3rd party app to practice recalling readings from English words?

WaniKani Requesting Help
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I use WaniKani to practice recalling:

  • readings from kanji;
  • meaning in English from kanji.

I use KaniWani to practice recalling:

  • kanji from English words.

When using KaniWani I often recall the reading in my head, but sometimes I don’t as it’s possible to recall the correct kanji without recalling the reading. I also use a stylus to handwrite the kanji, so I don’t use a 12-key keyboard and I can skip typing the kana here. Doing it this way was a conscious attempt to learn to recall the kanji themselves rather than have them autocompleted from a kana input method. However the downside is that I’m not practicing recalling the kana or readings.

Therefore the only gap I can see there is left to fill is to practice recalling:

  • kana/readings from English words.

I think this last step could help in terms of remembering how to say the kanji, as well as how to type them if necessary.

While writing this post I’ve had the idea that I may be able to open a second account on KaniWani, also synced to my WaniKani progress, and use this second account solely for recalling the kana. Or, if it’s not possible to open a second account, there may be another 3rd party app I can use.

So I may have answered my own question and I’ll try the above tomorrow, but thought I’d post this anyway in case anyone else has been thinking the same thing and had any other ideas.

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Kaniwani does this.

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If you already used KaniWani for something else, how about KameSame - a fast, feature-rich Japanese memorization webapp? In addition to recalling reading, it is also a Japanese IME practice.

If not using autocomplete from IME, you’ll probably have to use KaniWani. (Or kitsun.io or anything using WanaKana.js, but it has to be Romaji input.)

Otherwise, another option I can think of is some kind of voice transcription. Not sure of from English, but from Japanese, there is LipSurf.

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Actually KameSame also looks like it could be very useful, given that one day I’ll be typing a lot of my Japanese on a keyboard.

Right now I’m interested in trying out lots of different angles for learning the kanji, so I’m using:

WaniKani
KaniWani
Ringotan

Happy to try KameSame and see what it brings to the table.

Maybe I won’t use all of these apps forever, but at this early stage I think they’re all helping to reinforce each other.

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Trying out KameSame now and it’s really good. And it satisfies my requirement of having some system that requires me to recall the kana/reading based when shown a word in English.

I could have just used a second instance of KaniWani, but I think the differing context of using a new app will be beneficial.

It’s not just the different features (having a link to a Bing image search for each word is genius).

It’s also the context in which I will use KameSame - i.e. stood up at my work desk, using a keyboard to type romaji, and selecting kanji from a list.

Which is very different to sitting on my sofa using my stylus and tablet to draw kanji directly into KaniWani. Or sitting on a train with a smartphone using a 12-key keyboard to enter kana into WaniKani.

I think the more contexts we can put ourselves in while learning, the more neural pathways we’ll form, and the better we’ll remember what we’re learning.

For that reason, I’ll probably leave “study recognition as well as production” switched on, even if it is duplicating some of what WaniKani does.

Edited to add…

There is still one thing I think might be missing… because KameSame ultimately favours me entering the kanji over the kana, it means I can get a correct answer with any reading of that kanji.

For example, it just asked me for “dirt” and I typed in “ど” and then chose “土” from the dropdown list. However I had completely forgotten that “つち” was another way to get to the same kanji.

Of course, if I’m disciplined, I can try to alternate which reading I type each time the review comes up, but it would be easy to slip into just using the reading I remember best.

One of my goals here is to remember the different ways to write (and ultimately say) the different readings. So I’m still looking for something that helps me to do that.