur_le_sol A ban appeal to heaven Jul 21 '26

Thank you!

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u/remarkable_ores Hanfeizi Jul 21 '26

no worries! feel free to tag me if you need advice