Learn Chinese by reading what you already read

Seep is a Chrome/Firefox extension that swaps a few sentences on each page into Chinese. The Chinese that's woven into the sentences is purposefully picked in a way so you can actually comprehend the sentences. It is running on this page right now.

How much Chinese do you know?

Zero added minutes

Immersion brought to you

Fluency demands immersion, but immersion usually means chasing it down: moving abroad, or digging up shows and articles you can barely follow. Instead, Seep brings immersion to you. You browse like normal, and Chinese seeps into the sentences in a way you can handle. When a sentence contains a word Seep thinks you don't know, Seep highlights it.

Seep ensures that each sentence contains at most one or a few unknown words, so that the surrounding context always provides enough scaffolding to help give away their meanings. Linguists call this comprehensible input, an optimal level of challenge that is the most conducive to learning.

No more clicking between tabs

Feedback is one click away

We designed Seep so that feedback is not only comprehensive, but also as convenient as possible. One click of the sentence (or hover over, depending on your settings), and a sidebar with the meanings, pronunciations, etymologies, and grammar explanations opens right beside the page. We ensure you'll never need to do the grudging work of copy-pasting or clicking between multiple tabs ever again. Right-click any sentence to flip between English and Chinese.

Your interests

No app, no textbook

No, you don't need to tap through another app, sit through another lesson, or read another story written for children. The Chinese comes from pages you already choose to read: your news and your rabbit holes.

You can only become fluent if you stick with it, which means what you read has to be interesting to you: not boring flashcards or stories from a generic fixed curriculum. Seep keeps you reading and picking up new words, and since the words come from your own pages, every new word you pick up is a word you'll genuinely encounter again, not flashcard trivia.

English or Chinese

Works both ways

Seep does not only weave Chinese into English pages. The same sidebar works on sentences that are already Chinese. So when a page is already Chinese, Seep reads it right alongside you.

Exactly your level

It knows what you know

Underneath sits FSRS, the spaced repetition memory model Anki uses. It remembers every word you have encountered. As you read, you mark what you knew and what you didn't with a keystroke, and the model keeps score, accounting for how memory fades over time so its record of the words you know and don't know stays accurate.

Seep optimizes FSRS parameters to your review history, so the memory model is personalized to you. This is how Seep keeps every sentence comprehensible: just challenging enough to teach you, but never overwhelming.

On your terms

Your pace, your pages

Set two dials to adjust how much of the page turns Chinese and how challenging the sentences are. Pause any website or pause all of them. Schedule quiet time for work. Turn it off for a meeting or to finish an important task and it stays off.

The method

An old idea, finally practical

Linguists call this the diglot weave: it weaves the language into text the reader already wants to read. Robbins Burling proposed it in 1968. Browsers and LLMs finally make it practical.

Zero added minutes.
Your interests.
Exactly your level.

You are already reading Chinese.