Learn Mandarin from YouTube with pinyin

A Mandarin YouTube video is useful only if you can read the line you just heard. taihaa takes the subtitles, shows pinyin over them, and lets you save the words that blocked you. It does not add captions to a video that has none.

What you need

• A YouTube link. Watch, youtu.be, and Shorts links all work.
• Subtitles in Chinese. Creator captions are used when they exist. Otherwise taihaa uses auto-generated captions. Auto captions are often wrong.
• If no subtitles are found, paste a transcript yourself. The video can still play.
• Mandarin as the lesson language, so the text gets pinyin rather than Cantonese Jyutping. When both Mandarin and Cantonese are possible, you can pick. Written Cantonese particles such as 佢, 係, 唔, and 嘅 mean the captions match Cantonese speech.

Turn the video into a lesson

1. Create a free account and paste the link on import or on a new lesson. Start reading free.
2. Look the video up. Choose Mandarin if both Mandarin and Cantonese are offered, unless the captions are written Cantonese.
3. Create the video lesson. Video mode keeps the player above the caption text. Read mode hides the player and leaves the text. You can tap a word in either mode.
4. If the channel disables embedding, the lesson still opens and the video plays on YouTube.

Pinyin on the captions

The caption text is a normal Mandarin lesson. Pinyin, with tone marks, sits above the characters. Turn it off when you want to try a line from the characters alone. Pinyin is generated. Check a reading that looks off. The pinyin guide covers the letters and the tone marks, and the Mandarin reading guide shows the same screen.

Split a bad word break

Captions are not dictionaries. A line may glue two words together or cut a compound into single characters. Open Split (Fix word split) from the word panel and tap between characters to add or remove a break. That splits a compound into characters, or joins characters into one word. The change is saved on that lesson for you. Reset puts the automatic split back. New pieces get translations and review cards the same way as any other word.

Save the words that stopped you

• Tap one word. Check the English translation before you save it.
• The sentence stays attached, so review is the caption line, not a bare word.
• Dictionary lookups have no daily cap. A new AI translation, only when the dictionary has no entry, is 8 a day on the free plan.
• Natural Mandarin voice is 5 plays a day free.

Limits

• Free accounts can create 3 new video lessons a week. Taihaa Plus removes that weekly cap, within fair use. Text imports are not part of this cap.
• A Cantonese subtitle track will not become spoken Mandarin just because you wanted it to. The Cantonese path is learn Cantonese from YouTube.
• Auto-generated captions drift. Read the line before you save a word from it.
• Copyright still applies. The lesson is for your own study.

Paste one link and read the captions with pinyin. More on the reader is on the Mandarin page.