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！

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[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Could this be adjusted for traditional Chinese as well? Or Korean? Seeing as how they are also kind of 'blocky' languages?

[–] tentoumushi@sopuli.xyz 18 points 8 months ago

I was always thinking of creating a Chinese fork once this is polished enough! I'm learning Chinese too at the moment

[–] stray@pawb.social 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I would also like more languages, but I'm not sure what you mean by blocky?

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It’s more of a feeling than a technical definition. The opposite end of the ”blocky letters” spectrum would be Sanskrit or Arabic.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Like all the words fit in boxes? Like a pictogram? I'm sure there's a technical term for it

[–] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Logographic, or logogram maybe?

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 months ago

To me it's the feeling that they have a lot more characters which make use of straight lines

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You should also crosspost this to !japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz and !learnjapanese@lemmy.ml!

This looks neat, I'll have to sit down and give this a proper try some time ☺️

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 13 points 8 months ago

I just wanted to point out that https://github.com/fabd/kanji-koohii is also open source and a really awesome tool, too.

I was wondering if it's possible to create an account or if it's planned, because if I loose my cookies all progress will be lost. :(

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 9 points 8 months ago

Would be awesome to create an offlined ZIM archive with this like they did with FreeCodeCamp so you can use on your local device with Kiwix.

[–] basketugly@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I tried it and really like how open and not contrived (compared to there language apps) it is. Can you add a grammar section? I am at the point where I have the hiragana down and am okayish with Katakana, I know a lot of words/vocabulary but still feel like I cannot do anything with it because I don't grasp the grammar and conjugation-like rules of the language. Thank you.

[–] TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Grammar problems solved.

It took me a while to be able to tolerate the voice but it's the single best resource for learning Japanese grammar. The video creator passed on but they are by far the best teacher I've ever come across

[+] CHOPSTEEQ@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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[–] TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, it's rough, I almost quit five mins into the video and I told my wife it's the most grating thing I've ever heard. After finishing the first and second video I was able to tolerate it and concepts that I had read about but never understood were clicking left and right.

I later realized it might have been because the video creator was sick and was constantly in and out of hospitals so using an artificial voice may have just made everything easier and made me feel bad for being judgy.

I'm not super far in the series yet but there's put out so many amazing videos, there's problem sets with answers, and the comments are filled with personal anecdotes where the creator answered DMs to questions in a very in-depth and patient manner.

There's almost no fluff to the videos after the first one, they're very concise and the explanations make so much sense. It's easy to read things like "wa is the topic marker, ga is the subject marker" and not gain any clarity, but I finally understand it thanks to the vids. I'm sure one day I'll finish the series and wish I could hear more

[+] CHOPSTEEQ@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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[–] TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's a google doc transcription of this series , so you mostly dont need to suffer through the voice, if you don't want.

[–] TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

That's fantastic, thank you! I prefer reading to listening when learning so that's a huge help!

[–] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Other recommendation for grammar: check out bunpro. It does nag for log in and try to push subscription for SRS (flashcards), but the last time I used it, it did a great job of laying out the grammar points (by profiency level or following textbook order), and linking to various sources of info on them.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago

I'm currently learning Japanese, and this is suuuper useful! Thanks so very much!

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I fucking love you!!! I knew you could do it!! Thanks for doing this!!

Edit: I can't get in error code when opening website

[–] tentoumushi@sopuli.xyz 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

noooo, I can't let that happen! if you want, you can privately message me on discord or email me with your browser, OS and all other relevant info so we can fix it ASAP (it might be just Vercel's anti-bot mode though)

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sure I'll do that with ya tomorrow. Also it doesnt work on any browsers on mobile, & laptop so defi itely a wider problem of whatever it is

[–] tentoumushi@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It could also be that Vercel automatically blocks certain IPs for whatever reason. Even had that happen to me a couple times, and as far as I'm aware, I don't seem to be living in Iran, Russia or China lol

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Same here I don't either so it's strange

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What an amazing tool! I have no need to learn Japanese but always been curious about the language and tried multiple times to learn the kana at least. Might go practicing about with this.

Is there plans to get a drawing tool to practice? That's what mostly interests me, not just to read or write with a keyboard.

[–] stray@pawb.social 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

On my phone there are keyboard options to draw characters for Chinese and Japanese inputs, if that's a solution for you.

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 months ago

Ah... Very good point! I have to check if the OpenSource keyboard I use allows it... But I guess I would need to learn very well how to draw them to use them or the keyboard won't recognize it. I would need something that allows me to learn slowly the patterns and drawing directions specifically. Something that starts giving you a pattern to draw on top and then slowly make it more difficult.

[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Very cool

[–] clmbmb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 8 months ago

Wow! Just in time... I'm planning on learning Japanese, at least conversational level, as I'm planning a trip to Japan in 2027.

[–] ccf@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Very nice, I like the UI and theme selection! I don't see a way to add themes or fonts myself, though; any plans for this?

[–] tentoumushi@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, adding your own fonts would be impossible by definition, but creating your own custom themes is something that's definitely coming down the line! ^^

[–] pory@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Any chance for a self-hostable containerized version? I'd love to be able to spin up my own local instance on my homeserver.

[–] eraor@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Pretty cool.

[–] Arigion@feddit.org 2 points 8 months ago

Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading kanadojo.com (see the browser console for more information).

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

I love this! I will use it everyday as I really don't like Duolingo anymore.

One issue noticed, pronunciation and ui sounds are inadvertently linked.

For example

I don't want UI sounds, but I want the pronunciation button to work. It does not with these settings.

[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago

This looks awesome, and I'll explore it a bit. I love this being open source, and it looks very clean.

I'm going to pull a prior post, because I think ALL could be potential improvements for your utility. Feedback mainly sensible for Kana, but it could be applied to kanji with significant effort.

I like these resources for practicing kana:

https://gohoneko.neocities.org/learn/kana
- it's like most other "type what you see" quizzes, but I like that it has a good selection of handwritten fonts that normalize different strokes/styles, so you can practice identifying the character written a number of ways
https://studykana.com/practice-reading
- just a typing test. Gives you an excuse/motivation to try to go fast. I wish it had more words, or a way to upload a word dictionary, etc. (I think your app already includes a time test but I havent yet explored. I like that the above link isn't multiple choice)

I would LOVE for it to detect when you commonly confuse two characters and then offer to give you a short drill of just those characters to reinforce.

OR if you could have a "good probability" of including easily confused characters in the multiple choice. Me/nu, wa/re/ne, chi/sa, can be easily confused. I havent done drills in a long while and I know roughly the shape I'm looking for, but would stuggle to differentiate some of these cases. With 3 multiple choice - odds are good I can guess whichever is present.

[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Whoa, this looks awesome, thanks for sharing. I was going to start learning Japanese for an upcoming trip next fall so thanks, this will be incredibly helpful!

[–] drebora@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

I really like what you’re doing, keep it up!

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago

Hopping on this to share that Milo Learns made by some of my Cambodian friends also just added Japanese for conversation practice. It has an online community as well if you don’t like talking to an AI. But sadly it is freemium, so OP wins on that front. https://milo.niy.ai/