你好！
Hello!
HEADPHONES ON. A FRIENDLY BEGINNING.
Free Mandarin Chinese audio lesson for beginners
Hear a short Mandarin Chinese conversation, understand its English meaning and practise at your own pace. Start with a free five-minute lesson—no account, microphone or subscription required.
Open the listening player Try your first lessonYOUR FIRST FIVE MINUTES
Listen: First words
Two prepared Mandarin Chinese voices and a slower British English guide. Press Play below, or use the app player to save your place.
Download the free lesson MP3 for your walk, commute or favourite audio player.
Start playback before locking your phone. Background playback depends on your device and browser. There is no requirement to speak aloud.
FOLLOW THE CONVERSATION
Your first exchange in Mandarin Chinese
早上好！
Good morning!
再见！
Goodbye!
Understand the words
你好！
Hello!
Nǐ hǎo. The two third tones change in connected speech: the first is usually pronounced with a rising tone.
早上好！
Good morning!
Zǎoshang hǎo is a friendly morning greeting.
谢谢。
Thank you.
Xièxie has a light second syllable.
再见！
Goodbye!
Zàijiàn literally suggests seeing each other again.
Mandarin uses tones to distinguish meanings. Pinyin is a reading aid: mā, má, mǎ and mà have different tones. 你好 is a neutral hello; 您好 is more respectful. Characters stay visible alongside pronunciation. 再见 is an ordinary goodbye.
Build everyday Mandarin Chinese, one conversation at a time
The course has 30 teaching lessons and ten mini-tests. Three lessons introduce useful words and sentences, then a short test helps you see what you understood. Answers and corrections appear at the end. You can try again without a penalty, and no lesson requires typing.
- First words — Say hello, greet someone politely and say goodbye.
- How are you? — Ask how someone is and return the question.
- Nice to meet you — Introduce yourself and ask someone their name.
- A little politeness — Make a polite request and respond to thanks.
- Where are you from? — Say where you are from and where you live.
- When you do not understand — Ask for English, a slower pace or a repetition.
Later topics include food, shopping, travel, family, directions and making plans. Animated rooms, pictures and Little Town games bring the same useful language into a different setting. A saved Text mode gives you a calmer screen.
Choose 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes
A five-minute session plays one chapter. Ten minutes plays two different chapters; fifteen plays three, twenty plays four and thirty plays six. Longer sessions continue to the next topics instead of looping the opening five minutes. Starting near the end of the library wraps to the beginning. Short phrase repetitions inside each chapter are deliberate practice.
Each new exchange is followed by English meanings and a practical breakdown. Familiar words return lightly in later lessons alongside new material. The full library has 38 five-minute chapters, including eight longer everyday conversations.
What can I use free?
The opening six teaching lessons and their mini-tests, every place and level in Binx’s Little Town, and the first five-minute audio chapter are free. A free account saves your progress across devices. The rest requires full account access; checkout is currently closed. Complimentary upgrade codes can be redeemed in the app. There are no subscriptions.
Start learning Mandarin ChineseHow this audio is made
The scripts are original beginner teaching content. Prepared voices are generated locally using free licensed voice models, then assembled with English guidance, slow repeats and processing pauses. These are synthetic voices, not recordings of a teacher or a licensed podcast. Source credits and licences are available on the Credits page. No paid audio API is needed while you learn.
The material supports everyday practice; it does not certify fluency or pronunciation. An independent native-speaker certification is not claimed.
Keep learning
Free Mandarin Chinese words with pronunciation · Games for language learning