My wife is Japanese and we’ve been together for 7 years but we talk English 90% of the time unless she angry but she’s always working and we never have time to actually talk or study. So I wondered any apps to keep my Japanese ability and improve on it. Something I can casually use to study 1-2 hours per day. Thank you very much.
As an added bonus any recommendations to podcasts or audio lessons as I tend to work out for 1-2 hours at the gym and prefer learning something while doing cardio.
3 comments
the most popular application here is probably Anki, which is a flashcard app. You probably don’t want to use it for 1-2 hours a day (but some people here do that actually), it’s more like 30 min a day or so for most people. If you are interested, read [the manual](https://docs.ankiweb.net/) first.
Besides that people recommend reading books a lot. An app which helps reading books online is yomichan, which is a popup dictionary. However if won’t work with paperback books, obviously. For those I like to use jisho.org, which is a dictionary website.
Your wife can probably help you pick out some easy beginner books. But if she is too angry right now, and only speaking in Japanese, which you don’t know that well, you can go to [jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io/) and it has a massive database of books and how hard they are and what vocab they require.
If books are too hard, you can read graded readers. There are legally free ones here, just search this sub for “free graded readers” or click this [link](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/o7x7ha/2021_updated_free_tadoku_graded_reader_pdfs_1796/)
for kanji a lot of people use a website called wanakani. I don’t use it since I learn kanji along with vocabulary, but if you want a more colorful website to use that is an option. It’s not free.
Of course there are many more resources than this, there is a starter guide in the sidebar which will give you much more info.
I am very new on my adventure to learn Japanese. I found Duolingo very helpful in learning to read and write Hiragana and Katakana, but then found it rough going for learning words. Switched to [WaniKani.com](https://WaniKani.com) for learning Kanji and vocabulary. I’m 1100 words in and really enjoy this tool. When I get to around 2000 words, I’ll need to switch to something that has more grammar and sentences, but I’m not ready for that yet.
I bought a copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in Japanese, because it’s one of my favorite films and I have it practically memorized. Once I get a bit farther, I’m going to use it as a reading challenge. It will be my Rosetta stone. lol
This post is strangely relatable. Unfortunately, no app will do what you are looking for, some may be ok initially, but they’ll get you nowhere near independence.
I recommend Anki and ImmersionReader. Download some books (角川つばさ文庫 is a good place to start) and buckle in for a year or two.
After doing this, I am slightly more independent than before. Good luck!