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Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

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Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#41

Post by diob »

glandium wrote: post #20
diob wrote: post #7

The Japanese learning space feels so crowded. Most are marketed towards beginners, which makes sense when you see statistics (most folks give up). The top tier tools I recommend anyone are Wanikani and Bunpro. Beyond that, reading! I tried a site dedicated to it, but realized that I'm too much of a picky reader to do anything but read things I find interesting. So I read japanese and english books side by side now. I…

Satori Reader seems interesting in the reading space, although I never gave it a try.

Yes, I tried it, I think it would be good if you're not picky.

I couldn't get into any of the stories, so my sub for two years just expired. Might resub if I can get some discipline.

For now I'm reading through books on my own that are interesting.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#42

Post by chrisvasselli »

gimmeTheJalup wrote: post #33

Most comments here look at this as "yet another SRS/flashcard app" and with all the usual Japanese learning app traits. - The usual read, flip, recall, choose if you got the card right. - The usual local Japanese voice records of the sentences to shadow to. - The usual i+1 decks, where you learn 1 new word mixed with a sentence of words you've already learnt in previous cards. - The usual teaches you your first 1000…

Glad to hear you've had such a good experience! And you've actually given me some good ideas about how I can improve my marketing too!

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#43

Post by valenterry »

What I'd like to have is an app that allows me to easily select specific vocab that I want to learn (with flashcards).

Essentially, I would pick "cooking" and get a list of vocabulary, sorted by usage/importance that contains all the words that I need for "cooking" such as tools, ingredients, techniques and so on.

Or the same for traveling, hiking, cycling, ordering in a restaurant, buying a house, ...

That would be super useful.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#44

Post by ehnto »

timr wrote: post #36
raylad wrote: post #28

I think a lot of people don't get past the "learn all the characters first" barrier. What would really be useful to them (and me) is an app focused on how people really talk, that teaches actually commonly used phrases as well as grammar and vocabulary. Apps focused on reading often produce people who can read but can't have a conversation. This is one of the main criticisms of the way English is taught in Japan by t…

> I think a lot of people don't get past the "learn all the characters first" barrier. PSA: That's not an actual barrier. It's a borderline useless thing that some significant subset of self-learners seem to do, for reasons I cannot explain. There is no such thing as "learning the characters". You need to learn words and sentences. You can certainly categorize the learning by character (this is how it's done in Japan…

I think an issue self learners have is that they are often reading only. Without knowing the kanji you can't actually read anything. With furigana and the phonetic alphabets you can at least read them out loud but I think reading only is why you see people thinking they need to learn a bunch of kanji before doing anything else.

I agree with you though, you really benfit from the dense web of association you get from actually reading and hearing words in sentences. Much quicker path to practical fluency in my opinion, and you get the benefit of learning words in contexts you will actually use.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#45

Post by chrisvasselli »

rjh29 wrote: post #35
thaumasiotes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nerds like Japanese so it's no surprise that Japanese has the best arrangement of apps and websites. It might not be a surprise... but is it true? Pleco (for Chinese) seems to reach a standard well above what's available for Japanese, despite the twin facts that (a) Chinese has much less cultural currency in the English-speaking world than Japanese does; and (b) Pleco is not at all a complex app.† It's a dictionary…

You make a good point. Pleco is leagues better than anything available in the Japanese domain. I wonder why that is the case - why nobody has stepped up to make an equivalent Japanese app? It might be related to the Japanese publishers not wanting to sell their data. EPWING is an established format and there are plenty of epwing viewers on Android already so I'd guess advanced users will do that instead. My point was…

Would love to hear more about what makes Pleco stand out for you. I make a dictionary app as well (https://nihongo-app.com) and am always trying to improve it.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#46

Post by ehnto »

raylad wrote: post #28

I think a lot of people don't get past the "learn all the characters first" barrier. What would really be useful to them (and me) is an app focused on how people really talk, that teaches actually commonly used phrases as well as grammar and vocabulary. Apps focused on reading often produce people who can read but can't have a conversation. This is one of the main criticisms of the way English is taught in Japan by t…

I think conversational fluency takes a bit of gumption, in that you need to find people to talk to. You can join Japanese/English discord servers, get into the voice chats and listen and learn. iTalki is an app where you can schedule conversation time with tutors. There are also lots of YouTube channels that focus on natural Japanese and not textbook learning. But the theme with all of these is that no one is guiding you through, there's no easy to follow path and it is very DIY. I think drilling kanji catches people because it feels like a gamified progress that ends in fluency, if only you could drill enough kanji. So it becomes a morale failing in someones mind, rather than seeing it as a failure to teach.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#47

Post by Nerada »

chrisvasselli wrote: post #22
diob wrote: post #7

The Japanese learning space feels so crowded. Most are marketed towards beginners, which makes sense when you see statistics (most folks give up). The top tier tools I recommend anyone are Wanikani and Bunpro. Beyond that, reading! I tried a site dedicated to it, but realized that I'm too much of a picky reader to do anything but read things I find interesting. So I read japanese and english books side by side now. I…

Reading is one of the things I developed my other app, Nihongo, to help with. I take DRM free ebooks and copy them into the app one chapter at a time. It automatically creates flashcards for all the words that appeared that I don't already know, and I can filter down to only words that appear at least twice. I pre-study those "essential" vocab, then usually just read without looking anything up. But the app also make…

I'm stuck somewhere between Anki hell and Graded Readers (~Level 1). Do I just continue working my way up the Graded Readers list, or is there something more engaging for adults that's a good stepping stone from Anki to being able to consume written content?

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#49

Post by dayvid »

diob wrote: post #7

The Japanese learning space feels so crowded. Most are marketed towards beginners, which makes sense when you see statistics (most folks give up). The top tier tools I recommend anyone are Wanikani and Bunpro. Beyond that, reading! I tried a site dedicated to it, but realized that I'm too much of a picky reader to do anything but read things I find interesting. So I read japanese and english books side by side now. I…

Yeah, I think simple fundamentals are better for learning Japanese. Some JLPT books/genki for a foundation and going through primary source materials and making flash cards for things you don't understand.

On top of that, quickly attempting to speak the language with native speakers is VERY important. You can join a meetup group and there are even many online language exchange things for free now.

Re: Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar acquisition

#50

Post by jinto36 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #34
rjh29 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean nerds like Japanese so it's no surprise that Japanese has the best arrangement of apps and websites. Personally I just read easy manga (like Yotsuba-to) and worked my way up to books. I didn't use any tools except Genki 1+2.

> nerds like Japanese so it's no surprise that Japanese has the best arrangement of apps and websites. It might not be a surprise... but is it true? Pleco (for Chinese) seems to reach a standard well above what's available for Japanese, despite the twin facts that (a) Chinese has much less cultural currency in the English-speaking world than Japanese does; and (b) Pleco is not at all a complex app.† It's a dictionary…

Akebi for Android is pretty good. For a while I used the Nintendo DS Japanese dictionary (Rakubiki Jiten) for the ability to do stylus-based character recognition, which was less frustrating to use than the Windows IME pad feature. Akebi works reasonably well for that function.

I only just started learning Chinese, so I haven't looked at Pleco yet and can't really compare them.

I'll agree with some other comments that once you get into the area bordering intermediate and advanced proficiency there are many fewer resources, but by then you have a better idea of what you don't know, and and can use your existing base to sort of plot a path to fill those gaps.

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