Might be good to allow the kanji/vocabulary to be filtered by JLPT or Jouyou stage. Picking multiple sets on the kanji units was a bit tedious, it's be nice to 'pick all' for a drill (but I was using it to test myself rather than learn new ones). I don't understand the pick options (pick, reverse, input, output) - they seem superfluous and perhaps need tooltips. Maybe add audio recordings at some point, although that's a bunch of work. You can use AI to generate it of course and it will be mostly correct as far as individual words go, but Japanese AI voices still seem to get pitch shapes and timing wrong sometimes.
出 means "to go out or exit" and doesn't have anything to do with learning Kanji. 言 means "to say" and is only tangentially related to learning vocabulary.
Still, great job!
Edit: I didn't realise there were multiple modes either until I stumbled upon that as well
anyway drilling vocab/characters isn't the same thing as learning a language
https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
The communities are also… particular. People tend to espouse certain deep beliefs or attitudes that you just don’t see for other languages (and I don’t think complexity is the reason; you don’t see that for Chinese or Russian or Finnish, to name some other notoriously hard languages).
I tried and failed several times to get started with Anki before having success with Wanikani. The key diffentiator for me was the learning step. Anki is great for remembering things you were taught or learned outside of it, but using Anki to learn new things is very much a learned skill that Wanikani holds your hand through.
I have N2 and am working on N1 now, and feel I still have a very long way to go before getting to CEFR C1. Now I only use Anki with the yomitan and takoboto integrations to quickly add any words I look up, which seems to be working well.
His result to efforts ratio listed back in the days was terrible and reading through is blog - back when it was a blog - was impossible. Everything read like an informercial and never got to the point.
Last time I checked it was a book club. Didn’t bother to check this time.
On the test screens I was expecting there to be an option to shown the answers (ie cheat mode) so I could go through and get 100% score first few times.
And use that as a kind of flash card mode to get my footing in understanding stuff.
Then move out of cheat mode and see if I learnt anything!
For studying N5 and N4, I’ve found Bunpro’s lesson grouping by JLPT levels a really nice format. It’s been encouraging seeing a progress bar for each step of the journey. I’d suggest looking for inspo there too if that interests you.
1. For picking the kana answers, using the keyboard key is better than numbers. When you actually type an え, you type 'e', so it's a useful mapping to learn in terms of how IME works.
2. For vocabulary, there should be an option to turn off romaji in favor of kana only. No explanation needed I think
3. The vocab quiz, between kanji and just an english word, is an anti-pattern in my opinion. Recognizing the meaning if vocab in a full japanese sentence is a much better basic quiz, especially since not all words have 1-1 mappings. It also doesn't quiz on the reading, which seems weird. Also, an easy example of something confusing there is that 辺 is 'area', but if I see 'area' my first thought is 面積 (like the area of a triangle), while 辺 would be edge in that context... and my second thought is 地域, like "the area of the country I grew up in". I think 辺 is maybe 4th or 5th for 'area', and that's just because 'area' is a broad english word. My point is, quizzing vocab -> english word, without reading, without an example sentence, is a recipe to confuse learner's brains.
4. Same complaints as vocab for the kanji quiz, but moreso since kanji's meaning is more abstract.
The beautiful aesthetic and open-source way to learn Japanese is to make Anki flash cards, and customize the cards using html (which it already supports).
This entire site could have been anki decks, and then it would have had spaced repetition for free, and users could even more easily edit things to suit themselves ad add to it.
tentoumushi•4h ago
Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned.
But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion different color themes and fonts, to really hit it home and honor the app's original inspiration, Monkeytype?
And so I did. Now, I'm looking to find contributors and testers for the early stages of the app.
Why? Because weebs and otakus deserve to have a 100% free, beautiful, quality language learning app too！
For anyone interested, you can check it out at --> https://kanadojo.com and let me know what you think ^ ^
3np•4h ago
colesantiago•2h ago
me_bx•2h ago
Some alternatives:
asimovfan•2h ago
agnishom•1h ago
Mainly because of the content. Designing a beautiful UI and framework is one thing, but what is your plan for pooling together enough effort to produce enough learning material that the app becomes a meaningful learning resource?
clbrmbr•1h ago
I'd love to collaborate, but I think we've got to look at overall concept first. There's a lot of information on the screen and it's not really clear how the learner journeys through. Greatly reducing the amount of info on the screen at once, focusing learner's attention on a single path would be helpful.
There's many theories of language acquisition, but I think Krashen is most on-point: we learn through comprehensible input. New vocabulary really needs to be encountered in context of meaningful sentences that are understandable to the learner. Further, when training, production with spaced repetition is really the most effective strategy.
I'd love to see there be a really great free learning tool that brings a pedagogically sound approach to Japanese learners!