u/Heavy_Box_9763

I am a beginner in Chinese (~1 year of studying) and must take a year of foreign language study to graduate from university. I plan on becoming an engineer and am not Chinese; I only began to learn because I thought it was interesting, and I know it will take a very long time to become fluent. Is there any merit to continuing my pursuit of the Chinese language if I'm not going to be fluent, that I can't gain from pursuing an easier language or a language that may be more relevant to my work? I understand the Chinese language is important because most manufacturers are Chinese, but I don't know if this necessitates fluency, given the prevalence of AI and increasingly sophisticated translation tools.

I built a Mandarin pronunciation trainer.

You say a word, and it tells you specifically what was off. Not a score, but feedback like "you didn't rise, tone 2 must finish higher than it started" or "that x sounded like sh, keep the tongue flat." It grades tones and consonants separately against 460 native speakers, handles tone sandhi (so it won't mark a correct 你好 wrong), and shows your pitch curve against the native range so you can see the gap. Any one or two-syllable word works, and most have native audio to compare yourself against.

https://preview.redd.it/3x7tlow8dsih1.png?width=2574&format=png&auto=webp&s=c15b799e3d8d690c74066d692118cf94891f4158

It's a beta, so it will sometimes be wrong. There's a feedback box at the bottom of the page, and I read everything that comes through it. Recordings are stored (with your consent) to improve the grader.

https://tonedrill.com