Should you switch your phone to Chinese?

What a phone in Chinese says

We read the official Simplified Chinese text of three pieces of software in October 2026: Android's own apps (Settings, the system bar and its notifications, Contacts, Calendar and Email)¹, the messaging app Signal² and the Firefox browser's main windows³. That is 79,295 words in 15,286 strings: buttons, menus, settings and the sentences that explain them. Each word is checked against the 2025 HSK list.⁴

HSK 1–4 words cover about as much of a phone as they do of a news article (52%) or a game's menus (44–56%, games), and far less than of a novel (68%). HSK 5 is where a phone opens up: its words alone add 23 points, from 56% to 79%, against 20 for HSK 4 and 10 for HSK 6.

我把手机的语言改成了中文。

手shǒu机jī

Noun

mobile phone; cell phone

Also written 手機

A phone is made of few words

A phone says the same things again and again. The commonest 452 words make up 80% of all three apps' text, 392 of Android's and 269 of Signal's; a game's menus took 626–912 and a game's story 1,210. A string is three words long at the median, such as 添加成员 (add members) or 正在关闭蓝牙 (turning Bluetooth off).

The words that come back most are HSK 5 and 6 words: 设备 (device), 应用 (app), 设置 (settings), 屏幕 (screen), 功能 (feature), 数据 (data), 显示 (to show), 关闭 (to turn off), 删除 (to delete), 网络 (network) and 连接 (to connect) at HSK 5; 开启 (to turn on), 添加 (to add) and 解锁 (to unlock) at HSK 6; 更改 (to change) and 启用 (to enable) at HSK 7–9. Each app adds its own: 群组 (group) and 备份 (backup) in Signal, 标签 (tab) and 书签 (bookmark) in Firefox.

A word has to come back many times before it is known well; in one study, what learners knew about a word grew with each meeting, most at ten.⁵ On a phone, 555 different words above HSK 4 come back ten times or more, and together they are 39% of everything it says.

Will it be too hard?

A text is easy to follow when you know about 98% of its words.⁶ Even all of the HSK list, about 11,000 words, reaches 96% of a phone, so some words will always be new. What makes a phone easier than a news article is that you already know what its screens do: 删除 on a message you meant to delete is easy to guess, and you will meet it again tomorrow. Meanings beside the text help learners of Chinese learn new words, even ones they meet once.⁷

How to switch without getting lost

• Learn the way back first. On Android, 设置 (Settings), then 系统 (System), then 语言 (Language) leads to the switch; write the three down before you change anything.
• Wait until about HSK 4. Below that, a phone is mostly words you don't know; at HSK 4 it is about half, and the next hundred words bring it to 80%.
• Learn the hundred phone words. 设备, 应用, 设置, 屏幕, 显示, 关闭, 删除, 添加 and 连接 are on screen after screen; save them to your Backpack and they come back in Review.
• Switch one app at a time. Signal was the easiest of the three, 61% HSK 1–4; many apps follow the phone's language, and some let you choose their own.
• Read with help. In the browser, point at any word with Mandarin The Wild for its pinyin and its meaning there; for a screen you can't point at, take a screenshot and Pinyin X-Ray puts pinyin and meanings over its text.

How we counted

The text is each project's own Simplified Chinese strings as it publishes them, read in October 2026: Android's Settings, system bar, Contacts, Calendar and Email from the Android Open Source Project¹, Signal for Android², and twelve of Firefox's translation files, its main window, menus, tabs, settings, new tab, bookmarks, downloads and private window³. A phone maker's own apps and settings differ from Android's and aren't counted. Placeholders, markup and resource names are left out, and strings marked not to be translated are passed over. Words are cut by our engine and levelled on the 2025 HSK list the way the Library levels a story; "all of HSK" includes the advanced band 7–9, and names the dictionary only knows as names are left out. Shares are of all the words an app has, each counted every time it appears.

Questions

Should I change my phone language to Chinese?

Yes, once you know about HSK 4 words. In the Android, Signal and Firefox text we counted, HSK 1–4 words are 56% of what a phone says, and the commonest 100 words above HSK 4 bring that to 80%. Learn where the language setting is before you switch.

What Chinese words do you need for a phone?

Mostly HSK 5 words: 设备 (device), 应用 (app), 设置 (settings), 屏幕 (screen), 显示 (to show), 关闭 (to turn off), 删除 (to delete) and 连接 (to connect). 452 different words make up 80% of the text we counted.

How do I switch my Android phone back to English?

Open 设置 (Settings), then 系统 (System), then 语言 (Language), and pick English. Phone makers move these menus, so look for the same three words.

Sources

Checked on 19 October 2026. Prices and features change; tell us if one has.

1. Android Open Source Project: the Simplified Chinese strings of Settings, the system bar, Contacts, Calendar and Email, the text we read (from its public mirror)
2. Signal for Android: its Simplified Chinese strings, the text we read
3. Firefox: its Simplified Chinese translation files, the text we read
4. HSK: the official site of the Chinese Proficiency Test
5. Webb (2007), The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge, Applied Linguistics 28(1)
6. Hu and Nation (2000), Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension, Reading in a Foreign Language 13(1)
7. Zhou and Day (2020), The incidental learning of L2 Chinese vocabulary through reading, Reading in a Foreign Language 32(2)