So I’ve been wanting to learn Japanese for a long time and my sister got me to start on Duolingo since that’s what she uses for Spanish. It wasn’t till I got a decent way into learning hiragana that I realized how bad Duolingo is at teaching Japanese, however, I do the guided path they offer for teaching a language. Are there any other apps or websites that are available with a similar teaching style? I’m ok with paying for a subscription but I’d like to be able to try some of it for free before committing to something.
8 comments
Have you looked at renshuu.org?
I knew Duolingo was bad when in their Vietnamese course, the first sentence they taught was “I am I.”
Bunpro för grammar and wanikani for kanji is what I use. There are other options as well that are good. These two are ar not really like Duolingo though but i would recommend you to try them.
Lingodeer is another app that is good.
I think Tokini Andy made a great video on where to start and you should check it out.
https://youtu.be/L1NQoQivkIY
I used Bunpo app on Android and found that really good and felt like Duolingo to me.
It isn’t *bad*. It’s *bad as a sole resource*. But that’s true of just about everything in the space. I like it for when I’m busy and don’t have my other resources at hand.
Otherwise, Bunpro and WaniKani are pretty nice, I’d recommend trying them.
Memrise is decent too, but I personally used it the same way as Duolingo and I actually ditched Memrise for Duolingo. Your mileage may vary.
I’ve heard really good things about Lingodeer, but I’ve never tried it.
​
As an aside, if you’re just getting started and picking up the kana, I’d actually recommend skipping an app altogether and just getting some flashcards (Anki works for this) and drilling. If you really want to be fancy, you can do what I did and get these things called “genkouyoushi notebooks” – they’re full of special vertical grid paper you can use to practice writing. They’re cheap on Amazon and you’ll use them later anyway. Write each kana a dozen times a day until you can recognize most of them after a second or two. You don’t need to know them all perfectly, just well enough to move onto other material.
I use MaruMori. It teaches grammar in-depth, Kanji and a vocab. All the grammar lessons on their websites have plenty of example sentences made using words you’re supposed to learn alongside those set of grammar lessons. There are plenty of small stories to be read as well. If you want you can also created your own vocab decks with the words you want to learn instead of the list they provide. It’s also free to use right now for months to come as they are yet to finish creating all their lessons. It currently goes halfway through N4 and they release a new batch of lessons every 2 weeks
After an attempt to learn Arabic (now *that* was a bad course, no grammar whatsoever), I started to use Duolingo to brush up my long-forgotten Japanese (18 months of evening classes 25 years ago) and it does the trick. I sometimes get frustrated by the lack of explanation, but there are other resources for grammar.
I don’t have a particular goal to learn Japanese (e.g. no trip to Japan planned), I just do it for fun. For that I think it’s okay, it keeps me motivated and I notice progress, I think that’s all that counts.