Terms of Service

You must be at least 13 years old (or older where your local law requires a higher age) to use CNLingo. If you are under 18 (or the age of majority where you live) you may use CNLingo only with the permission of a parent or guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use, including any purchase. Younger children may only use CNLingo through a parent's account under supervision — see the Privacy Policy.

You must not use CNLingo if you are barred from doing so under the laws of your country or if we have previously suspended or removed your account.

Language: these Terms are published in several languages. The English version prevails if there is a conflict, except where the law of your country requires the local-language version to prevail.

CNLingo helps international learners study Mandarin Chinese: HSK 3.0, YCT and HSKK vocabulary and exercises, spaced-repetition review, mock exams, pronunciation and tone assessment, AI-assisted speaking practice and learning statistics. The website presents our courses and lets you ask about one-to-one online lessons with a teacher, which are booked and paid separately under an order confirmation that supplements these Terms.

Some features are free; others require a paid membership or purchase. We may change, add or withdraw features, update content and set reasonable limits (for example on the number of AI requests per day) to keep the service running for everyone. We will give you reasonable notice of changes that materially reduce what you have paid for, and the Refund & Cancellation Policy applies.

• You register with your mobile phone number and a verification code or password. Keep your sign-in details confidential, do not share your account and tell us immediately if you suspect unauthorised use.
• Provide accurate information and keep it up to date. One person may hold only one account, and accounts may not be sold or transferred.
• You are responsible for everything done through your account unless it results from our breach of security.
• You can delete your account at any time in the app (My profile → Settings → Delete account) or by contacting us; see the Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.

Prices, included features and billing periods are shown before you buy. Taxes may be added where applicable. We may change prices for future periods with at least 30 days' notice; a change never applies to a period you have already paid for.

• App Store and Google Play purchases: purchases made in the iOS app are processed by Apple, and purchases in the Android app from Google Play are processed by Google, under their terms. Where a plan renews automatically, it renews for the same period and price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You manage and cancel subscriptions in your Apple ID or Google Play account settings; deleting the app or your CNLingo account does not cancel a subscription.
• Other payment methods: in the web app and in Android builds distributed outside Google Play we may offer Alipay or WeChat Pay; those purchases are fixed-term and do not renew automatically unless stated at checkout.
• Free trials and promotions: a trial converts to a paid plan at the end of the trial unless you cancel before it ends; the conditions are shown when you start the trial.
• One-to-one lessons: lessons, lesson packages and course fees purchased through the website or our consultants are governed by the order confirmation you receive, which sets the schedule, validity period and cancellation rules; where the order is silent, the Refund & Cancellation Policy applies.
• Refunds and cancellations are described in the Refund & Cancellation Policy. Nothing in these Terms limits the statutory refund rights of consumers.

We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the app and to access the website for your own, non-commercial language learning, subject to these Terms. All other rights are reserved. You must not:

• copy, modify, translate, reverse-engineer, decompile or create derivative works of the app, the website or our content, except where the law allows it;
• extract, scrape or download our word lists, audio, exercises, exam papers or other content in bulk, or use them to build another product or to train AI models;
• resell, rent, lend or sublicense the service, share accounts, or circumvent purchase, usage or security controls;
• interfere with the service, probe its security, send automated requests or introduce malicious code.

You keep ownership of the content you provide — voice recordings, avatar, nickname, messages and other material ("Your Content"). You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, transcribe, score, display and transmit Your Content to the providers described in the Privacy Policy, solely to operate, secure and improve the service for you. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep by law.

You are responsible for Your Content. It must not be unlawful, infringe anyone's rights, or contain the personal data of other people without their permission. We may remove content that breaches these Terms.

When using CNLingo you must not:

• harass, threaten, defame or discriminate against anyone, or post obscene, hateful or violent material;
• impersonate any person or organisation or misrepresent your affiliation;
• use the service for anything other than personal language learning, including commercial solicitation or advertising;
• collect the personal data of other users or interfere with their use of the service;
• attempt to manipulate scores, leaderboards, trials, promotions or refunds;
• breach any applicable law, including export-control and sanctions laws.

Pronunciation and tone scores, corrections, AI conversation replies, example sentences and other feedback are generated automatically by speech-recognition and language-model technology. They may be inaccurate, incomplete or inappropriate, are not reviewed by a teacher before you see them, and are provided as learning aids only. They are not an official HSK, HSKK, YCT or BCT result and do not predict your result in any official examination. Do not rely on AI output for medical, legal, financial or other professional decisions. Learning outcomes depend on your own effort, and we do not guarantee any particular progress or exam result.

CNLingo, 千语中文, our logos, the app, the website, our courses, word lists, exercises, recordings, images and software are owned by Champion Future International Education Group Limited or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of these rights to you.

HSK (汉语水平考试), HSKK, YCT and BCT are examinations and marks of their respective owners, including Chinese Testing International Co., Ltd. (汉考国际) and the Center for Language Education and Cooperation of the Ministry of Education of China. CNLingo is an independent learning product: it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by those organisations or by 中文联盟 (Chinese Plus), and our vocabulary lists are prepared from the publicly published syllabus standards.

Our products include third-party and open-source content that we gratefully acknowledge: HSK vocabulary lists compiled with the help of the complete-hsk-vocabulary dataset (MIT License) and its upstream sources; English definitions derived from CC-CEDICT (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0); and Chinese character stroke-order data from the Make Me a Hanzi project (Arphic Public License), packaged as hanzi-writer-data and rendered with Hanzi Writer (MIT License). Content we use under such open licences remains available to you under those licences, and nothing in these Terms limits your rights under them. Attributions and licence texts are listed in the app under "Open-source licences". If you believe content on CNLingo infringes your rights, write to Contact page with details of the work, the location of the content and your contact information.

CNLingo relies on third parties: Apple and Google for app distribution and billing, payment providers, WeChat for optional sign-in and sharing, and the speech and AI providers listed in the Privacy Policy. Their services are governed by their own terms and we are not responsible for them. Links to other websites are provided for convenience only.

You may stop using CNLingo and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access, with notice where reasonably possible, if you materially breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the service (in which case we will refund any prepaid, unused period). On termination your licence ends; sections that by their nature should survive (including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability and governing law) remain in force.

We provide CNLingo with reasonable skill and care. To the extent permitted by law, the service and all content are otherwise provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, including that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or suitable for a particular purpose, or that AI output will be accurate. Some countries do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties; in that case the exclusions apply only to the extent permitted.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you (including mandatory consumer-protection law).

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, data or goodwill, or for losses caused by events outside our reasonable control; and our total liability for all claims arising in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in that period and HK$800 (or the equivalent in your currency). If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK or another jurisdiction whose law provides otherwise, you keep all rights that cannot be waived.

If your breach of these Terms or Your Content causes a claim against us by a third party, you will compensate us for the reasonable losses and costs resulting from that claim, to the extent permitted by the law applicable to you. This does not apply to consumers where the applicable law prohibits such clauses.

We may update these Terms for legal, security, product or business reasons. The version and date appear at the top of this page. For material changes we give at least 30 days' notice in the app, by e-mail or on the website. If you do not agree with a change you may stop using the service and delete your account before it takes effect; continuing to use CNLingo afterwards means you accept the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and the courts of Hong Kong have non-exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, you also benefit from the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live, and you may bring a claim in the courts of that country; nothing in this section deprives you of that protection. If you live in the EU you may also use the European Commission's online dispute-resolution platform.

Before starting legal proceedings, please contact us at Contact page — most issues can be resolved quickly and informally. We will try to resolve any dispute with you within 30 days of your notice.

If you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store: these Terms are between you and us, not Apple; Apple is not responsible for the app or its content, has no obligation to provide maintenance or support, and is not responsible for any claim relating to the app (including product-liability, consumer-protection or intellectual-property claims); Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you; and you confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or listed as a prohibited party. If a warranty claim is made, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any, of the app to you. If you downloaded the app from Google Play, the Google Play Terms of Service also apply to the download and billing.

• These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Refund & Cancellation Policy and any order confirmation form the entire agreement between you and us about CNLingo.
• If any provision is held invalid, the rest remains in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.
• You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor of our business after notice to you.
• Notices to you will be sent to the contact details on your account or shown in the app; notices to us go to Contact page or [registered address].

Operator: Champion Future International Education Group Limited, registered address: [registered address]. Questions about these Terms: Contact page or the Contact page.