Learn Chinese from Things Your Child Already Knows | Piko
Frequently asked questions
- How does my child learn Chinese with Piko?
- They photograph an object — a toy, a cup, the moon — and Piko identifies it on device, showing the Chinese word, pinyin, tones, and each character it contains.
- Is the identification done on the phone?
- Yes. Piko identifies the object on device, so a photo of your child's world is not sent off to be looked up.
- Who is Piko designed for?
- Families raising bilingual children and passing Chinese from one generation to the next — heritage learners, whose everyday surroundings already contain the language.
- Is the photo recognition free?
- Yes. Photo recognition, the word gallery, word cards and four-way character cards are free.
The short answer
A heritage child already lives inside the language: the food, the labels, the relatives' names. The words are present. What is missing is a route from a thing they already know to the word for it.
Photograph an apple. Piko recognises it on device as 苹果, píng guǒ — and then turns the word into cards they can read, hear, trace and save.
Photograph an object
Capture a toy, a cup, or the moon. Piko identifies it on device and shows:
- the Chinese name
- pinyin
- tones
- each character it contains
Recognition happens on the phone, which matters for a product whose input is a child's environment.
Four angles on every character
A character is not a fact to cram. Piko lets your child read it, hear its pronunciation, follow the stroke order, and discover the idea behind its shape — which is the part that turns a symbol into something that means something to them.
Build a gallery
Every discovery can be saved to a personal gallery of words and character cards. It grows as your child explores more of the world in Chinese — so the collection becomes a record of their world rather than a list to work through.