Learning Chinese from Spanish: where to start

You start with pinyin (the system for writing Chinese pronunciation in our alphabet) and the tones, leaning on HSK 1 vocabulary. Characters come later: sound first, reading second. If your first language is Spanish — or you teach Chinese to Spanish speakers — here's what changes, and a clear path to begin.

What a Spanish speaker has going for them

Coming to Chinese from Spanish isn't starting from zero. There are real advantages, and knowing them means you don't waste effort where you don't need to.

• The vowels. Spanish has five clean vowels (a, e, i, o, u) that are close to pinyin's basic vowels. In syllables like ma, ni or lu, a Spanish speaker's ear and mouth start ahead of an English speaker, who first has to unlearn their diphthongs.
• The grammar, surprisingly, relaxes. Chinese doesn't conjugate verbs (the verb never changes for person or tense), has no gender or number (no masculine / feminine, no singular / plural marked on the word) and uses no articles. After wrestling with Spanish's irregular verbs, that's a genuine relief.

What's genuinely new (and needs work)

• The tones. This is the truly different part. Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and they change what a syllable means: not decoration — part of the word. Here everyone starts level; it's a matter of ear and daily repetition.
• Sounds that don't exist in Spanish. Two consonant series the mouth has never made: zh, ch, sh, r (tongue pulled back) and j, q, x (further forward, against the palate). Plus the vowel "ü," which is neither "u" nor "i." Not impossible — just unfamiliar.
• The writing. The characters (hanzi) are the marathon of Chinese: learned gradually, over time. That's why you start with pinyin — the perfect crutch to get going. You can speak and understand long before you can draw the character.

An honest caveat: you'll see rankings and "official hours" that file Chinese among the hardest languages. What actually matters isn't that label — it's spreading the work well: pronunciation early, vocabulary steady, reading as soon as you can. That's the plan below.

The real problem: almost everything is in English

For a Spanish speaker the biggest hurdle isn't linguistic — it's that almost all the serious material for learning Chinese is in English. And studying a language through a second language adds friction: every word runs through one extra translation, and grammar explanations arrive tuned for a different ear.

Wanyu was built, in part, to close that gap. What's genuinely in Spanish — not machine-translated:

• Curated Spanish glosses on every card — not an automatic translation of the English, but the reviewed meaning. The HSK 1–2 vocabulary is free.
• The 371 grammar points (HSK 1–6) explained in Spanish, in Gramática (and in English under Grammar).
• The 140 chengyu (four-character idioms) with their backstory, and a fully Spanish interface (English too — the menu language is separate from the gloss language).

Said with the same honesty: an app is one tool, not the whole road. Neither Wanyu nor any other replaces classes, language exchanges or real exposure — reading, watching and listening to actual Chinese. The app orders and holds your vocabulary and grammar; the living language is on you.

The path, step by step

No promised timelines — everyone moves at their own pace — but in this order:

1. Pinyin and tones. Before anything else. Learn to read pinyin and to hear and produce the four tones. Everything else rests on this.
2. HSK 1 and 2. The starter vocabulary: 500 words at level 1 and 772 at level 2 in the HSK 3.0 standard. The official lists are free to browse, with pinyin and meaning.
3. Sentences and basic grammar. As soon as you have words, combine them: sentence order, particles, questions. The grammar points are explained plainly and ordered by level.
4. Read early, with a safety net. Don't wait until you "know a lot" to read — do it early, with support. The Reader segments any Chinese text into words; tap any word for its card with audio, and save it to a deck.
5. Spaced repetition from day one. Don't let what you learn fall away. FSRS review puts each word in front of you right before you'd forget it. If that's Greek to you, we explain it in What is FSRS.

Vocabulary figures from the HSK 3.0 standard (GF 0025-2021): level 1, 500 words; level 2, 772. See the differences between HSK 3.0 and 2.0 and the full lists. Guide written in July 2026.