This is super cool! Thank you so much for creating this and sharing it with the community. I'll definitely be trying it out.
Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#32Apps/platforms don't work for learning Japanese. You just need to memorize the hell out of the vocabulary, spend some time learning the grammar, and most importantly IMMERSE. Watch, read and listen to content in Japanese. https://learnjapanese.moe https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
The “culture” around learning Japanese is so different from other languages. There’s a large amount of software engineers studying the language, so there’s tons of apps/websites that center around it (for better or worse). The communities are also… particular. People tend to espouse certain deep beliefs or attitudes that you just don’t see for other languages (and I don’t think complexity is the reason; you don’t see…
Funny thing is, these communities aren’t readily visible in real life. At the Japanese language school I attend people are mostly regular people with regular lives and regular limitations. Online, you’d believe that everybody did Wanikani on Adderall for several hours a day.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
And maybe talk to people in Japanese? And do some writing? Not just passive consumption.
This is actually NOT recommended for a beginner. Writing and speaking are effective at establishing long term memories, it's why we do it for other things, but a language learning beginner has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes in how they're pronouncing words or how they're putting them together, etc. Language learning experts don't recommend you start speaking/writing unle…
>has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes
These days AI can tell you if it makes sense and the subtle mistakes you are making. I think this view point is outdated now that everyone has a personal language tutor in their pocket.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#34It looks and feels amazing and peaceful! For the kind of people who like studying without music.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#35Apps/platforms don't work for learning Japanese. You just need to memorize the hell out of the vocabulary, spend some time learning the grammar, and most importantly IMMERSE. Watch, read and listen to content in Japanese. https://learnjapanese.moe https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
And maybe talk to people in Japanese? And do some writing? Not just passive consumption.
Writing is not that necessary of a skill in Japanese- even many native Japanese speakers no longer remember how to write many characters.
There's even a self-deprecating slang term: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97...
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
And maybe talk to people in Japanese? And do some writing? Not just passive consumption.
Writing is not that necessary of a skill in Japanese- even many native Japanese speakers no longer remember how to write many characters. There's even a self-deprecating slang term: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97...
"Writing" here probably doesn't refer to writing things by hand with a pen, but rather the act of composing emails, text messages, essays and so on.
Even just forgetting about Kanji for a moment, just like in other languages, written Japanese is not identical to spoken Japanese and requires practice if you want to be able to compose natural sounding texts, emails, letters, and so on.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#37Apps/platforms don't work for learning Japanese. You just need to memorize the hell out of the vocabulary, spend some time learning the grammar, and most importantly IMMERSE. Watch, read and listen to content in Japanese. https://learnjapanese.moe https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
Ajatt is absolutely ridiculous and I never understood how it rose to prominence online. His result to efforts ratio listed back in the days was terrible and reading through is blog - back when it was a blog - was impossible. Everything read like an informercial and never got to the point. Last time I checked it was a book club. Didn’t bother to check this time.
What's ridiculous about it? Long before AJATT was a site, I think most people would've told you that immersion is a good way to learn a second language.
You mention "result to efforts ratio," but I'm not sure I understand what this could me. In language learning, "results" and "efforts" are more or less the same thing. If you read a lot of books, you'll be good at reading books. It's not like there's some reading that is "effort" reading and other reading that is "results" reading; it's all just reading. For most people, the goal of learning Japanese is to be able to use Japanese in the real world. In which case I don’t see why any amount of time spent using Japanese should count as effort (but not results), since that’s the whole point.
I never paid any money to AJATT nor agree with everything on the site, but did find it inspirational in various ways early on in my studies. I'm fluent in written and spoken Japanese, and I do think living in Japan as well as immersing myself in Japanese media was a big part of that. I studied French in high school and college using traditional courses and I was never a great French speaker, I think in large part because I didn't do much with French outside the classroom.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#38Apps/platforms don't work for learning Japanese. You just need to memorize the hell out of the vocabulary, spend some time learning the grammar, and most importantly IMMERSE. Watch, read and listen to content in Japanese. https://learnjapanese.moe https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
Isn’t this the same as any language?
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually NOT recommended for a beginner. Writing and speaking are effective at establishing long term memories, it's why we do it for other things, but a language learning beginner has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes in how they're pronouncing words or how they're putting them together, etc. Language learning experts don't recommend you start speaking/writing unle…
>has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes These days AI can tell you if it makes sense and the subtle mistakes you are making. I think this view point is outdated now that everyone has a personal language tutor in their pocket.
I've used several LLMs to do translations and they're very hit/miss, specially in very high context languages like japanese. I'm not sure recommending their usage for a beginner is good advice, it's better than nothing for sure, but still not a replacement for a human coach.
Re: Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
#40this is really cool, I had no real interest in learning Japanese but this makes it kinda enjoyable.