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

lessons.nihongo-app.com

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

#111

Post by chrisvasselli »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #110
chrisvasselli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're interested in what makes a good dictionary, as opposed to a good app, I want to note something that I really want but that dictionaries generally do not provide: Words generally accept several different parameters (known in linguistics as "complements"). If I look up the FrameNet entry for "notify (v.)" ( https://framenet2.icsi.berkeley.edu/fnReports/data/lu/lu9183... ), I see that it belongs to the semanti…

This is really really interesting. I wonder if the data from FrameNet would be enough to reliably generate this kind of information in a Japanese dictionary, and if the license supports is usage. I'm going to explore this more, thanks.

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

#112

Post by chrisvasselli »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #107
chrisvasselli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

features I use in Pleco: - The main panel. You put in characters, and Pleco calls up a list of dictionary entries. As I mentioned above, if you put in several words at once, Pleco will try to call up entries for all of them, but it can't tell where one word ends and another begins, so if you do this you're not unlikely to end up fetching incorrect entries. - The entry view. - The stroke order view. Tells you the stro…

Thanks, this is really useful. I've got some of those in my app, but this gives me a good set of features to aim for as well.

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

#113

Post by chrisvasselli »

gabelschlager wrote: post #91
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…

There are sites like japanese.io, that allow you to copy/paste any text and get vocabulary lookup, furigana support, allow to add words to a flashcard deck and other things. I really like their idea and feel such a platform would add a lot of benefit, since you can read whatever you care about. Sadly, the site struggles with longer texts (the UI is not optimized for it) and their flashcard system isn't that great. I…

You should check out my other app, Nihongo (https://nihongo-app.com), it has functionality like this, and is one of the reasons I developed it in the first place.

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.

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

#114

Post by chrisvasselli »

mkenny wrote: post #103

Great work! I just downloaded the app and was testing it out. I like the way the onboarding is down with a gentle suggestion of what to do first without locking the user out of parts of the app. I believe users should be able to explore as much as they want to decide if something is beyond their current comprehension. One thing, when learning some of the hiragana, the sensitivity seems to be set pretty high on the pr…

Thanks for that feedback. The drawing system was originally developed for writing kanji, used in my other app Nihongo. Kanji doesn't have the same kind of long strokes that change direction as hiragana, so I could see it not behaving as well for those. I'll see if I can improve it, thanks!

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

#115

Post by chrisvasselli »

kinbiko wrote: post #96

Your timing could not be better. Just this morning I was thinking how I'm set on the kanji front (with Anki) but I could really use a system for learning more vocab and grammar at an advanced level. Then this came along. Excited to have a go!

Awesome! Let me know if you have any feedback after playing around with it.

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

#116

Post by jalapenos »

glandium wrote: post #93
jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is great. I'm not going to recommend porting to web (or android) because it's too obvious :). Maybe buy out his existing other assets too? But if you aligned it with the JLPT I would subscribe. JLPT is the official gauge of progress and is a great motivator.

I don't think JLPT is granular enough to be a gauge of progress. It's only really useful to show to institutions that ask for it (implying N3 to N5 are mostly useless).

The progress does feel more real though, which motivates.

To a large extent even an N1 is useless too for practical uses. It doesn't cover production so employers etc are more concerned with interview performance anyway. But it's psychologically validating.

I have a friend who has N1 and who still just works as an English teacher, so it's not like it suddenly opens lucrative doors.

Also the N5 is a requirement for some student visas I believe.

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

#117

Post by entropicgravity »

In learning a new language job 1 is get pronunciation correct. For adults this be very tricky unless you're a muscian or you listen to a lot of movies in the target language.

Job two is get strong hearing.

Grammar is last.

Language is a sport, you have to play with an opponent (or friend)

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

#118

Post by raylad »

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…

You misunderstand me. I am actually referring to katakana and hiragana, not kanji.

Just having to learn those first will stop a large percentage of people who would otherwise be able to learn to talk reasonably well.

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

#119

Post by chrisvasselli »

jalapenos wrote: post #89

This is great. I'm not going to recommend porting to web (or android) because it's too obvious :). Maybe buy out his existing other assets too? But if you aligned it with the JLPT I would subscribe. JLPT is the official gauge of progress and is a great motivator.

Planning on at least adding "this is approximately JLPT N4" kind of tags on the levels in the future.

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

#120

Post by chrisvasselli »

raylad wrote: post #118
timr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You misunderstand me. I am actually referring to katakana and hiragana, not kanji. Just having to learn those first will stop a large percentage of people who would otherwise be able to learn to talk reasonably well.

I'm going to add some ability to display things in romaji in the future, so users can start on some of the actual sentences before completing hiragana/katakana. Agree that getting through all the characters before starting anything else is not motivating.
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