Category: Japanese

The Best Free Apps for Learning Japanese

Today I want to talk about some of the best apps I’ve found for learning Japanese. All of these are on the Google Play Store, but most are also available on Apple’s App Store. You can even get a few on Windows phones. They’re all free to download; some have paid upgrades, but I only use the free version.

I’ve also included a few popular apps that I can’t quite recommend, but wanted to include my thoughts on them anyway.

Without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.

Recommended Apps

LingoDeer
Category: Vocab/Grammar – Availability: Google Play, App Store

LingoDeerLingoDeer is aimed mostly at beginning-level Japanese learners. Relative to the other entries on this list, I’ve discovered LingoDeer relatively recently. I actually really like it, though!

I’d mostly compare it to DuoLingo (further down on this list), which I’ve tried in the past, or Rosetta Stone (only LingoDeer is free). I like it better than either of those, personally. Right now it only has courses for JLPT N5-level learners (read: beginners), but they’re supposedly working on developing content for learners up to level N3 (intermediate).

It’s one of those formats where you learn different vocab categories (e.g. Nationality, Profession, Weather, Age, Time, Family, etc.) and work your way up a tree. You can test out of the various blocks if you already feel comfortable with everything in them, too. Practice at your own pace; study in big chunks, or just meet daily goals.
Overall, if you like the learning format in this type of app, LingoDeer’s the best of its kind right now.

WaniKani
Category: Kanji/Vocab – Availability: Google Play (unofficial app)

wanikaniLet me preface this by saying WaniKani is technically only free for the first three levels… and it goes up to level sixty. You learn a lot in just those first three levels, though; each level takes roughly a week, if you’re diligent.

WaniKani is a website in the Tofugu family designed to help you learn over 2000 kanji 漢字 through the use of mnemonics. It also teaches you radicals, which are sort of the building blocks which make up various kanji. You learn meanings and readings for all the kanji as you go.

The full version comes at a price, but if you aren’t flat broke like me, it’s a good investment. I’m trying to save up for a WaniKani lifetime membership. At the time of this writing, the current regular prices are $9/month, $89/year, or $299/lifetime. Around the New Year, though, WaniKani has historically gone on mega sale for half-off yearly and lifetime. There’s also (usually) another discount code floating about, but even if you can find it, I’m not sure it’s as good as the New Year sale. I don’t know what the current one is; they tend to put one out for awhile, then discontinue it. I believe we’re currently in a lull between codes. Either way, if you don’t like it or it doesn’t work for you, there’s plenty of free content to help you decide.

Despite this, as I said, even just the first three levels give you a bunch of good info. You can find similar techniques through things like Remembering the Kanji, but books don’t come with the same advantages. Don’t get me wrong, I still like books — probably a lot more than most people, really. But it’s a lot easier to remember to study when I get a notification on my phone telling me it’s time, and better yet when the app will remember which kanji I’m having trouble with and which I don’t need to study anymore. WaniKani has an algorithm — a spaced repetition system — that judges which kanji to quiz you on each time, and judging by the first few levels alone, it works.

For some bizarre reason, there doesn’t seem to be an official app for either Apple or Android. There’s a (bad, unofficial) companion app listed on the Microsoft Store, but I’m not even going to link to it because its reviews are garbage. Thankfully, some kind soul was nice enough to make an unofficial one for the Google Play Store, so you can access all that WaniKani goodness easily, complete with daily reminders to study.

Kanji Study
Category: Kanji/Kana/Vocab – Availability: Google Play, App Store

kanji studyKanji Study is really handy for kanji lookup. This is what makes it stand out; while something like WaniKani will help you memorize kanji and radicals using mnemonics, Kanji Study helps you with finding a particular character’s meaning and words it commonly appears in.

Another strong point in its favor is that it shows you stroke order. This is a concept that’s hard to grasp for a lot of novice kanji learners. I’ve read a few guides to stroke order over the years, and it’s still something I get wrong a lot of the time because I don’t have the rules memorized yet. Kanji can get very complex (there’s a rare-use one that looks like 靈 and 覺 smushed together side-by-side into one which apparently means the same thing as sei 性 “nature [of a person]”) so stroke order can be a useful factor in keeping things straight from memory.

You can study and search by radicals as well, which is another helpful way to keep things straight in your head. I don’t know every radical yet, but I find myself searching for kanji by the radicals I do know. It’s hard for me to remember a whole kanji at this point, but I can be like, “oh, that one has something that looked like ‘sun’ 日 and ‘tree’ 木 in it,” and even if I can’t remember the rest, I can still pull up 楽 like in the image above by putting in those radicals.

While its primary focus is obviously kanji (it’s in the name), I have picked up a bit of vocab from its suggestions, too. Another cool thing that I’ve found it useful for is that it lists names that the kanji you’re looking up appears in. I’ve been using it to research name ideas for characters in a game I’m working on. I like sneaking symbolism into names, so I would work in kanji with certain meanings when choosing names. (This also lead me to discover a concept called ateji 当て字 “called-upon characters”, which I plan to write about another day.)

It also has some study options available for kana and kanji. You can get daily reminder notifications to help you remember to study.

There is an upgrade available for “advanced kanji” for $15, but you probably won’t need it much at the beginner or intermediate levels. The free version alone gives you a lot of helpful info, and it’s worth having around just for all the stuff it does have.

Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese
Category: Grammar/Kana/Vocab – Availability: Google Play, App Store

taekimTae Kim’s Guide is one of the most useful Japanese resources I’ve seen, no matter where you find it. Not only are there the website and the apps, but there’s also a physical book available if you prefer a non-digital medium. Note that everything available in the book is online for free, so this is really only worth it if you love having things in book form.

This is virtually a textbook in terms of what it has. I haven’t gotten through all of the information yet, but it has lessons on everything from verb conjugations to sentence structure. It also has basic lessons on things like hiragana ひらがな and katakana カタカナ, complete with stroke order and pronunciations.

When it comes to grammar, there’s a wealth of information in this guide, and the digital guide is free. I highly recommend checking it out.

Takoboto
Category: Dictionary – Availability: Google Play, Microsoft Store

takoboto_48x48If you’d have asked me a few weeks ago, I’d have recommended Akebi in this spot. Both are available on Android, neither are available on the App Store, and Takoboto is available for Windows phones. While Akebi is a solid dictionary choice, I’d say Takoboto has crept just slightly past as my favorite recently. They’re quite similar in functionality, and both are very good. You may very well prefer Akebi, to be honest, but I figured putting both on here would be redundant, and Takoboto edged it out.

Why? A minor reason is the way definitions come up (in a list, as opposed to tiles like Akebi), but what sold it for me is that it links its kanji to the Kanji Study app. For the reasons listed above, I happen to really like that app, lol. Akebi is self-contained and still shows things like stroke order, but it’s static and I just find Kanji Study’s entries more robust.

You may still want to compare these two and decide for yourself, as I feel a lot of my decision is based on aesthetics and connectivity with another app, and even then it’s close. Both are great. I personally favor Takoboto.

HelloTalk
Category: Speaking partners – Availability: Google Play, App Store

hellotalkI talked about HelloTalk the other day in my post about finding a Japanese speaking partner. You can read a little more about it there, but I’ll give you the tl;dr here.

HelloTalk is an app that allows you to connect with native Japanese speakers who are often also trying to learn English.

What I like best about it though is its Moments feature, which is like a micro-blog, sort of. If you type posts in Japanese, native speakers can correct any mistakes you might make; you can help them in return by fixing their posts in English. This helps you see what you’re doing wrong.

Like I said though, it’s intended to help you find people to have regular conversations with. It’s really good for immersion to have a Japanese buddy to talk to, and HelloTalk does open up that door for you. I personally had a lot more luck getting short interactions than extended ones, but even those short interactions are useful. If you’re more outgoing than I am and have no problem initiating conversations, it shouldn’t be too tough to find a regular Japanese speaking partner through HelloTalk.

Your Mileage May Vary

Memrise
Category: Primarily Vocab/Grammar; includes user-created courses – Availability: Google Play, App Store, Microsoft Store

memriseMemrise is interesting in that it has user-created courses in addition to the ones by Memrise itself. Your experience may vary based on which lessons you choose to take, but so far I haven’t found a bad one.

It can get super annoying about nagging you to join Premium, though, and there is some walled-off content. It’s still nice to mess around with the free lessons, though, and you can still learn some things.

I mostly recommend this one; at least to try it out and see if you find something you like. A lot of people love Memrise, but I feel like I have yet to find something on Memrise that holds my interest as well as the apps above do. Put it this way: when I actually remember I have it, I have a pleasant experience using it. Good, but not what I would call great.

DuoLingo
Category: Vocab/Grammar – Availability: Google Play, App Store, Microsoft Store

duolingoThis is probably the second most famous app on this list. DuoLingo is a popular language learning app. I used to use it to brush up on my Spanish, and like many people, I was hyped when the Japanese course finally dropped.

Well, it works about the same way LingoDeer does, as I described above. Before LingoDeer came out, I felt DuoLingo did a fair job of teaching Japanese. I made it through almost the entire tree, actually, but I just feel like LingoDeer does it better. I went back and forth about putting Duo on this list, but in the end, I thought I should still include it because it is free, but with the caveat that I believe that LingoDeer is better for Japanese, and most people seem to agree. If you hate LingoDeer for some reason, maybe see if you like DuoLingo any better.

DuoLingo’s Japanese course has a big problem with incomplete lessons. I think they try to teach it the same way as their other languages, and it feels like they leave out a lot of information going into each lesson. They don’t really define vocab beforehand, nor kanji. I’m not sure if this is a weird bug with just the app, or what. They also have a habit of making you write the same sentence again and again until the progress bar fills all the way.

I feel like it did help me some with very basic Japanese. It focuses a lot more on vocab than grammar, though, so you hit a wall pretty quickly since you can’t form complex sentences. 90% of the way down the tree, they still have me on sentences like, “Please show me a picture of your child,” which basically breaks down to, “child’s picture, show please.” And it’s not like I had only a passing encounter with Duo. There was a point where I had over a hundred-day streak, and the only reason I broke it was because I was hospitalized for almost two weeks. I’m not nearly as far in LingoDeer yet, but I already feel it’s just… better. It lacks Duo’s weaknesses.

The one thing I like about Duo that LingoDeer doesn’t seem to have (or at least I haven’t found it yet) is a comment section for each exercise. This often turns into people meme-ing on Duo’s weird sentence choices (I seem to remember something about a dog selling hats…?), but just as often you’ll find people who know more than you giving tips.

Bottom line, if you want something similar to LingoDeer that’s also free, but isn’t LingoDeer, you might want to give DuoLingo a go.

Rosetta Stone
Category: Vocab – Availability: Google Play, App Store, Microsoft Store

ugh, rosetta stoneAh… Rosetta Stone. The program known by language-learners everywhere. This is likely one of the first language apps you heard of when you started looking. You can try their app for free, though you quickly reach a point where you need to pay. For a good, unique program, such as WaniKani, this isn’t necessarily bad.

But is Rosetta Stone worth it?

In my opinion, no. I’m just gonna say it, no — I don’t think Rosetta Stone is worth the money. For what little you can get for free, I wouldn’t even bother downloading the app. You can learn just as much through LingoDeer, and the functions that LingoDeer doesn’t address can be covered by the other apps on this list.

A Rosetta Stone subscription isn’t cheap, and from what I recall, they actually used to be even worse. Unless you’re like, top-hat-and-monocle rich, I honestly don’t think Rosetta Stone gives you a fair value. Even their paid content is kinda “meh” from what little I’ve seen, and you won’t see much unless you drop the big bucks; it’s $60 for their three-month sub, and their “best deal” two-year sub is $180. They try to make this look like a steal — after all, you’re getting two whole years for the price of nine months, right? Never mind the fact that the three-month price is grossly inflated to begin with.

This review on Tofugu is almost ten years old, but while the alternatives they recommend are outdated, the assessment of Rosetta Stone’s approach to their program is still dead-on. I agree with pretty much all of it.

Just go with the other stuff on this list, especially when we’re talking about free content only.

 

Anything I’ve left out? I may add Anki at some point as I’m lacking an entry in the flashcard category, but I don’t have enough experience with it yet to call it one of the best. I know it’s versatile, but I’m not sure how well-paced its content is as it seems to be largely dependent on its users. Maybe under YMMV?

What are your favorite Japanese study apps? I’m always looking for good ones!

by Lunaphire

Where can you find a Japanese speaking partner?

I’ve mentioned before that a great way to practice language immersion is to find a speaking partner. It’s one of my fluency goals to find a consistent “Japanese buddy”, in fact.

In a classroom environment, students have the advantage of speaking with one another in Japanese. This can be very helpful, but at the same time, you’re both limited to the vocabulary and understanding you have so far. You also risk teaching one another your mistakes, and you’ll likely be locked into speaking politely. That’s not inherently bad, but to reach true fluency, you’ll want to learn informal speaking patterns as well.

Japanese has different politeness levels depending on to whom you’re speaking; a native speaker doesn’t talk to their boss the same way they talk to their friends. Of course, you don’t in English, either, but in Japanese “politeness” is coded into words more intensely. I’ll have to make that a topic for another day, though.

At any rate, you will almost always be taught “polite” Japanese first.

When you’re trying to teach yourself Japanese outside of a classroom, though, you usually have to go out of your way to find a speaking partner, regardless of who they are. This is why when I look for a Japanese buddy, I try to find a native Japanese speaker who speaks enough English for us to be able to communicate.

Fortunately, in the age of the internet, this is fairly easy.

The two best places to find a Japanese speaking buddy that I have found are Conversation Exchange and HelloTalk. Another popular one is Italki, but I can’t personally vouch for how good they are, as I haven’t tried them myself.

Conversation Exchangecelogo

I honestly wasn’t expecting to like Conversation Exchange when I first signed up as much as I ended up doing. Their web design is, uh… a bit, um… lacking. The actual site is pretty dang useful, though. I’ve had several native Japanese speakers approach me (an average of about one per day) to ask to chat so we can teach one another.

cescreenshot
I don’t wanna call it ugly, but I’m kinda getting 2007 Facebook flashbacks…

The site allows you to search for people by target language and communication platform. I have yet to successfully make contact with someone who uses Discord, unfortunately, which is my preferred platform. It seems like most Japanese people on there prefer Line or Skype.

You can also look for people who want to be penpals, however, if chat’s not your thing. There’s a face-to-face option too, but I feel like if you can do that, you’re probably not struggling to find someone who speaks Japanese.

Conversation Exchange is primarily to assist in making connections. This is its strength. You can message people on the site itself, but its intention is to set you up with someone you can talk to on a regular basis on a platform of your choice, which I think is fantastically useful.

HelloTalkhtlogo

HelloTalk is an app that has similar functions to Conversation Exchange. Personally, I had a hard time finding people who were willing to hold a conversation beyond the initial interaction, and it was rare anyone ever reached out to me for conversation first. This made things a bit rough for me personally, since I tend to be rather socially anxious and always worry that I’m going to bother someone by reaching out unprompted. I feel that if I had been more persistent (it’s been a while since I used the app regularly), I might have had better luck.

Screenshot_20180824-055033
An example of the language correction feature in HelloTalk

That said, where HelloTalk really shines is the ability to make posts called Moments that are sort of like a micro-blog. You can type in Japanese, and native speakers will go in and correct you (!) so you can see in detail where you’re off the mark. You can help them the same way by correcting their posts in English. This was the extent of the vast majority of my interactions on this app, but while its potential is certainly much greater than this, Moments alone make HelloTalk worth a shot.

You can also record audio posts, or listen to audio posts by native Japanese speakers. This helps you work on your pronunciation, either by listening to someone else or by having a native speaker correct you.

Another nice thing is that Moments can also feature pictures, which often give you a cool glimpse into Japanese culture in a way you don’t necessarily see in media. Right now, people are still sharing their personal pics from Bon Odori 盆踊り, a festival which took place earlier this month. It can be captivating to get a peek into someone’s personal experience living in Japan like that. You also might run into pictures of things like Japanese food (often homemade; more than what they show in anime!), special events, or even Japanese memes.

Conclusion

Overall, these are the best two places I’ve found to match with a Japanese speaking partner. I would say it’s worth using both of these services. As an app, HelloTalk is always in your pocket if you want to fire it up. It’s also well-designed and has some fairly unique features, but be aware that you might have to take some persistent initiative if you’re looking for real conversation. Conversation Exchange is also a great option for finding a Japanese buddy, and in my experience it was easier to find people to talk to for more than just a fleeting language pointer. I do wish it was a bit less clunky, though, and a sleek-looking app would do worlds for its first impression.

Have you tried either of these? What did you think? Did I leave out anything important? Is there another great place you know of to find native Japanese speakers to converse with? Let me know, and maybe I can update this list!

by Lunaphire

My Japanese fluency goals

These are my current short- and long-term goals in learning Japanese, taking my current capabilities into account:

  1. Improve vocabulary
  2. Learn verb conjugations
  3. Learn more particles
  4. Learn complex sentence structure
  5. Find at least one consistent Japanese speaking partner
  6. Complete Genki, Japanese for Busy People, and WaniKani
  7. Learn to speak at different levels of politeness
  8. Play an entire game in Japanese
  9. Master all 2,136 jōyō kanji 常用漢字 (“regular-use kanji“)
  10. Pass all JLPT exams, N5 – N1

What do you think? Am I aiming too high? I don’t think it’ll happen overnight, of course, especially the JLPT N1, but I’m gonna try my best!

What are your goals in learning Japanese? Are you learning for the sake of learning? Is there something specific you want to be able to do, or someone in particular you want to talk to? Tell me!

by Lunaphire

My Japanese progress before creating this blog

For a bit of backstory, I’ve actually been studying Japanese on and off since I was a kid. I taught myself hiragana ひらがな and katakana カタカナ when I was in grade school, but unfortunately I’m still terrible with kanji 漢字 recall as well as actually knowing what I’m reading. If you don’t know what any of this means, I’ll make other posts about these topics in the future. In short, these are the three main writing systems in the Japanese language; there’s also romaji ローマ字, a.k.a. the same alphabet we use in English, but in my experience focusing on romaji just makes things harder most of the time. That’s a topic for another post, though.

Everything I’ve learned about Japanese is through independent study. Surprisingly, despite being in a major metropolitan area (Chicago), Japanese is rarely taught in schools here. The only college in the area I’m aware of that offers a full education in Japanese (you can even take a Japanese major!) is North Central College, and even if you have financial aid, are local, and living at home, they’re not cheap. I do have a friend who went there, though, and from what I hear it’s a great school if you can afford it. They offer a study-abroad program, and he got to live in Japan for quite some time. Can’t beat that level of immersion.

NCC aside, it’s pretty tough to find Japanese classes near me. I’m somewhat limited to online/remote courses now anyway, which effectively cuts off the other options I’m aware of, such as through the Japan America Society of Chicago or the Japanese Culture Center, both of which I’d need transportation to even if I could afford them. Another important factor to consider is that these classes are not accredited like NCC’s are. Though language fluency isn’t necessarily something you need accreditation to prove, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have. The real reason this is important, however, is because it also means the FAFSA doesn’t cover it. You have to pay out of pocket. Even though it’s far less than NCC is asking, I’m not in a position where I can do that right now.

Something else to take into account is that, as far as I’m aware, I already have all the books they use in these formal Japanese courses and then some. JAS of Chicago uses Japanese for Busy People, and I believe NCC uses Genki. What they use for these particular Japanese classes in Chicago probably makes no difference to most of you since you’re likely not local, but what I’m trying to say is that both of these are popular and reputable in Japanese courses across the country, as far as traditional textbooks go (though I’d say Genki has a better reputation overall).

I already own Genki I and II, and I want to say I have Japanese for Busy People I (also available in a romaji edition, but I recommend the kana edition; if you need help with learning kana, they make a kana workbook, too), II, and III as well, along with the supplementary audio and workbooks (workbook links: Genki I – II, Japanese for Busy People I – II – III). In the case of JfBP, I’m pretty sure I even have multiple variants of the first book; like, both the romaji and kana versions, because I found the romaji one first in a used bookstore. I also have their kana workbook, even though I didn’t need it… I think I mistook it for the level I workbook. I have a couple Japanese from Zero! books too, but I think it’s only the first two. I also own a lot of kanji reference guides / practice books, as well as things like dictionaries and particle guides. Like… a lot.

I think a lot of my problem is that I tend to buy books with the abstract hope that merely owning them will somehow give me the knowledge contained within.

Getting back on topic, though, I’ve studied a bit from textbooks like these, but never managed to progress to the intermediate level. I’ve actually heard it’s extremely common in learning Japanese to hit the “intermediate wall”; textbooks like Genki, though very good in a classroom context, were probably not written with independent study in mind. As a Japanese learner, this is a massive barrier between me and my fluency goals. It’s super easy to burn out, in other words, which is where I’m at, and where I no longer wish to be.

That’s not to say I’ve studied exclusively from Japanese textbooks, though. I read a lot of online resources as well, and there’s a wealth of very useful information out there that you typically don’t find in a book. I hope to write about a lot of the concepts I’ve found particularly interesting in the future. I feel like the internet makes it much easier to target the subjects I’m struggling most with; I can Google a specific question without having to read an entire textbook only to find my question is still unanswered.

A few sites I’ve found especially useful are Tofugu (along with its sister site, WaniKani) and Japanese with Anime (I just found this one very recently, but it’s answered several obscure questions I’ve had!), as well as JapanesePod101, who are also on YouTube. Jisho and whatever the hell you wanna call this site are both pretty solid online Japanese dictionaries. WaniKani is also available as an app with the convenience of daily practice reminders — it guides you along one of the easiest paths up the intimidating mountain that is memorizing kanji. Around New Years’-ish they tend to put their subscriptions on mega-sale, but while you wait for that to roll around, go ahead and try out their first few levels for free and see whether you think it’ll work for you. They use mnemonics to help you retain the readings and meanings of essential kanji. Rumor has it, they do have a (less major) discount code floating around year-round, though…

I also have several Japanese learning apps on my phone, which is currently very dead so I will have to tell you in another post, lol. Nearly every non-book resource I have is totally free (and to be perfectly honest, you can find a couple of the book resources online for free too, if you know where to look).

Another nice thing is if you can find yourself a Japanese buddy. I don’t necessarily just mean a friend who’s also learning Japanese, though of course that’s helpful too! There are several sites/apps where you can find and connect with native Japanese speakers who are often also trying to learn English. This is a really good idea if you’re looking for immersion. I’ve recently started looking for a Japanese speaking partner myself, but unfortunately I’m a bit shy (read: horribly socially anxious) and I feel like I might only embarrass myself at my current level, haha…

tl;dr: my existing knowledge of Japanese is very scattered and disorganized, having come from many different sources over the years. It is my hope that using this blog can help me to finally organize the concepts I do know, as well as document and share my progress towards understanding new ones.

So, how about you guys? If you’ve read this far, I imagine it’s likely that you’re also trying to learn Japanese. What would you say your proficiency level is? Are you self-taught, or did you find a school that offers Japanese? What are your favorite independent study aids? Let me know!

by Lunaphire