250 Hour Lingopie Review

What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the channel, and welcome to the 250-hour LingoPie update. This is a series where I am taking my Mandarin Chinese from an intermediate level up to an advanced level using a service called LingoPie. LingoPie is essentially the Netflix for languages, except it comes with subtitles and a tutoring service. So, you can, while watching a TV show, click on the subtitles either in the native script or in English, add those to a flashcard program, practice them, practice pronunciation drills, and then later on, when you feel ready, you can go join a group class and practice with natives and non-natives alike. Now, I have been doing this for, at this point, seven videos. The first video appeared 4 months ago. Now, I must warn you, this is a sponsored series, meaning that LingoPie are essentially paying me to learn Mandarin Chinese via their service, which is basically my version of a wet dream. Now, guys, if you decide to sign up to LingoPie, please don't forget that there's an actual affiliate link you can click on. That's right, it's down in the description of the video. You see here? Boom, affiliate link. Using this link, you get 45% off. I'm I'm just pointing that out if you do decide that you want to use LingoPie, use the affiliate link. Otherwise, I may accidentally find you down a dark alley, and I may end up helping you impale yourself upon a sharp object multiple times. So, what have I done over the last 50 hours? Let me open up my LingoPie pie chart to give you guys all an example of what I have done. Okay, so, the last video appeared on August the 5th, it's now September the 7th, and 33 days have passed, which is actually quite drastically different compared to my normal updates, which are usually every 2 and 1/2 to 3 weeks. That is because I actually fell deathly ill for like an entire week, and I stopped doing Mandarin Chinese, I stopped doing Spanish, hell, I even stopped uploading videos. I almost stopped breathing at one point. So, I pretty much just stopped everything, okay? But, I'm back, and we're done. Now, 33 days have passed. I have done 68 hours total in some way with Mandarin Chinese during this 50-hour update. 49 of those hours have been spent on Linguee Pie, although by the time this I finished filming this video for today, uh that will be 51 hours. And by the time you're watching this video due to production, how long it takes to get out there and all that type of stuff, we may be at 55 hours. So, I have spent 47 hours basically consuming content on the Linguee Pie Pie platform. So, that is me watching content, clicking on subtitles, looking up words, and I'll give you guys all an example of that later on because you're always a little bit curious. I've spent 3 hours on their tutoring service, which is basically this over here. So, you can go join a class, a group class where you practice the language around a specific topic. Like, for example, this topic here is how to cheer up. That's exactly what I need right now. And then, I also spent under an hour on flashcards. So, I've been adding less flashcards, a lot less, and that's because I've actually decided to pivot and more focus on my production practice, which is also why I've dropped on the tutoring side of things. I am now at 5 hours of production practice, and I'll give you guys a demo of that a little bit later. And then, 14 hours of me using Chinese in real life in some way or in gaming. Now, for those who don't know, by the end of this week and probably before you even get to see this video, I am actually flying to China, and I'll be spending a month there. So, the next update is going to be hella different. But, for this one, gaming-wise, okay? I want to show you this here. I have a series where I am playing uh a game. The name of the game is It Takes Two in Mandarin Chinese with a native speaker. Each video's over an hour long. If you want to go hear me, you know, speaking in Chinese, just go hit that member join button, and you can watch this series. So, that is an example of me using Mandarin Chinese in real life and just having a good time with the language, okay? Now, if I go over to my uh individually day tracked data, okay? You can see previously I spent a lot of time on tutoring early on in the series, and now I spend a lot less time. And that is because, as I said, I am focused now on production practice. So, let me give you an example of this production practice, and then I'll show you what I've been doing on platform, okay? This way I can focus on all the skill sets that I need. But, before I do that, I just want to point out, as you can see, just under 75% of my time has been spent with LingoPie itself. Okay, production practice. This is what I've been doing, okay? I've been sitting here in the dark, cold corners of my room, alone, whispering to myself like Gollum, okay? Essentially, I will pose a question to myself in Mandarin Chinese. A question that, you know, I expect to get in real life, or I may not expect to get, but basically a question. An example might be like, "Evil Deer, why did you learn Chinese?" And then I will practice responding to that question. And the point is to try and find gaps in my capabilities, to look up how to say those things, to find, you know, basically almost mini speeches around how I would respond, and to practice those, and then to keep responding to that question until I feel comfortable that I can respond to it automatically in the moment, okay? So, an example would be like, "Evil Deer, why did you learn Chinese?" And then I'll respond, okay? So, "Wo kaishi xue Zhongwen shi yinwei wo de yuefu yuemu bu hui shuo Yingwen, erqie tamen ban lai gen women yiqi zhu le, suoyi wo juede rang wo de shenghuo biande geng hao de zui hao de banfa jiushi xuexi tamen de yuyan." So, I will do that, and I will do that for that same question, and then I'll try to respond to it again, maybe in a different way. I'll be like, "Uh Evil Deer, why did you start learning Chinese?" Oh, okay, well, um uh "Wo kaishi xue Zhongwen shi yinwei wo de yuefu yuemu bu hui shuo Yingwen, erqie uh tamen uh wo yi same question. And then when I find holes in my capabilities, I can actually go look those up. And an example of that was when I was trying to explain some actual work that I do. So, I work on simulation software. Like literally yesterday I was trying to explain my job and I was like, "Oh, okay. I don't even know how to say this, okay?" But now after practicing that, I can say, "Oh, well, your job is to develop a simulation simulation software." You know, for example, I didn't want to give too many details about specifically what I work on in that one sentence there, but that's an example, okay? And I've been doing that over and over and over and I'll be doing a lot more of that, uh, obviously as I move forward, but I will continue with the tutoring once I get back from China. So, for the next update, what you're going to see is probably similar to this, almost zero tutoring, probably zero tutoring, uh, and then a lot more in real life use of the language because obviously I'm going to be in China. The plans are I'm going to go to, uh, Hong Kong, uh, then to Shanghai because I have some, uh, clients I want to meet over in Shanghai. Then I'm going to go to my wife's hometown, which is Weifang. Uh, she needs to work while she's there online, so she doesn't have leave during that period. So, during that time I'll probably self-explore the city. And then there may be a few other little places we drop by, but that's basically going to be like the next month and a bit of me using Chinese. Okay, now that you know my plans, let me show you how I've been using Linguee Pie. Okay, so first up, I got to show you this. This makes me happy. I've been winging to Linguee Pie about various different features over like the last few months and mentioning them in videos, but finally we can set our target. >> few months, and mentioning them in videos, but finally, we can set our target. Originally, Linguee Play had a target every day of 7 minutes. You could not change that. That was just it. But now, you can set a target, and you can see I've set my target to 99 minutes. So, if I go click on this, you can type it down here. Now, personally, I would like to set that to 120 minutes, but for some reason, they've capped it out at 99 minutes. So, now I'm going to winge about the fact that I can't set that to 120 minutes. It seems a little bit strange. And also, I can see that they've got casual as 5 minutes, learner as 10 minutes, serious as 30 minutes. I know where they're getting from this from, because like literally every app out there says the same thing. Serious is like 30 minutes. When if you're actually in the language space, you know serious language learning is not 30 minutes a day. That is actually casual, okay? Serious language learning is 2 hours a day, okay? And then casual is 30 minutes. Like 5 minutes is it's like nothing. 10 minutes is like maintenance. Like that that would be basically it. So, I feel like they should definitely change these tags around, but I understand why they put them like that, because that's that's literally every app says that. But if you're in the language space, like me, you know those tags are completely incorrect, and this should definitely be able to be set a lot higher. But I am glad that I can at least set that now, because 7 minutes I blew that away so fast historically. Okay, so what we're going to do is I'm just going to watch this TV show that I've got here. A mortal's journey to immortality, okay? We're going to turn on Do I want pinyin? No, I don't. I don't want pinyin. I'll turn on No, I don't even want English, okay? So, what we're going to do is we're going to watch through this little bit, and I'm going to show you how I use it, okay? The great thing is you can just hit the buttons left and right on your keyboard to jump forward and backwards between subtitles, and I'm just going to start from this point, because actually before this point, it's just this dude fighting with some monster. And if you've ever seen Chinese fight scenes, they're like the Matrix but on [ __ ] steroids. So here we've got Shang-Chi to come down to young the Yue Liang. So the last time I saw this kind of, you know, moon as we've got here. So you got the last time saw such or this kind of moon. Yep. Nothing I need to look up there. Uh did I jump Okay, so next is uh but it was a long time ago. So nothing I need there. Okay. Um how is this one? It's like So I know all of these words here. Okay, so it's basically saying um the food here it's it's been stolen all the food. All all like the the Is it like grains or crops? Like Yeah, it's grains. Okay. Woman create Zahuo ya. Woman create Zahuo ya. So this here I do kind of know this one. What This is like livelihood. That is kind of colloquial. So I wouldn't need to look that one up. So Zamen jieshi zhongdi ya. Zhongdi de ya. Okay, so uh this is just we So these um how do I translate this? Again, it's like crops. Is it crops? No, farmers. That's interesting. See, now I need to double-check. Farming. Okay. And then if it says zhongdi de, that'd be like farming related. So I guess like farms and I don't know. I don't I wouldn't translate that as farmers, but I guess there's no good English translation there. Liangbian dou Uh is that No. Bu qi. I I'm not too sure about that one. Yeah, see, this is something I don't know. So what do we got? >> [bell] >> Re bu qi. Okay, so what I should have done is actually turned on Pinyin for this one. So, re bu qi. can't afford to offend. So, you're bougie. Okay, so here I would now try to think of a sentence I could practice this in. And by the way, you notice I'm actually not even watching at the moment. I would actually do an initial watch through of this whole thing and just listen. Then the second walk through, like what I'm doing right now, is where I'm just kind of like looking up the words I don't know. And then the third stage would be to go back through and listen to the whole thing. And then come back another day and do it again just to kind of cement it. So, you're bougie. So, can't afford to offend. Okay, so they can't afford to offend both sides here. This would be an instance where I'm not too sure because here what we've got is the thing that you shouldn't offend comes first. So, in this case I could probably say something like ta men bougie. Or [ __ ] in. You're bougie. I'm not too sure. So, maybe I would open up an AI or I just type it straight into Google. So, it'd be like um ta men you're bougie. They are not to be trifled with. You can't offend them. Yes, I think that would be that makes sense. Okay, so do I have like chat GPT or something here? Let's just go open up Gemini. Is this a valid sentence? Ta men you're bougie. You're bougie. You're bougie. Completely valid natural idiomatic. Okay. And it says um they are not to be messed with. Yeah, so yeah, I've got it. Now, the grammar is not quite like what you would expect in English, but you can see just based on looking at that Lingo Play sentence I could kind of figure out how it fits together. And then I would do the next one. So, uh yo t-sure uh not Oh, I've got I hate seeing Pinyin above because it kind of like messes with me. So, Yelang bang so Yelang is that like wolf? Wild wolf gang. Maybe bang here can actually mean gang. But bang usually means help. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to just go slap this over in here and just see. Wild wolf gang. Okay. Now, I'm very curious about this. Break this down into its parts. See, this is an example of how I'd I'd work through these sentences that I'm not too sure about. Like why is that being gang? Can that character Yeah, so it says the same thing. Okay, so bang gang faction cut. Maybe I'm I think I've actually visually mixed this one up with the other bang. No, it is the exact same character. I did not know it had a secondary meaning. So, I can just double-check. Is so la means both help and gang? How did that come about? So, the evolution from help to gang comes down to physical support shifted to mutual aid and eventually to organized factionalism. Interesting. Now, this may be completely hallucinated by the AI, but even if it is okay. Like I do know it means gang now. Like we've we've double-checked it with Linguee Pi. Linguee Pi was correct. I've then checked it with Google Translate. Google Translate said it meant gang. I've come over here and it said the exact same thing. So, we've got like three separate sources. So, we we know it also means some type of gang at the moment. But like why it led to that, I don't know. And even if this is hallucinated by AI, it's probably going to help me remember it. So, you know, helping becomes some form of a gang if you're helping people. So, we've got mabang, a caravan brotherhood horse traders. So, that's literally horse gang. Okay. Wow, that see this is just fascinating. And I'm never going to forget this now. And that's something you can do now. So you can just hit play and listen to it. And this can all be done by your keyboard. Like I don't even need to use my mouse. I can just hit space here. Here this is like deceiving or bullying. Oh yeah, yeah, it's bullying. That's right. Okay, so t full up. Okay, so that is an example of what I do. And then now that I've looked up each of those words, you know, I'll just go back to where we started which was here and I'll just listen. >> [sighs] >> Okay, and then that's it. So I'll just listen to it and focus in on those new words that I'd heard. And I might do that actually a few times as well. And I can do it in segments like what I'm doing here or I might do it over the whole video. Really depends on how many words that I'm looking up. And at the moment, you know, it's at normal speed. I know some people like to listen to beginner and intermediate. I actually just like to listen at full normal speed. Even if it's really difficult for me. And the simple reason being is because you need to get used to full normal speed. No one's going to speak at a beginner speed for you in real life. And plus it always sounds kind of mechanical if you're swapping down to a beginner speed cuz you know, it's like it's mechanically drawn out. It doesn't sound as good. So it's better to just get used to that. And that's what I'll do. I'll just keep going through it exactly like this. Now, plans for the next month are going to be insane. I will continue doing Linguee Pie while I'm in China. Funnily enough, Linguee Pie is completely accessible while you're in China. There is no issues accessing the service over there. Unlike for example, other services I've used Dreaming Spanish where all their videos are hosted on YouTube. Guess what? When you're in China, you need a VPN if you want to get on to like YouTube. But, the great thing is with Lingopie, I can just I can use the whole service while I'm over there. Cuz I remember I asked my teacher about this. Yes, that's right. My tutor on the service, okay. So, he actually told me it just works completely fine while he's over there. Yeah, cuz he's obviously based in China, so there's no issues. So, that's pretty much it. If you guys have enjoyed this video and you want to see anything specific in future videos, let me know down the comment section. Of course, if you decide you want to get Lingopie, go via the link down in my description. You'll get 73% off. I'll make some money from this, which helps me learn more uh because like, you know, I get money and Lingopie will continue supporting the service moving forward. So, the more support you guys show towards this series uh via, you know, actually going via my links, uh the more likely that this thing can go on for the long term and I can get to a [ __ ] insane level in Chinese. And I will continue doing my production practice. Uh and then hopefully, my long-term crazy goals are by mid next year, I want to start doing the Chinese podcast uh route. Basically, I will jump from one podcast to another to another, just, you know, doing interviews in Chinese. That is my my plans for about mid next year. I think I should be at a a happy place where I can do that. Anyway, if you guys have enjoyed this video, let me know down the comment section below, and I'll see you all at the next video. And if you're not there, well, I will find you and I'll give you whatever almost killed me for like 6 days there.