Japanese Talk

Very User-Friendly Japanese Apps for Beginners

Here are a few apps I’ve personally used and found very helpful for beginners:

How to Learn Japanese: The Ultimate Beginners Guide A guide to what you should know when you start learning Japanese, how to learn it, and some resources you can use to learn them!

If you want to learn from an app the renshuu is your best bet. It's designed to actually teach you Japanese and it's free.

Otherwise here's a list of resources depending on how you like to learn:
jtalkonline.com/how-to-learn...

Pink quince blossoms.

Pink almond blossoms.

Flowering quince.

A bee visits cherry blossoms.

🍑🌸BEWILDERING BLOSSOMS🌰🍊

Spring's great conundrum...which blossom is which?🤔

There comes a period in the year when species of ume, quince, peach, cherry and almond trees can all be seen in bloom🔍😵‍💫

#blossom #Kyoto #Japan #京都 #cherryblossoms #梅 #桜 #桃 #木瓜 #アーモンド

We’re pleased to have joined Bluesky! Follow us for news, updates, events info, education resources, and more 🇯🇵🤝🇬🇧
To find out about the history of The Japan Society and the work we do to cultivate UK-Japan relations, visit our website: www.japansociety.org.uk

Have you tried renshuu? It's free and designed specifically for Japanese.

がんばってください！！

My method isn't the recommended method or the one everyone uses. I found then when I tried to cram lots of new/reviewed words I didn't memorize them as well, so try to focus on learning a few and taking my time. And I don't bother to get all my reviews to 0 if I have hundreds of cards piling up.

I should probably add that I don't use any pre-made decks, only stuff I want to learn. I work on one deck at a time with 10 new words/50 reviews. If I leave a deck for long enough and find myself re-studying reviews then I'll reset the whole thing and start from scratch with 20 new/50 reviews.

I make my own decks based on whatever vocabulary I feel I need to learn from Kanji Study or textbooks or novels. I only do 10 new and 50 review a day and completely ignore the "you should 100 reviews if you're learning 10 new words" prompt 😅 I've learned quality > quantity works better for my brain.

Even if I'm super busy, I can at least study vocabulary with Anki daily. It normally only takes 10 minutes.

I've just looked over the reviews and Reddit and it seems HelloTalk is now very aggressive with trying to give them money (probably because they wasted a lot on AI) and have issues with harassers and fake accounts. So probably not worth it for language exchange.

Nooooooo 😭

How to Learn Japanese: The Ultimate Beginners Guide A guide to what you should know when you start learning Japanese, how to learn it, and some resources you can use to learn them!

Here are all the resources I recommend to beginners.
jtalkonline.com/how-to-learn...

Find and Track Japanese Books with Natively If you love reading or want to read Japanese books, then you might want to check out this brand new website!

Natively is a fantastic resource for Japanese and Korean learners to find books, movies, and TV shows. You can also use it as a book tracker with detailed stats, and take advantage of the book clubs and discussions on the forum. Did I mention it's free?
jtalkonline.com/find-and-tra...

I haven't used HelloTalk in forever, so can't comment on what it's like now. But it provided a different service for correcting sentences. Which is useful and good practice/a good way to get feedback, but as you said, different from teachers and actual lessons.

Beginning Japanese Study Guide - Sarah Moon's Ko-fi Shop I've made a 121 page study guide that outlines most of the lessons in the Genki I textbook. I use my own example sentences to illustrate grammar, and ...

I'm offering digital downloads of beginner-level Japanese on my kofi!

121 pages, based off the Genki 1 textbook, but explained in my voice, with my unique examples, and with extra grammar, vocab, and tidbits not covered in Genki 1.

Highly recommend the app Renshuu. It's free and is designed to teach you Japanese rather than just trigger dopamine like Duo.

italki is Dead to Me - Japanese Talk italki, like so many great services for language learners, is dead. Well, not dead dead, but it’s heading that way. italki was a great service that connected language learners with amateur and profess...

If you've been following me for a while you'll know how annoyed I was about the changes to italki 6 months ago. Things haven't changed so, after 12 years of using italki, I've decided to delete my account.
jtalkonline.com/italki-is-de...

It's crazy there's no way to report Amazon listings for plagiarized slop.

If you're a fan of youkai, make sure you get real human written works and not AI generated slop stolen from real people.

I use the 手書き keyboard from Gboard, it works really well even if you're not sure of the exact stroke order.

in the package I got the other day I got some new books and one of them was this fancy JP translation of Alice in Wonderland, which I obvs already wanted to read, but actually opening it and flipping through the pages, this might be the coolest formatting/typography I've ever seen

They changed the JLPT rules so that people on provisional release are allowed!! www.facebook.com/share/p/16vj...

I tried to do some research but can't seem to find a QWERTZ keyboard for Japanese on Android. I think probably because the Japanese keyboard is different in Japan?

If you're struggling because they're similar, you could try to learn a completely different Japanese keyboard?

How to Learn Japanese: The Ultimate Beginners Guide A guide to what you should know when you start learning Japanese, how to learn it, and some resources you can use to learn them!

The best way is to find a way that works for you. If you're overwhelmed, focus on learning just a few kanji. Maybe aim for just the ones for the JLPT N5 at first.

If you're struggling with memorizing them, then use mnemonics or focus on their radicals.
jtalkonline.com/how-to-learn...

Ahhh, yeah, that makes sense. You can always start with just 5 or 10 minutes a day of study. A little every day is better than nothing. (If it's something you're still interested in doing.)

Japanese Study Apps That DON'T Use AI - Japanese Talk The plagiarism machine seems to be worming its way into everything. Here's a list of Japanese Study apps That DON'T Use AI!

Sadly Mango also uses AI to make their courses. If you want 100% AI free (and free) then renshuu is a good option. Here's a list of apps that don't, though.
jtalkonline.com/japanese-stu...

Is there a particular reason you kept getting demotivated? Too much to do? Couldn't make a habit of it? Kept putting it off? Etc. If you identify what demotivates you, maybe you can try to avoid that or find work arounds?

初めて言われました Japanese passive forms can be difficult to get used to at first. Finding a few phrases you understand, such as 初めて言われました, can make it easier to access others.

I sent out the February newsletter earlier today. I wrote about the phrase 初めて言われました. I think this is a really helpful phrase for new students to access the Japanese passive form. newsletter.howtojapanese.com/hajimete-iwa...

Best and Worst Japanese Novels of 2024 - Japanese Talk I read a lot of Japanese novels in 2024 and have picked my five worst and best ones so you can find something new, or avoid something bad.

Maiko Seo (あかり) wrote そして、バトンは渡された and Ryo Asai (イン・ザ・メガチャーチ) wrote 正欲 which were both on my worst books of 2024...
jtalkonline.com/best-and-wor...