There are these times where almost everybody around me travels to the same place. Last year this place was Greece and this year it seems to be Japan. Like my friends, I too decided that Japan will be my next travel destination. But before going to the land of the rising sun I wanted to learn some basic Japanese. From my past trips to China and Korea I found that the experience is different when you are able to speak a bit of their language.
An important part of a language is the alphabet. Japanese has three so called scripts that cause minor headache for new Japanese learners. Since I struggled as well I decided to write an app that helps me to learn these three scripts step by step while providing some mnemonics that should help with memorizing the dozens of characters.
Usage#
This app gives a course on the Japanese scripts Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. The app is split into multiple lessons which are either lectures or tests. A lecture provides the user with some information on a topic while a test will prompt the user to either pick among multiple options or write words by arranging the characters in the right order. These tests will grade your performance with zero to three stars. As long as you score one star the next lesson will be unlocked. Take your time with the tests. If you feel you didn’t perform well in a test then go back to the respective lecture and re-read the provided hints.
App#
Acknowledgement#
Some of the mnemonics for remembering the characters are taken from Kanji Pict-O-Graphix and Tofugu while the illustrations were created with the help of DALL.E 3. If you found any problems or have any suggestions to improve the app then let me know in the comments.