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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But if you aligned it with the JLPT I would subscribe. JLPT is the official gauge of progress and is a great motivator.
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.
Well done!!
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.
Job two is get strong hearing.
Grammar is last.
Language is a sport, you have to play with an opponent (or friend)
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.)
Then this came along. Excited to have a go!
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.