Learn Taiwanese Hokkien online

free interactive course2,000 real sentences works on your phonemoderate · ~1,303 hrs

Taiwanese Hokkien is spoken by about 15 million people. Taiwan's home language beside Mandarin: roughly two thirds of Taiwan's 23 million report speaking it, with fluency skewed older. Counts Taiwan's variety only. The wider Hokkien/Southern Min continuum (Fujian, SE Asia) runs to 45 million or more, but this course teaches Tai-lo orthography and Taiwan usage, so the wider figure is not claimed. Nearly every speaker also speaks Mandarin, so the pair adds few new people.

On our measured language map, its closest relatives are Pashto, Yoruba and Cantonese. If you speak one of those, much of the vocabulary will feel familiar from day one.

Structurally, objects usually come before their verbs.

one sentence from the course
split into its working pieces by the course itself: tap any piece to light up what it pairs with, and tap the speaker to hear it. Every one of the 2,000 sentences works like this.
15 millionspeakers
2,000real sentences
940patterns discovered
~1,303hours from english
Try a Taiwanese Hokkien lesson now, free, no signup or create a free account

Real Taiwanese Hokkien sentences from the course

tsa̍p-ji̍p-guán.
Join us.
kíng--tio̍h--tio̍h!
Wake up!
guá m̄-sī.
Forgive me.
Guá tsin hó-hó.
I am happy.
Guá ē-hiáu siû.
I can swim.

How the course works

Every lesson is built from 2,000 real Taiwanese Hokkien sentences, aligned with their translations word by word and piece by piece, so you always see how the sentence actually works instead of memorizing flashcards. The grammar is discovered from the sentences themselves, 940 patterns so far, and a spaced-repetition quiz teaches it in the order that unlocks the most of the language first. Our measured estimate for reaching conversational level from English is about 1,303 hours of study. Read how it works.

Learn Taiwanese Hokkien from your own language

Most apps only teach Taiwanese Hokkien through English, if they teach it at all. These starting languages already have a built course, and any other published language can be paired on request:

EnglishJapaneseMandarin

Related languages you can also learn

PashtoYorubaCantoneseFrisianDutchTajikPersianAfrikaans

Speaker figures follow Ethnologue and national censuses, rounded; the difficulty estimate is calibrated against U.S. Foreign Service Institute data.