Ever wonder how people end up creating language-learning apps? For Sarah Aberman, one of our founders here at Nincha Languages, it all started with… a Korean speech. Recently, she sat down with Mischa Wilmers on the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast to share her story, and honestly, it’s not what you’d expect.
“You know what, all the cool things kind of started out randomly,” Sarah explains, thinking back to her first brush with Asian languages. She was in middle school when she heard a Korean speech during a trip that completely captivated her. Living in Lille, France, she naturally wanted to learn Korean after that. But sometimes life has different plans, especially in a city where Korean classes weren’t exactly growing on trees.
“I looked around to see what I could find,” Sarah recalls, “and it turned out that my German teacher in middle school had a Chinese club at lunchtime.” Now, if you’re thinking ‘wait, a German teacher running a Chinese club?’ – yes, that’s exactly what happened. And this unexpected detour? It changed everything.
The Magic of Characters
This German teacher turned out to be something special. “He was just absolutely fascinated with Chinese characters,” Sarah shares, her voice warming at the memory. ” He was very good at transmitting that passion for Chinese characters. And that’s how that got me hooked, really.” He would tell stories about the characters, bringing them to life in a way that made learning feel like an adventure rather than a chore.
But what about those early learning days? Sarah’s quite honest about them. “I wish I had done more, but no, honestly at that stage, it was really just going to the classes in school.” Remember, this was before smartphones and easy internet access – we’re talking about the early 2000s here. “It was very much textbooks and paper dictionaries,” she says with a laugh.
Speaking of paper dictionaries, Sarah has a particular fondness for them now: “People that have had to use paper dictionaries to learn Chinese, to find characters – remember what that was like? It’s still a good experience. I think it teaches you a way to apprehend Chinese characters that we don’t look at anymore.”
The Shanghai Wake-Up Call
Fast forward a few years, and Sarah’s headed to Shanghai at age 19 for an internship at the French consulate. Picture this: a young student, armed with good grades and plenty of confidence, ready to take on China. “I thought I had a really good level of Chinese at that time,” Sarah remembers. “I’d done my three years of high school, and I had my bac, which is your big exam at the end of French high school. I took Chinese then and got a really good grade, so I was super confident when I got to China.”
But then reality hit. “I realized that nobody, absolutely nobody understood me,” she says, able to laugh about it now. “I had to go back to pointing to myself and saying 我 ‘wǒ‘ – that was very, very frustrating, but it was also like a good wake up call.” It’s a moment many language learners can relate to – that humbling realization that classroom Chinese and real-world Chinese are two very different beasts.
But here’s where Sarah’s story gets really interesting. A lot of people might tell you, “Just go to the country, and everything will solve itself!” Did that work for Sarah in Shanghai? Well… “It’s just so big that you can rely on not using Chinese if you’re lazy,” she admits candidly. “I was 19 and I was having fun and I didn’t use as much Chinese as I should have.”
The Harbin Game-Changer
Then came Harbin – and this is where everything shifted. Picture a city about 500 kilometers from Vladivostok, right up near North Korea. “The three main languages that were spoken there were Chinese, Russian, and Korean – no English,” Sarah explains. “So suddenly Chinese is like the easy option!”
This environment forced her to use Chinese out of necessity, and that’s when her language skills really took off. “I think I progressed a lot more outside of my classes,” she reflects. “Interacting with people in the street or interacting with other students that we met, that definitely helped progress.”
The Birth of Ninchanese
Coming back to France with significantly improved Chinese skills, Sarah faced a new challenge: how to maintain and continue improving her language abilities. “Once I was no longer in that full Chinese immersion, I wanted to not lose all that progress I’d made,” she explains. “I wanted to keep training and practicing.”
The memory of this struggle led to what would become Ninchanese. “That’s how the idea to create the prototype started,” Sarah shares. “Those experiences in China definitely shaped what we didn’t want in terms of approach. We didn’t want other people to have that same experience where you get to China and think, ‘oh crap, I thought I could speak, but I can’t.’” It helped shape what Ninchanese should be about.
What’s New at Nincha?
During the podcast, Sarah shared some exciting news – “we’ve just released a new Chinese grammar app available in six different languages. It’s part of our ongoing mission to make Chinese learning more accessible and, yes, actually enjoyable. “ Because as Sarah discovered through her own journey, the key to mastering a language isn’t just about memorization and drills – it’s about staying engaged and motivated throughout the process.
“Learning a language is fun and it should be like that,” Sarah insists. “It’s such an amazing experience to discover Chinese and to work with the characters. It’d be a shame if it was boring at the same time.”
Want to hear more about Sarah’s journey, including her tales of linguistic mishaps and triumphs? Check out the full episode of the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast (https://imlearningmandarin.com/podcast/). And if you’re ready to start your own Chinese learning adventure – hopefully with fewer pointing-and-miming-moments than Sarah had – come join us at Ninchanese (https://ninchanese.com)!, or Nincha (https://nincha.co) , or Chinese Grammar app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chinesegrammar).
PS: The I’m Learning Mandarin podcast really digs deep into what matters for Chinese learners. Host Mischa Wilmers talks with leading educators while sharing insights from his own journey to fluency. You can find more fascinating episodes at https://imlearningmandarin.com/podcast/