Learning Japanese Apps

10 comments

1. For Japanese in particular I found books to be better at teaching me concepts and then the rest was just immersion (I used games initially).

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   Maybe someone else can pitch in when it comes to apps…I just thought I’d jump in to just recommend immersion instead of language learning apps…and maybe a series of books like genki or nihongo sou matome.

2. I actually find that changing the language of apps that you use currently to Japanese helps. You already know they layout of them and can associate the layout with words you already know in English. Not super effective in learning, but it helps to stay on track.

3. I love Bunpro. It’s easy to go through the reviews every day and it breaks down how well you know each grammar point so it’s easy to know when to start learning new ones.

   I also found that the multiple choice question format of Renshuu works for my learning style better than flash cards.

   And then I use Kanji Study to practice writing and recognizing kanji.

4. I’ve only been using it for about 2 weeks now but I’ve been really enjoying Renshuu. I use the free version because it’s still really good. The premium has some nice features but I haven’t felt like I need them. (They give you a properly free week to try it out) The app has grammar, kanji, and vocab. They have games to play and lessons from popular books like GENKI. I also enjoy Easy Japanese News. It’s a purple app with “TODAI” on it. It had articles for all different levels and you can click on words within the article to see what they mean. This one I’ve also only ever needed the free version. I think you get 5 free articles a day but I’ve personally never read more than like 3 a day.

   Also good websites are TOFUGU and the NHK news for kids. I also use wanikani to learn kanji but you do have to pay for it after the first 5 levels. JapanesePod101 has also been good but I’ve only used that for about a month and I’m debating buying their premium.

5. Renshuu! I currently use it for grammar only, but it has a lot of other features.

6. I tried duolingo about a year ago without knowing any Japanese at all. I tried it regularly at least once a day or so for a month and realized I still didn’t know anything. I figured after at least a month I should know something. -_-

   So just putting that out there that duolingo didn’t seem to work at all at least not for me. Still don’t know anything with Japanese but that’s why I am subbed to this sub recently, and why I clicked on this post. 😛

7. I use a combo of anki, WaniKani and Bunpro every day. They are all SRSes and very helpful!

8. Bunpro (I’m still on the free 1 month, so idk how pricey it is)
   Kanji Study (android only, expensive as hell to get the all the features but the best srs kanji study I’ve used)
   Satori Reader (easy to use and read)
   Tae Kim’s app

9. I feel that rather than apps it’s better to start with textbooks. Use apps as supplementary materials to the textbooks that you use. Textbooks will help in getting the hang of sentence structures, grammar etc.
   Language apps are nice for vocab building and practicing spellings, kanji etc.

10. Im on android. i read through human japanese 1&2. It was a digestible introduction into Japanese. I used the shared anki deck to someone made for all the vocab and some example sentences. If wanna try some guided reading you could try out satori reader app. These apps all have some free trail version to try out.

    takoboko dictionary app is nice.
    Im currently looking for something to practice / learn n3/n4 grammar. My grammar comprehension isnt great. But I have a decent vocab thanks to core 2k deck and reading lot of manga.