蟲蟲LingoRun

Mandarin for your life in Taiwan · in development

You studied Mandarin. Taiwan still couldn't hear it.

Years of apps and flashcards, and real conversations still stall — because the sentences were never yours, and nothing ever told you the truth about your tones. LingoRun starts by interviewing you, builds the course out of your own life, and turns the reviewing itself into a game you'd play anyway.

我住在台北 I live in Taipei from your interview
我喜歡喝茶 I like drinking tea from a photo you took
你要內用嗎 "Eating here?" 他們會問 · they'll ask you

None of these came from a textbook. They came from you.

Made from your life

It starts with a conversation about you

The game opens by interviewing you — thirteen spoken questions about where you live, why you came, what you do all day. From your answers it writes language islands: your own sentences, broken into your own words and characters, every reading verified before you're allowed to drill it.

And it keeps listening. Photograph a menu, record a moment, paste your class notes — they become cards. After a real conversation goes sideways, it hands back two islands: what you could have said, and what they'll ask you next time. Day one isn't empty either: dozens of ready-made islands about real Taiwan life, from ordering delivery to taxes to mahjong table talk.

One schedule, every skill

Everything, in one loop

Speaking, tones, reading, writing, vocabulary — and grammar you absorb through whole sentences instead of memorizing rules — all graded into a single spaced-repetition schedule. There's no self-grading button to lie to. Every fork in the tunnel is two gates; to take one you must say its card correctly — the right syllables and the right tones — or you hit the wall.

ㄇㄚ mā · mother · tone 1
ㄇㄚˇ mǎ · horse · tone 3

Same syllable, different tone. Only the tone steers you — which is exactly why it finally sticks.

A deck that starts big and grows yours

17,617 cards — characters, words, and full sentences from Taiwan's official standards — on day one, and then your interview and your captures keep adding the sentences your actual life needs.

A tone coach that shows you why

When a tone is refused, the coach draws your pitch curve against the target one, so "wrong" becomes something you can see — and fix on the next gate.

A writing pad in the same loop

Draw the characters you're riding past — stroke by stroke, graded the same honest way your tones are, feeding the same review schedule.

No points, no badges

The world is the reward

There's no XP bar and nothing to streak. The world itself keeps the score — and the better you speak, the faster you ride.

A meadow you grow

Every gate you earn grows a flower on the spot where you spoke it. Pull the camera back and months of practice look like a hillside in bloom.

Sentences become stars

A sentence you've truly made yours retires — it's never drilled again. It rises into the night sky instead, one star per sentence you now simply own.

Forks that shape your world

Some forks offer two true doors — 龍 or 蛇, 山 or 海. Answer with your voice and the world remembers: dragons, mountains, whatever you chose becomes the land you ride through.

繁體字ㄅㄆㄇㄈ

Made for Taiwan

Traditional characters, bopomofo first

LingoRun teaches the Mandarin you'll actually read and hear in Taiwan: traditional characters annotated with 注音符號 (bopomofo), with pinyin as the fallback rather than the default.

In development

LingoRun is being built and play-tested now, and isn't in any app store yet. There's no download and no waitlist — just this page. Check back for a way to get in touch once there's something to try.