There are so, so many resources out there for learning Japanese. But, are there any areas you think are lacking? (+If you list something that already exists I will hopefully direct you to it)
**Pitch accent grader** which compares your speech to that of a native’s and shows where you went wrong through a binary graph and a spectrograph. There are prototypes that can compare a recording with an audio clip on Github but nothing that’s fully set up to interface with at least Forvo (comparing sentences would be better of course but vocab support would constitute an MVP).
**Classical inflection parsing** in Yomichan or an extension like it, this is a much-needed feature for heavy readers in my opinion.
**Full EPWING support** in Yomichan Import or something like it, so that we can convert the hundreds of J-J dictionaries in EPWING format that have yet been unconverted.
**WebSocket support script in mpv** to avoid having to use the clipboard to get text on the text hooker page. I am aware of alternate players and forks of mpv but I am more interested in using a script on stock mpv.
**A better way to source Japanese subtitles from Netflix** instead of needing to wait for someone to manually rip and upload them to kitsunekko.
1. **Currently there are no tools for mining from manga on iOS.**
There is an app for reading manga on iOS called Kantan Manga which supports Yomichan format dictionaries and lookups via OCR, but there is no way to mine words after looking them up. Looking at the developers GitHub, it seems he was planning to implement it but the app hasn’t been updated since 2021 and the GitHub repository seems abandoned as well. You could try forking it and implementing mining features if that interests you.
Or if you want to start fresh, a lot of people like scanning their manga with Mokuro these days and those can’t be mined from on iOS either.
2) **Mining from games**
A surprisingly large number of people who are studying Japanese are big gamers and want to play lots of games in Japanese that were never officially translated (as well as replay games they played in English but were changed during localization). A lot of gamers are also into emulating older games on their Android phones or via portable gaming devices that run on android like the Retroid Pocket series of devices (and many, many similar devices). You could create a tool for Android that allows users to mine words and sentences into anki with screenshots while playing. And if you don’t want to specifically target Android, you could contribute this as part of the RetroArch (emulator frontend) project so that it would be useable on PC’s also. There is already a tool in RetroArch for using OCR and machine translation, so you could base it on that and utilize the same OCR functionality but remove the machine translation function and replace it with tools for mining.
3) **A tool that can generate high quality flash cards from a string of text automatically.**
Let’s say I want to watch anime. If I’m away from my PC I can watch it on my phone, but there’s no way to make cards. Sometimes I watch anime on TV and same problem. If you have the subtitle file, maybe feeding it to this tool could generate flash cards from the episode automatically. There is a tool that already does this but it doesn’t include the context sentence so the cards are 100% useless. You could also expand upon the idea and make it useable with other sources like news articles and web pages, ebooks, and any kind of pasted text.
4) **A replacement Yomichan**
Yes Yomichan already exists but it was recently abandoned. You could be the one to create the replacement if you want. I’m sure you could come up with lots of ideas for features to add to it in order to extend the scope.
A grammar teacher. At least to my knowledge. Non native english speaker here and for english education in school we had a software that contained kinda everything including like word order exercises, translation exercises, hole filling / word insertion, correct tense picking, …
I vaguely remember an app or website for japanese learning where you had to pick the correct particles in a sentence but it was very limited, one of those “early access” very incomplete feeling ones I think.
What I’ve been waiting for is an app or browser for the IOS that is connected to a high-quality Japanese dictionary so I can insert the link of any Japanese written material (Article, news, yourube videos…) and easily translate any word as I press on them, basically a Yomichan for iPad/iPhone
iOS has an integral dictionary but it is of low quality and almost unusable, the words gets translated to Chinese so I have to manually change the language each time and even with that the dictionary isn’t nearly as good as Yomichan Another thing is that I have to click twice for the translation of each word while in Yomichan it is effortless and it can easily identify each part of the word
And if I can download the articles and pages, novels..in the app like Pocket that would be amazing
Something for android phone browser so I can look at Japanese sites etc and be able to click Kanji to know it’s meaning etc. There are things like that for computer but I mainly use phone :>>
I want an immersive reading tool, like you can get on Kindle in English if you have the ebook and corresponding audiobook. Basically it synchronizes the audio to the words on the page and highlights them individually as you read, making it much easier to read along. Trying to listen to an audiobook and read along without this feature has been such a hassle, I just turn the audiobook off and use a dictionary for words I don’t know how to read, but I feel like I’m missing out on listening and pronunciation practice.
It’s been created but deserted and in much need of a reboot: supernative
Especially the speak-back function.
A Yomichan equivalent for IOS (Safari). 10ten reader is fantastic, but would love to be able to add custom dictionaries.
It probably already exists, but i couldn’t find it. A tool that lets you practice hiragana and katakana at the same time. For example, the app tells you “ka” and you have to drawn both the hiragana and the katakana.
I think creating a link between the two kana makes it easier to learn and remember
There are a bunch of resources that have been created that you will never see here because the mods want to make sure borderline NSFW stuff does not get posted.
Not something I personally want/need but I keep getting ads on YouTube for this ai eikaiwa app and it’d be pretty cool if the reverse existed for Japanese. I think that’s something a lot of people would find useful
13 comments
Something that directly downloads to your brain.
**Pitch accent grader** which compares your speech to that of a native’s and shows where you went wrong through a binary graph and a spectrograph. There are prototypes that can compare a recording with an audio clip on Github but nothing that’s fully set up to interface with at least Forvo (comparing sentences would be better of course but vocab support would constitute an MVP).
**Classical inflection parsing** in Yomichan or an extension like it, this is a much-needed feature for heavy readers in my opinion.
**Full EPWING support** in Yomichan Import or something like it, so that we can convert the hundreds of J-J dictionaries in EPWING format that have yet been unconverted.
**WebSocket support script in mpv** to avoid having to use the clipboard to get text on the text hooker page. I am aware of alternate players and forks of mpv but I am more interested in using a script on stock mpv.
**A better way to source Japanese subtitles from Netflix** instead of needing to wait for someone to manually rip and upload them to kitsunekko.
1. **Currently there are no tools for mining from manga on iOS.**
There is an app for reading manga on iOS called Kantan Manga which supports Yomichan format dictionaries and lookups via OCR, but there is no way to mine words after looking them up. Looking at the developers GitHub, it seems he was planning to implement it but the app hasn’t been updated since 2021 and the GitHub repository seems abandoned as well. You could try forking it and implementing mining features if that interests you.
Or if you want to start fresh, a lot of people like scanning their manga with Mokuro these days and those can’t be mined from on iOS either.
2) **Mining from games**
A surprisingly large number of people who are studying Japanese are big gamers and want to play lots of games in Japanese that were never officially translated (as well as replay games they played in English but were changed during localization). A lot of gamers are also into emulating older games on their Android phones or via portable gaming devices that run on android like the Retroid Pocket series of devices (and many, many similar devices). You could create a tool for Android that allows users to mine words and sentences into anki with screenshots while playing. And if you don’t want to specifically target Android, you could contribute this as part of the RetroArch (emulator frontend) project so that it would be useable on PC’s also. There is already a tool in RetroArch for using OCR and machine translation, so you could base it on that and utilize the same OCR functionality but remove the machine translation function and replace it with tools for mining.
3) **A tool that can generate high quality flash cards from a string of text automatically.**
Let’s say I want to watch anime. If I’m away from my PC I can watch it on my phone, but there’s no way to make cards. Sometimes I watch anime on TV and same problem. If you have the subtitle file, maybe feeding it to this tool could generate flash cards from the episode automatically. There is a tool that already does this but it doesn’t include the context sentence so the cards are 100% useless. You could also expand upon the idea and make it useable with other sources like news articles and web pages, ebooks, and any kind of pasted text.
4) **A replacement Yomichan**
Yes Yomichan already exists but it was recently abandoned. You could be the one to create the replacement if you want. I’m sure you could come up with lots of ideas for features to add to it in order to extend the scope.
A grammar teacher. At least to my knowledge. Non native english speaker here and for english education in school we had a software that contained kinda everything including like word order exercises, translation exercises, hole filling / word insertion, correct tense picking, …
I vaguely remember an app or website for japanese learning where you had to pick the correct particles in a sentence but it was very limited, one of those “early access” very incomplete feeling ones I think.
What I’ve been waiting for is an app or browser for the IOS that is connected to a high-quality Japanese dictionary so I can insert the link of any Japanese written material (Article, news, yourube videos…) and easily translate any word as I press on them, basically a Yomichan for iPad/iPhone
iOS has an integral dictionary but it is of low quality and almost unusable, the words gets translated to Chinese so I have to manually change the language each time and even with that the dictionary isn’t nearly as good as Yomichan
Another thing is that I have to click twice for the translation of each word while in Yomichan it is effortless and it can easily identify each part of the word
And if I can download the articles and pages, novels..in the app like Pocket that would be amazing
Something for android phone browser so I can look at Japanese sites etc and be able to click Kanji to know it’s meaning etc. There are things like that for computer but I mainly use phone :>>
I want an immersive reading tool, like you can get on Kindle in English if you have the ebook and corresponding audiobook. Basically it synchronizes the audio to the words on the page and highlights them individually as you read, making it much easier to read along. Trying to listen to an audiobook and read along without this feature has been such a hassle, I just turn the audiobook off and use a dictionary for words I don’t know how to read, but I feel like I’m missing out on listening and pronunciation practice.
It’s been created but deserted and in much need of a reboot: supernative
Especially the speak-back function.
A Yomichan equivalent for IOS (Safari). 10ten reader is fantastic, but would love to be able to add custom dictionaries.
It probably already exists, but i couldn’t find it. A tool that lets you practice hiragana and katakana at the same time. For example, the app tells you “ka” and you have to drawn both the hiragana and the katakana.
I think creating a link between the two kana makes it easier to learn and remember
There are a bunch of resources that have been created that you will never see here because the mods want to make sure borderline NSFW stuff does not get posted.
Not something I personally want/need but I keep getting ads on YouTube for this ai eikaiwa app and it’d be pretty cool if the reverse existed for Japanese. I think that’s something a lot of people would find useful
How would we know if it hasn’t been created yet?
Bruh…