Learning Chinese with mnemonics and spatial repetition seems like a promising way to learn characters and words efficiently. Hananzi-Hero (HH) and Mandarin Blueprint (MB) have a platform to do exactly this. But what is the difference between Hananzi-Hero (HH) and Mandarin Blueprint (MB)?
This blog contains two parts, the comparison on a higher level, and a detailed mnemonic methodology comparison.
TDLR overview:
First, it’s good to state that MB is more than just a character learning platform, it is an all-around Chinese learning course. MB is a company that offers various courses, and those courses can be included in different types of subscriptions (see their page). HH does not teach how to pronunciation but does have sound samples to show what a character sounds like. Similarly, HH does not engage in writing, listening, or reading exercises. As far as I see MB does have modules where they focus on using characters in context, and have dedicated courses and videos on YouTube on pronunciation. Also, they are active in making social media content regarding various usages of certain key vocabulary. So MB I would say is a more fully fledged course that touches most language learning subjects. For the sake of this article, we will mostly focus on the core methodology used by both platforms, that is method of loci mnemonics to quickly study Chinese ‘hanzi’.
Pronunciation:
HH = Decent AI pronunciation, and does not teach how to pronounce. Does have male/female voice and speed settings. HH explicitly states they do not teach pronunciation.
MB = Two founders who speak fluent Chinese and have sound samples for every word that is taught and also various example sentences spoken by natives.
Stroke Order
HH = Does not teach stroke order and positioning.
MB = Does include stroke order and positioning of components relative to each other.
Spatial repetition system
HH = Website has direct integration with its own SRS to memorize learned cards, no mobile apps.
MB = Third-party traverse app both mobile and desktop.
HSK level
HH = Upto HSK7 (around 3.6K traditional and simplified characters but acknowledged they do not have 100% coverage). And they do not cover/follow standardized HSK.
MB = Upto HSK9 (not sure how many characters), seems they do follow standardized HSK, but have not been able to validate it due to the paywall.
Costs and trail
HH = monthly ~10$, anually 15$ per month, lifetime ~350–449$ with a very good free trial (link)
MB = 299–599$ course basics + a monthly fee of 39–49$. (link)
Community
HH = Has an online open community, and the creators respond very quickly by the time of writing. Very easy to ask questions and engage with other learners.
BB = Has many social media channels but it's harder to engage with other course participants or get a deeper insight into the course structure without buying the course first. The community is mostly behind the course paywall.
Platform
HH: A very well-functioning website where all course materials are integrated together with the SRS. Great progress reports and insight into that which you’ve learned. You can view the entire course curriculum, both components, characters, words, mnemonics, and tones.
MB: Very hard to gain insight into the details of the course. Unless you spend lots of time going through youtube, and blog posts. SRS is a separate app apart from the course, and the course contents and details are spread out and in my view hard to ‘traverse’ xD
A short recap of the Method of Loci
The original method of loci is said to have been discovered by Simonides of Ceos who survived a banquet hall collapse and could recall where each guest was seated. Since then a lot of people have developed the method most commonly known as the mind palace. A mind palace is just a mental realm where locations are associated with visual imagery that represents the things you want to store in memory. The claim is that memories are already stored in the brain and that the linking of new information to existing memories is a very quick way to store random pieces of information. Currently, it's used a lot by stage performers to memorize lots of data like names quickly, or by memory champions to memorize huge numbers or decks of cards in a matter of a few seconds. It is also used by language learners, medical and law students (due to the big body of information they have to learn) and now you! A few examples in the language learning industry are Hanzi Hero, Mandarin Blueprint, Anthony Metivier who are big proponents of this method.
How HH en MB apply the method of loci
Both HH and MB separate learning components/radicals, characters, and words. For example, let's take the word 电视(TV), the characters are 电 (electricity) and 视 (to look at) and the components are 电 (lightning) and 衤(suit) 见 (walking eye).
- You start with components/radicals which you basically have to memorize that 衤looks like a fancy person wearing a suit. Fortunately, many components are reused and usually with 200 you can already build many many characters. This fancy-suit person will appear in the character mnemonic.
- Then you learn the character which is memorized by a movie set - the initial being the final -, and an actor — the initial — playing in that set. Then the location in the set defines the tone. This is memorized by a story/movie/set/script which describes the components, a set, and a location in the set, to interact in a way that makes it fun and engaging to remember.
- Once you have learned the scripts for 电 and 视 you know how to pronounce and write both characters with the script mnemonic (more on this later). Then you continue to learn a full word like 电视. Depending on HH and MB this is where they can differ a bit. Both try to teach link words which usually stimulates the learner to learn a logical association between one or more characters. In Chinese it’s very common to have characters where the logical meaning ‘electricity see’, 电视 , can be memorized as a logical relation ‘seeing electricity you do on a TV’. MB uses a lot of images in this process and HH uses simple phrases to memorize the connection between the characters that form the word.
Let’s dive ito the concrete approaches between the two. A mnemonic has the following components: location, actors, and components. Let’s check how each method represents those aspects.
Mandarin Blueprint
Mandarin Blueprint uses the concept of making movie sets.
The sets represent the pinyin vowels (eg. -a, -ai, -ao, -an, -ang, -o, -ong, -ou, -e, -ei, -(e)n, -(e)ng). (e.g. ‘-e’ electricity plant’, ‘-a’ auditorium)
Actors: the people that represent the pinyin consonants or also initials.
- male: initials b-, p-, m-, f-, d-, t-, n-, l-, g-, k-, h-, zh-, ch-, sh-, r-, z-, c-, s-, Ø
- female: initials y-, bi, pi, mi-, di-, ti-, ji-, qi-, xi- ni-, li-
- fictional: w-, bu-, pu, mu-, fu-, du-, tu-, nu-, lu-, zu- cu-, su-, zhu-, chu-, hu- ru-, ku-, hu-, gu-
- world leaders: yu-, nu-, lu-, ju-, qu-, xu-
The location inside a set: represents the tone of the pinyin word.
- 1st Tone (ā): Outside the Entrance
- 2nd Tone (á): Kitchen or Inside the Entrance
- 3rd Tone- Bedroom (ǎ): Living Room or Any Alternative Room
- 4th Tone (à): Bathroom or BackyardThe objects will be your “props”, which represent the character components.
Actions (i.e., how these elements all interact) will be your “movie scenes” or “scripts”, which represent the meaning of the character.
Hanzi Hero
Hanzi Hero is a bit simpler, it comes with predefined mnemonics for components actors, and stories.
Sets are the same as MB. (e.g. ‘-e’ electricity plant’, ‘-a’ auditorium)
The location inside a set: represents the tone of the pinyin word.
- 1st Tone (ā): Outside the Entrance
- 2nd Tone (á): Inside the Building
- 3rd Tone- Bedroom (ǎ): In the basement
- 4th Tone (à): Bathroom
- 5th tone (silent): On the roof
Actions (i.e., how these elements all interact) will be your “movie scenes” or “scripts”, which represent the meaning of the character.
Actors: Do not clearly differentiate between different types of actors. So initials will be memorized by fictional or real characters. ( e.g. ‘t-’ is tarzan, ‘f-’ is frodo, ‘g-’ is gandalf)
Concrete Example (个 gè)
MB: Garrit is at Emil’s (figurative friend) house (set) meditating in the bathroom (4th tone). He is sitting inside a tent (component) that is held up by a big stick (component), he is holding the stick with both hands and pondering the nature of individuality.
HH:
In HH’s case this story, people, locations, and components, are already pre-made. You have to memorize this story and in MB you have to find a set for the ‘e’ final. And a person for the ‘g’ initial. This shows a significant difference between the two.
Comparison in approach:
- HH has a very easy way to navigate to the hyperlinks, its very easy to see and trace back the meaning and definitions if you happen to forget something. MB does have something similar in traverse but you have to write down your own mnemonics in the notes and hyper linking is not as structured as HH does it.
- MB is a bit more involved as you have to think a lot in coming up with 13 locations, ~55 people, all the components, and the stories. Although they do come with a ‘suggestion’, and you can read community stories.
- In MB your locations, actors are directly tied to real memories. In HH this is an artificial location and actors Although HH has really good definitions for each location which helps to make memonics.
- In MB your props/components are placed/arranged in a very specific way which can help you to reconstruct the stroke order. HH does not have this concept.
Some reflections
In both cases, you learn this script, and its easier than you may think if never engaged in this type of learning. The brain just needs two or three memory hooks for the story’s key elements to stick. I often find myself forgetting the mnemonic but only memorizing the key pieces. The idea is that eventually the character just becomes knowledgeable and that you do not need the mnemonics anymore.
HH has a very good free tier to give you the full experience of their system, and the monthly subscriptions are very affordable too. HH is a great platform that is built to streamline the day-to-day learning user experience, you can finish all your lessons without having to touch the mouse. The entire course content can be viewed online, and it has great insight into the learning progress. In MB case the flashcards and instruction videos are separated, to me this was a big deal breaker as having two tabs open is not convenient, especially on the phone. To me it made the course feel disconnected from the flashcards and daily lessons and instead of one platform, I had to engage in two apps. The mnemonic help videos are usually 80% redundant content and it requires you to skip forward every time. The speed setting is not memorized, so I need to select speed up for every video.
HH's biggest shortcoming in my opinion is that they do not effectively use the method of loci. The locations are artificial/abstract, and the mnemonics are vivid but lack personality. MB does take a bit more effort to come up with personal movie sets which gives some initial investment of time and work, but comes with the benefit that they may be more memorable. MB develops the component mnemonics with the closed community, which helps develop better and more effective mnemonics for each thing. For every character/word, MB has some thread discussion of people discussing their mnemonics. HH has prewritten mnemonics, and a lot of the actors are from American movies and TV shows. If you have not grown up in a Western-world country it may be hard to relate to Jimmy Neutron, Timmie Turner, Tarzan, and bart simsons. And since the mnemonics are built with those actors and also related to them, it’s hard to change them or personalize them. I found my self having a considerably higher effort memorizing stories with actors that I do not know anything about.
The prices are quite a consideration, MB charches way more than HH although they do have a deeper curriculum, and they claim to bring the learner to level HSK9. So if money is not a concern for you it may be less of an issue.
A big factor in your decision may also be whether or not you want to write characters, MB teaches stroke order whereas HH only teaches components making up the character. However many argue learning stroke order is redundant in today's world with digital keyboards. And even many Chinese natives are not 100% correct in their stroke order.
Another point of interest is the qualifications the founders that teach the language. MB founders both have high Chinese proficiency and lived in China for a few years. The HH platform started development ~4 years ago and went out of beta in 2023. One founder is a programmer, the other one is someone learning Chinese, as far I can tell they have been engaged in Chinese learning for less than 5 years. There is not a lot of information out there indicating what level of sufficiency they have in speaking/reading/or understanding. To me, this sparks a little skepticism that they already built a whole course around teaching Chinese. Although HH does not overreach in claiming to teach you pronunciation, writing, and speaking. The platform based on dictionaries speaks for itself and the learner is expected to explore other sources too.
The number of tickets in HH (and probably MB) can be quite high, I am three months in and have to do around 100–120 flashcards a day. It takes roughly 20 minutes for me to go through them and then I have to spend an additional 15 minutes to learn new tasks. It takes a bit of time and that may be fine depending on the learner. But certainly, there seems to be room for improvements in their own SRS system which is still in active development. I am not fully aware of how much this compares with MB which may be similar given the approaches to mnemonics are the same. One can control the number of new daily tasks in HH tho.
Conclusion
HH en MB both use the method of loci, mnemonics, to represent Chinese characters. Those memories comprehend the meaning, pronunciation, and character ‘visual’ aspects. Both MB and HH are similar tho different in the way they build mnemonics where MB is way better at developing stroke order conserving, personal, vivid mnemonics HH is simpler as you do not have to pay too much effort in coming up with stories all the time. I think with enough persistence both methods may work for anyone. I need more time to figure out if I can retain the mnemonics long enough. My upfront time to learn a character in HH is definitely a lot shorter then it was in MB.
Given that HH is free up 100 characters + a number of words I think it's a no-brainer to give HH a try first, get familiar with learning through mnemonics, and see if it fits your way of learning. If it does and you like the platform it's quite affordable to continue the trail for only 10$ a month. Or if you are a more serious learner and have more time to spare perhaps look through the courses MB offers in addition to their mnemonic system.
To me, the biggest factors in choosing HH were: money, focus on character learning, excellent consistent user experience, and easy of bringing up any feedback.
The biggest power of mnemonic-based learning is that you quickly build up a vocabulary and its lack is not putting that vocab into practice. So also keep in mind to try to read or expose yourself to Chinese content since that will be needed to keep growing and retaining your gained knowledge.
Keep on learning! Cheers.
