Laonei (老内)

Laonei is a translator for foreigners living in mainland China. You press once and speak; the phone says it in Chinese, out loud. You hand it over; they answer, and it comes back in English, set large enough to read from a metre away.

Where the name comes from

Everyone who has spent a week in China knows the word 老外 (lǎowài). It is the everyday word for a foreigner — literally "old outsider". It is not an insult. It is just the word, and you hear it in shops, in taxis, from children on the street, several times a day, until it becomes part of the background of your life there.

老内 (lǎonèi) flips it. Nèi is inside. Old insider.

Nobody is called that, which is the point: it is the joke of a word for the person you slowly become when you have worked out how the queue at the hospital really works, which noodle place is the good one, and what to say when the delivery driver calls and you cannot hear him. Not a local. Not a tourist either.

What the app does

Talk. One control. There is no language toggle: Chinese characters going in mean English coming out, anything else means Chinese coming out. In the middle of a conversation nobody should be choosing a direction. Both halves stay on screen, because conversations refer back, and it speaks by itself, because nobody presses play while a stranger is waiting.

Phrases. Everything you have actually needed is kept, and becomes a deck you can go back to. Not a textbook's idea of the first hundred words — the ones your own week made you ask for.

Stories. Chinese legends and history, narrated in chapters, in plain English: Mulan, the Monkey King, the white snake, Chang'e, the Nian monster. They are the stories everyone around you grew up with, and knowing them changes what a festival looks like.

Who it is for

Students, teachers, people posted to a Chinese office, people who arrived for a year and are now on year four. Anyone whose Chinese is somewhere between none and not enough for the day that just happened.

Not the other Laonei

There is a separate product at laonei.app — a reps-first drilling engine, for a different kind of practice. No relation, no connection, different people. If you are looking for that one, it is over there.

This Laonei is at liuxuesheng.help, and it is the one with 老内 next to the name.

FAQ

What does laonei mean? 老内 (lǎonèi) means, roughly, "old insider". It is a play on 老外 (lǎowài), the ordinary Chinese word for a foreigner, which literally means "old outsider". Laowai is what you are called when you arrive. Laonei is the joke about what you slowly turn into.

Is Laonei free? Check the App Store listing for what is included today — this page deliberately does not carry prices, because they change and a stale number is worse than none.

Does it work inside mainland China? Yes. The app is deployed so that it reaches mainland China, which is the only place its purpose makes sense.

Do I need to choose a language before I speak? No, and that is deliberate. It works out the direction from what it hears.