10 ms·

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

161 points by chrisvasselli 4y ago

Hey HN, it’s been 8 years since I posted on here about the launch of my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo [0] and I’m finally back with a new app: Nihongo Lessons! Think of Nihongo Lessons as the textbook to Nihongo’s dictionary. It’s an app for learning Japanese, specifically made for learners who are serious about becoming fluent, and want a guided set of content that will help them efficiently acquire vocabulary and grammar. The project came about when Adam Shapiro of Japanese Level Up (Jalup) [1] announced last April that he was shutting Jalup down. As a fan of Adam’s work I was bummed to hear the news, but realized I actually might be one of the few people in the world in a position to keep his work alive. So I reached out, and we came up with a deal where I would sell Jalup content in my apps. Originally it was envisioned as an add-on to Nihongo, but after starting to build this out it became clear that from a UX perspective it felt too bloated and tacked-on to just shove Jalup into Nihongo. Plus, given that Jalup is built around one-time content purchases, and Nihongo is a subscription, the purchases involved would feel convoluted, and people might be upset that they weren’t included in the Nihongo subscription. So, I started building a separate app that would become Nihongo Lessons. From a technical perspective, Nihongo Lessons is actually just a different entry point into essentially the same app bundle as Nihongo. This gives me a lot of the infrastructure (sync, error reporting, screenshot generation, etc.) of Nihongo for free, and makes it easy to share UI, which I do a fair amount of (flashcards, tutorials, settings). Everything that actually changes behavior between the apps is stored in a single file as an “app variant” configuration, so if I decide to create another companion app in the future, it should be even easier. It’s iPhone-only for now, but iPad will be coming soon. No plans for an Android release at the moment. Download: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1640204242 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1640204242 [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10094326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10094326 [1]: https://japaneselevelup.com https://japaneselevelup.com

entropicgravity 4y ago
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)
kasool 4y ago
Hi, I’ve been using the app for a few days and I’m really enjoying it! Until recently I was using WaniKani, which I still enjoy, but I’ve been intimidated on how to start learning real grammar and conversation. Would enjoy a web or Mac version as some others may have pointed out.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Looks great and I am your target customer prior language experience but very out of practice and wanting to go from adequacy to fluency), but why phone-only? I was quite disappointed as I have a Mac but don't own an iPhone, and while I'd be willing to pay for this I don't want to buy a new device just to try it out. Another reason is that for study I actually like to sit at a desk and make notes with a pencil on paper.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Thanks! Phone-only for now just because I wanted to get it out the door and focus on polishing a single user experience, but I definitely plan on adding iPad support soon. That's good feedback that you like studying on your Mac, I'll consider putting together a Mac version as well (although the iPad version will at least run decently well on any Apple-Silicon Mac).
killa_kyle 4y ago
Checking it out!
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Great, let me know if you have any feedback!
- frxx 4y ago
  Will take a look as well.
nosefrog 4y ago
Cool! Does anyone know of apps similar to this for Chinese?
- 100phlecs 4y ago
  What do you like about this app that you would want for your chinese learning?
- mkenny 4y ago
  I am not sure which aspects you are looking to recreate exactly, but please check out my Chinese learning web app (JinbuPal). The primary focus is to help you learn high frequency characters and words as quickly as possible while giving you real-time data as to the application of what you've learned. You can gain familiarity with character pronunciations and then learn words that use only characters you've already studied. Seeing your progress score helps boost your confidence when starting to read real Chinese texts. You will reach 80%+ recognition of characters and knowledge of words through completing everything in the app. At that point, you'll feel much more confident to approach real-world written Chinese from any resource you find personally interesting.
jwrallie 4y ago
Spotted some typo (Nihnogo), so you might want to double check your spelling. I'm not sure if it is a personal thing, but I would like to have an idea of your pricing before trying your app, and it was not clear from the web page. This one might be subjective, but I've lived in Japan a couple of years and it is quite rare to hear somebody saying 見ましょう in the context of your example. I get the point is to teach the grammar, but if you claim your app lead people to fluency, there might be better examples to show up in your screenshots. Maybe I'm not the target customer, but I get the feeling I'll be learning more for passing the jlpt tests and less for the real world.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Oh thanks! I swear I must've read that typo 100 times and never noticed it. Good point about the pricing and 見ましょう examples, I'll consider changing it to something else.
  - SiVal 4y ago
    Chris, I'll second the pricing feedback. It sounded interesting, so I went to the App Store. FREE. Yay! But with in-app purchases. Oh. Okay, I guess that's how they all do it these days. Could mean you don't really need to pay for most features. Or you can't realistically use it without paying $2. Or maybe $200. Or maybe $10/month forever. Who knows? The App Store policy is to hide all but the initial price, so developers' policy is to make that zero and hide the actual cost in "in-app". But, the website will explain what you get for how much, right? The website explanation is that you potentially get lots of great features, and if you want to know which features cost how much, go to the App Store and "buy" it for "free" and see what happens. So, I figured maybe I would read some reviews. Later. Too busy now. If it was impulse purchase price, I would have just bought it, but I can't tell, so I'll put it on my mental "check it out someday" list. For now, I just shrugged and moved on, but since you're participating in the discussion here, and I'm a small dev too, I figured I'd just give you some feedback from the "usability lab", FWIW.
    - chrisvasselli 4y ago
diob 4y ago
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 wish there was a better way, but tools crafted for intermediate folks just don't have a market given the small subset who gets there.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm trying to fill that gap a bit here. My app Nihongo was the app I built for myself when I was getting to the advanced level, and wanted to focus on learning from native content. It helps automatically create flashcards from words you look up, OCR, etc. Nihongo Lessons is a companion app for people that want something more guided to help them learn vocab/grammar. It covers everything from beginner-advanced, but is probably most suited for intermediate folks who want to make a push towards advanced.
- resonious 4y ago
  Agree on reading. The one tool I feel I want is a good OCR + dictionary setup, as a quick escape hatch for physical books. I actually cobbled together something like that using Google's OCR API for Android. Works well for me but might be too janky for release. Maybe I should release it as a good tool for upper intermediates.
  - chrisvasselli 4y ago
    If you haven't checked it out my other app Nihongo has a good OCR + dictionary setup. You can see a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A iOS-only though.
    - resonious 4y ago
      Ahh yes that's basically perfect! Let me know when there's an Android version ;)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
frellus 4y ago
Wow, I really like this app. The way you've done this, it's extremely visually appealing, it's well designed and from the start I felt productive in learning where I'm weakest with my Japanese writing. Well done!!
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Thank you so much, I'm so glad you like it!
sirmarksalot 4y ago
This looks interesting to me, but I've been looking for a language learning app that goes beyond flash cards and SRS as its core teaching concept. SRS is great for learning individual vocabulary in a vacuum, but kind of falls apart when you need to teach bigger concepts like number systems, grammatical theory, or conjugation rules. If you've already been taught the rules, then an SRS app like Wanikani can be a really great supplement to that, but it's not going to serve as a full learning experience. This is where I find Duolingo and its imitators really frustrating, and I've been looking for a higher-effort product that actually uses subject-appropriate teaching strategies, and not treating SRS as a silver bullet. The "puzzle" feature here looks interesting, so I'd like to see how integrated it is with the concepts, vs. being another view onto "word <-> translation" and SRS.
- teen 4y ago
  Lingodeer is really good. Check it out.
raylad 4y ago
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 the way.
- timr 4y ago
  > 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 Japanese language schools), but that's not necessary (or necessarily advisable), and going from that to "I must first learn the characters" is pathological. People get stuck on this because they spend weeks/months/years doing rote memorization, and make no progress toward understanding the actual language. Eventually you get to a place where you can start to infer word meanings from kanji, but that's a lot like using latin roots to infer the meanings of unknown words in English. It's a nice-to-have, not an essential tool, and you'll get there anyway if you simply study words.
  - raylad 4y ago
    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.
    - chrisvasselli 4y ago
      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.
gimmeTheJalup 4y ago
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 words/grammar with English translations. - The unusual common twitter/conversational/colloquial slang words taught early. - The unusual those same first thousand words "coincidentally" allowing the first step to using monolingual Japanese-Japanese dictionaries. - The unusual next 1000 words * 6 decks with no English, just pure Japanese that you transitioned to from only knowing the first 1000 Japanese -> English translated words. It is a lot more amazing than most people realize from just a headline or a quick glance at the home page! My one dopamine-inducing memory using this was against a person who has been learning Japanese for about a year with a tutor and Japanese friends vs me who has only been using the app for about a month now. We were presented with a tweet and he was confused because of a few slang terms in there, I could make out the tweet naturally as if I was reading English, although with the reading speed of a 6 year old. Granted the tweet was fairly simple with basic words just expressing the thoughts of the user. I definitely would be outmatched with a tweet/conversation with more advanced words. But at that moment, I knew I had him beat with most casual simple colloquial sentences that I don't have to internally translate back to English in my head. This is not to say who's better than who, he was clearly better in almost every way, but he was learning it textbook style. I went with the path of wanting to read the internet too, and textbook language just are like valid vibes, but lowkey, no cap, fit the internet fr fr.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  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!
valenterry 4y ago
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.
russelg 4y ago
Nice! Shame it's iOS only. I guess I could run it on my Macbook...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Fan boys aside. I use another app called learn Japanese !! (Plus the easy Japanese news which is not related). That seems to be similar superficially. I did pay for that to get the additional feature. (and forget how I pay it. Does not seem to be subscription based.)
alexklarjr 4y ago
Am I right, full app cost is 500 dorrars?
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Individual courses are $120, unlocking all seven is $300 (USD).
trophycase 4y ago
If you are trying to learn Japanese I highly recommend the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 It explains the actual structure of the language in a way I've not seen anywhere else. The creator passed away last year but the content is still incredible and useful.
- Tor3 4y ago
  Agreed. It's tragic that she passed away. The content of her 92 videos describe Japanese grammar better than any textbook in existence (ignoring her own small booklet - and unfortunately she passed before she could finish her newer book).
- risingsubmarine 4y ago
  Her grammar lessons were so insightful it was actually exhilarating to watch them for first time. So good I downloaded the entire channel.
toxik 4y ago
This is one of those cases where the hyphenation really matters. A Japanese learning app would be an app in or by Japanese for learning things. A Japanese-learning app would be an app for learning Japanese.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Whoops! Japanese-learning app then.
revskill 4y ago
I don't see the Reading/Pronounciation part. Knowing how to pronouce correctly the Kanji characters seem like an impossible task.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Kanji lessons coming soon. :)
suction 4y ago
suction 4y ago
jalapenos 4y ago
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.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Planning on at least adding "this is approximately JLPT N4" kind of tags on the levels in the future.
- glandium 4y ago
  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).
  - jalapenos 4y ago
    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.
dayjaby 4y ago
Huge shoutout to jpdb.io, which is imho second to none as they have flashcard sets for 5600 different books/animes/mangas/novels etc. That's literally the best way to learn to read a language: reading actual Japanese written by a Japanese. No artificial workbook sentences. Actual context that surrounds your sentences. And you only have to deal with unknown vocabulary, where jpdb steps in.
- dtdynasty 4y ago
  Huge +1 to jpdb. If I were to start my journey over I would just use jpdb instead of recreating a worse version by hacking together plugins and handmade tools.
cehrlich 4y ago
This looks great, and I remember seeing Jalup a few years ago. I'm alright at the language now (N1 a year ago, 50+ books read, etc) and so deep into Anki at this point that I doubt I'll ever transition away, but I could see recommending this to someone who wants an easier solution.
kinbiko 4y ago
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!
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  Awesome! Let me know if you have any feedback after playing around with it.
mkenny 4y ago
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 precision of handwriting to get accepted. I must have tried え 10 times before just swiping down to get out of it because it would not accept the second stroke. I didn't have trouble with the others leading up to it though.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  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!

161 points by chrisvasselli 4y ago

entropicgravity 4y ago

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)

kasool 4y ago

Hi, I’ve been using the app for a few days and I’m really enjoying it! Until recently I was using WaniKani, which I still enjoy, but I’ve been intimidated on how to start learning real grammar and conversation. Would enjoy a web or Mac version as some others may have pointed out.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Looks great and I am your target customer prior language experience but very out of practice and wanting to go from adequacy to fluency), but why phone-only? I was quite disappointed as I have a Mac but don't own an iPhone, and while I'd be willing to pay for this I don't want to buy a new device just to try it out. Another reason is that for study I actually like to sit at a desk and make notes with a pencil on paper.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Thanks! Phone-only for now just because I wanted to get it out the door and focus on polishing a single user experience, but I definitely plan on adding iPad support soon. That's good feedback that you like studying on your Mac, I'll consider putting together a Mac version as well (although the iPad version will at least run decently well on any Apple-Silicon Mac).

killa_kyle 4y ago

Checking it out!

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Great, let me know if you have any feedback!
frxx 4y ago
Will take a look as well.

nosefrog 4y ago

Cool! Does anyone know of apps similar to this for Chinese?

100phlecs 4y ago
What do you like about this app that you would want for your chinese learning?
mkenny 4y ago
I am not sure which aspects you are looking to recreate exactly, but please check out my Chinese learning web app (JinbuPal). The primary focus is to help you learn high frequency characters and words as quickly as possible while giving you real-time data as to the application of what you've learned. You can gain familiarity with character pronunciations and then learn words that use only characters you've already studied. Seeing your progress score helps boost your confidence when starting to read real Chinese texts. You will reach 80%+ recognition of characters and knowledge of words through completing everything in the app. At that point, you'll feel much more confident to approach real-world written Chinese from any resource you find personally interesting.

jwrallie 4y ago

Spotted some typo (Nihnogo), so you might want to double check your spelling. I'm not sure if it is a personal thing, but I would like to have an idea of your pricing before trying your app, and it was not clear from the web page. This one might be subjective, but I've lived in Japan a couple of years and it is quite rare to hear somebody saying 見ましょう in the context of your example. I get the point is to teach the grammar, but if you claim your app lead people to fluency, there might be better examples to show up in your screenshots. Maybe I'm not the target customer, but I get the feeling I'll be learning more for passing the jlpt tests and less for the real world.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Oh thanks! I swear I must've read that typo 100 times and never noticed it. Good point about the pricing and 見ましょう examples, I'll consider changing it to something else.
- SiVal 4y ago
  Chris, I'll second the pricing feedback. It sounded interesting, so I went to the App Store. FREE. Yay! But with in-app purchases. Oh. Okay, I guess that's how they all do it these days. Could mean you don't really need to pay for most features. Or you can't realistically use it without paying $2. Or maybe $200. Or maybe $10/month forever. Who knows? The App Store policy is to hide all but the initial price, so developers' policy is to make that zero and hide the actual cost in "in-app". But, the website will explain what you get for how much, right? The website explanation is that you potentially get lots of great features, and if you want to know which features cost how much, go to the App Store and "buy" it for "free" and see what happens. So, I figured maybe I would read some reviews. Later. Too busy now. If it was impulse purchase price, I would have just bought it, but I can't tell, so I'll put it on my mental "check it out someday" list. For now, I just shrugged and moved on, but since you're participating in the discussion here, and I'm a small dev too, I figured I'd just give you some feedback from the "usability lab", FWIW.
  - chrisvasselli 4y ago

diob 4y ago

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 wish there was a better way, but tools crafted for intermediate folks just don't have a market given the small subset who gets there.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Yeah, I'm trying to fill that gap a bit here. My app Nihongo was the app I built for myself when I was getting to the advanced level, and wanted to focus on learning from native content. It helps automatically create flashcards from words you look up, OCR, etc. Nihongo Lessons is a companion app for people that want something more guided to help them learn vocab/grammar. It covers everything from beginner-advanced, but is probably most suited for intermediate folks who want to make a push towards advanced.
resonious 4y ago
Agree on reading. The one tool I feel I want is a good OCR + dictionary setup, as a quick escape hatch for physical books. I actually cobbled together something like that using Google's OCR API for Android. Works well for me but might be too janky for release. Maybe I should release it as a good tool for upper intermediates.
- chrisvasselli 4y ago
  If you haven't checked it out my other app Nihongo has a good OCR + dictionary setup. You can see a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A iOS-only though.
  - resonious 4y ago
    Ahh yes that's basically perfect! Let me know when there's an Android version ;)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

frellus 4y ago

Wow, I really like this app. The way you've done this, it's extremely visually appealing, it's well designed and from the start I felt productive in learning where I'm weakest with my Japanese writing. Well done!!

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Thank you so much, I'm so glad you like it!

sirmarksalot 4y ago

This looks interesting to me, but I've been looking for a language learning app that goes beyond flash cards and SRS as its core teaching concept. SRS is great for learning individual vocabulary in a vacuum, but kind of falls apart when you need to teach bigger concepts like number systems, grammatical theory, or conjugation rules. If you've already been taught the rules, then an SRS app like Wanikani can be a really great supplement to that, but it's not going to serve as a full learning experience. This is where I find Duolingo and its imitators really frustrating, and I've been looking for a higher-effort product that actually uses subject-appropriate teaching strategies, and not treating SRS as a silver bullet. The "puzzle" feature here looks interesting, so I'd like to see how integrated it is with the concepts, vs. being another view onto "word <-> translation" and SRS.

teen 4y ago
Lingodeer is really good. Check it out.

raylad 4y ago

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 the way.

timr 4y ago
> 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 Japanese language schools), but that's not necessary (or necessarily advisable), and going from that to "I must first learn the characters" is pathological. People get stuck on this because they spend weeks/months/years doing rote memorization, and make no progress toward understanding the actual language. Eventually you get to a place where you can start to infer word meanings from kanji, but that's a lot like using latin roots to infer the meanings of unknown words in English. It's a nice-to-have, not an essential tool, and you'll get there anyway if you simply study words.
- raylad 4y ago
  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.
  - chrisvasselli 4y ago
    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.

gimmeTheJalup 4y ago

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 words/grammar with English translations. - The unusual common twitter/conversational/colloquial slang words taught early. - The unusual those same first thousand words "coincidentally" allowing the first step to using monolingual Japanese-Japanese dictionaries. - The unusual next 1000 words * 6 decks with no English, just pure Japanese that you transitioned to from only knowing the first 1000 Japanese -> English translated words. It is a lot more amazing than most people realize from just a headline or a quick glance at the home page! My one dopamine-inducing memory using this was against a person who has been learning Japanese for about a year with a tutor and Japanese friends vs me who has only been using the app for about a month now. We were presented with a tweet and he was confused because of a few slang terms in there, I could make out the tweet naturally as if I was reading English, although with the reading speed of a 6 year old. Granted the tweet was fairly simple with basic words just expressing the thoughts of the user. I definitely would be outmatched with a tweet/conversation with more advanced words. But at that moment, I knew I had him beat with most casual simple colloquial sentences that I don't have to internally translate back to English in my head. This is not to say who's better than who, he was clearly better in almost every way, but he was learning it textbook style. I went with the path of wanting to read the internet too, and textbook language just are like valid vibes, but lowkey, no cap, fit the internet fr fr.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
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!

valenterry 4y ago

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.

russelg 4y ago

Nice! Shame it's iOS only. I guess I could run it on my Macbook...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ngcc_hk 4y ago

Fan boys aside. I use another app called learn Japanese !! (Plus the easy Japanese news which is not related). That seems to be similar superficially. I did pay for that to get the additional feature. (and forget how I pay it. Does not seem to be subscription based.)

alexklarjr 4y ago

Am I right, full app cost is 500 dorrars?

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Individual courses are $120, unlocking all seven is $300 (USD).

trophycase 4y ago

If you are trying to learn Japanese I highly recommend the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 It explains the actual structure of the language in a way I've not seen anywhere else. The creator passed away last year but the content is still incredible and useful.

Tor3 4y ago
Agreed. It's tragic that she passed away. The content of her 92 videos describe Japanese grammar better than any textbook in existence (ignoring her own small booklet - and unfortunately she passed before she could finish her newer book).
risingsubmarine 4y ago
Her grammar lessons were so insightful it was actually exhilarating to watch them for first time. So good I downloaded the entire channel.

toxik 4y ago

This is one of those cases where the hyphenation really matters. A Japanese learning app would be an app in or by Japanese for learning things. A Japanese-learning app would be an app for learning Japanese.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Whoops! Japanese-learning app then.

revskill 4y ago

I don't see the Reading/Pronounciation part. Knowing how to pronouce correctly the Kanji characters seem like an impossible task.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Kanji lessons coming soon. :)

suction 4y ago

jalapenos 4y ago

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.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Planning on at least adding "this is approximately JLPT N4" kind of tags on the levels in the future.
glandium 4y ago
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).
- jalapenos 4y ago
  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.

dayjaby 4y ago

Huge shoutout to jpdb.io, which is imho second to none as they have flashcard sets for 5600 different books/animes/mangas/novels etc. That's literally the best way to learn to read a language: reading actual Japanese written by a Japanese. No artificial workbook sentences. Actual context that surrounds your sentences. And you only have to deal with unknown vocabulary, where jpdb steps in.

dtdynasty 4y ago
Huge +1 to jpdb. If I were to start my journey over I would just use jpdb instead of recreating a worse version by hacking together plugins and handmade tools.

cehrlich 4y ago

This looks great, and I remember seeing Jalup a few years ago. I'm alright at the language now (N1 a year ago, 50+ books read, etc) and so deep into Anki at this point that I doubt I'll ever transition away, but I could see recommending this to someone who wants an easier solution.

kinbiko 4y ago

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!

chrisvasselli 4y ago
Awesome! Let me know if you have any feedback after playing around with it.

mkenny 4y ago

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 precision of handwriting to get accepted. I must have tried え 10 times before just swiping down to get out of it because it would not accept the second stroke. I didn't have trouble with the others leading up to it though.

chrisvasselli 4y ago
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!