As someone who loves both coding and learning Japanese, I’ve always wished there was an open-source, truly free tool for learning Japanese, kind of like what Monkeytype is in the typing community (fun fact: we actually have 2 Monkeytype devs on board with us now!)
Unfortunately, most language learning apps these days are either paid or closed-source, and the few free ones that are still out there haven’t really been kept up to date. I felt like that left a gap for people who just want a straightforward, open-source, high-quality learning tool that isn’t trying to milk them and/or sell them something.
That being said, I didn’t want to just make another “me too” language app just for the sake of creating one. There needed to be something special about it. That’s when I thought: why not truly hit it home and do something no other language learning app has done by adding tons of color themes, fonts and an extremely fun and customizable experience, as a little tribute to the vibe that inspired me in the first place, Monkeytype.
So, that’s what I’m doing now. We’ve already hit half a thousand stars on GitHub and reached thousands of Japanese learners worldwide, and we’re looking to grow our forever free, open-source platform even more.
Why? Because Japanese learners and weebs deserve a free and genuinely fun learning experience too.
Live demo: https://kanadojo.com/
If you wanna make our day by dropping us a star or even contributing, then you can do so here --> https://github.com/lingdojo/kana-dojo ^^
どもありがとうございます！
The practice problems made it stick for me, I just worked through the lesson 2’s problems a couple of weeks ago. That said, language learning is a journey. I’ve watched anime for years and did Duolingo for half a year but never got anywhere. I went to Japan in March but was severely disappointed by how absolutely useless I was without Google translate. I finally decided that I’m going to learn it this time and a couple of months ago I started in earnest.
From what I’ve researched, there’s 3 things you need to focus on (after you’ve learned the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets):
Doing Anki flashcards with a vocab deck (I’m currently using Kaishi 1.5K). This software OP created fills the same role so use that if it works for you, I just like Anki’s algorithms that put frequently missed cards in rotation more often. Don’t overload yourself, just do a little bit every day. If you use Anki, set it to only introduce 10 new cards a day.
Listening to a lot of Japanese for immersion, arguably the most important. Listen to podcasts, anime with no subs, whatever seems interesting enough to keep you engaged. If it’s about a topic you know about you’ll pick things up faster. Your brain begins to form patterns and with enough inputs will put things together and match words you know with words that are commonly found beside it
Learning the grammar. This is arguably less important because with enough listening you’ll passively pick it up, but if you study a bit it can jumpstart it.
There’s a concept called tolerating ambiguity: as you listen to Japanese immersion you will have no idea what’s going on. For me it was infuriating, but you need to accept that you won’t understand in the beginning. This is how babies learn. This is the video that started me on my path to actually trying.
The part that people don’t want to admit is that it takes years to get to the point where you can really understand the language and you’ll have to work at it. If you want to go down that journey then feel free to DM me, I can help you get started and we can throw phrases we learn at each other and watch our progress grow over time.
Another banger video. Thanks! That’s exactly how I figure I’d learn. For the last few years I’ve been addicted to watching subbed and unsubbed episodes of Game Center CX and when they speak slow enough, the ambiguous learning really works. E.g. when everyone is groaning after a death and gets serious and the narrator says “lasto iki” well it’s pretty obvious iki means “life”
That’s perfect. Subbed is fine too if you’re actively listening but my problem was that I would just read the subs, hear the voices, and never actually listen to what they were saying.
For some reason I thought it would eventually sink in but it never did, the immersion listening has been working much better.
Funny story, I looked up Pokemon Podcast in Google translate and pasted it into YouTube and clicked the first result and actually liked the podcast. I went to watch more, but then realized it’s a general podcast that did a single Pokemon episode. Furthermore, it’s called the Badonkadonk Podcast and each episode starts with the guy saying daaaaamnnnnnmmn, that’s a badonkadonk! before starting the podcast in Japanese. It’s pretty funny, the guy is from America and will randomly break into English