For all of you who learn primarily on your phone, which tools do you use?
Here is my list:
WK (Flaming Durtles)
Bunpro
Marumori
Assimil
Jalup
Lingodeer
Kitsun
Kanji Study
On to the reason I am asking:
I can get core decks quite easily on Kitsun for vocab and Jalup also servesu needs on that front. But for custom cards for low frequency, more obscure words, I have no mobile-centric way of adding cards to Kitsun. Ideally it would be something that takes the term and the context sentence, and generates a card from it.
If it lands up being an Anki deck that I can clbvert to a Kitsun deck once a month, thatās not too bad either. Jidoujisho and čŖęøå°å donāt seem to have the required options either, so Iām at a loss. This seems to be doable on PC with Yomichan though.
Havenāt used these myself and am not sure this is what you are looking for, but on Android you can use Kiwi Browser + Yomichan and on iOS there is Immersion Reader as long as your source is an epub?
Why not just run the PWA on Kitsun and use the Reader, it will auto add the sentence in question. Otherwise, Iām using the app for word adding which is a good portion of my word adding into Kitsun when not behind a computer.
I have Android, and here are my main learning apps:
Flaming Durtles (WK)
AnkiDroid
Akebi (dictionary)
Satori Reader
DeepL (OCR and translations)
Bunpro
For adding custom words to a flashcard deck, Akebi + AnkiDroid works beautifully:
See word I want to learn, take screenshot
Share to DeepL for OCR and easy copying
Paste into Akebi, add it to Akebi vocab list
Tap button in Akebi to send updated list to my Anki mining deck
If you want to get fancy about it, you can specify which parts of the dictionary entry get sent to which fields in AnkiDroid, and create custom templates. The resulting cards look nice and pretty.
I use WaniKani (Flaming Durtles) for kanji and NativShark for everything else.
Iāve also been testing out GameGengoās anki decks for grammar and vocab and so far if i didnāt have lifetime to the 2 I and use and needed something free of be using his decks and YouTube videos. But i still find NativShark to be the best vocab and grammar system out there for Japanese.
Kinda seems like it should be a mobile-native feature to be able to mine sentences into a cloze card . Even if it were just saving sentences to a bank for cloze generation on a PC that would be fine as a stop-gap, since all my reading happens on my tablet.
Also, Iām not a fan of adding individual words, but Iād be happy to hear if I am wrong to think that way.
Iām not on iOS, so the app, which looks cool, seems like a no go. But, the KW browser + Yomichan thing could be interesting. Though it seems like that might also be for individual word card-generation?
Same question applies here too, I guess? Can this be used to generate sentence cards? Iām guessing not since youāre going through Akebi?
Iād imagine an ideal solution would be something like Jidoujisho with Yomichan dictionaries where you can select entire sentences and the specific word you want to study with the definition on the back, pulled form the Yomichan dictionary .
It also seems, as I am typing, that I am asking for way too much.
For the Reader on the go mobile if you end up using it, Iād recommend just keeping the default template for simplicity to just generate the content and then converting the preferred layout in manager (if you want the sentence as the focus for a custom layout instead of the word for instance). If you canāt copy paste the content to the Reader depending on the source, then may have to wait for the browser/mpv extension later this year after the dictionary revamp. The PWA still works very well, I still use for specific task or deck management on the go.
Flaming Durtles with a mix of Anki and manual. Input for readings, and Anki for meanings. I do use the Undo feature because its just hard to type sometimes.
This is from a beginnerās perspective, using iOS device.
RocketLanguages: this is where I started, found it useful while walking with my dog to just listen basic conversations and learn some vocabulary + hiragana/katakana charts and lessons
Tsurukame: WaniKani app for iOS that I like the most (I also have Jakeipuu installed, but never use it)
Bunpro SRS: grammar in SRS, itās great app and gets updated pretty frequently I guess
Duolingo: not using it much and havenāt paid for it, basically using it to learn and memorize hiragana and katakana (stroke order too), I usually recognize most hiraganas but if someone asks me to write āxā, then Iām lost
Kanji Garden: yet another app to learn kanji, the way it presents onāyomi and kunāyomi is more distinct from each other, and I would like to see it in Tsurukame/WK too, because sometimes Iām a bit confused which one I just used for a correct answer in Tsurukame
Shirabe Jisho: dictionary where you can input in romaji, kana or even draw the kanji
TODAI Easy Japanese: great app for Japanese news, itās like NHK Easy News but for multiple news sources, it highlights the N5-N1 vocab and you can adjust the playback speed, has a built-in dictionary popup, itās that great that I even bought the premium version
Ringotan: just installed today and I think I will move away from Duolingo and start to use this one for learning stroke order
Tae Kimās Learning Japanese: never use this one
Satori Reader: might be a bit too advanced material for me at this point but will see in the future how it turns
I have spent 473,16ā¬ for self-study so far.
RocketLanguages: all three levels, lifetime, from discount 146,04ā¬
WaniKani: lifetime, from discount 190,35ā¬
Bunpro SRS: lifetime, from discount 114,78ā¬
TODAI Easy Japanese: lifetime premium version, from discount 21,99ā¬
Canāt say I regret buying Rocket Japanese because that was the real kick-off to start studying Japanese at all, but at this point, WK and Bunpro are far more compelling and pleasing to use. Despite that, Rocket Japanese is still the only app/service for me to study basic conversations in an easy way.
The key in my self-study journey is that everything should be easy, intuitive, fast in a sense that when you open the app you are straight away in āright chapterā doing the reviews or listening to a course etc. comparing to traditional text book approach, because Iām doing this for fun and donāt necessarily have that much continuous time to study, rather like quarter of an hour here and half an hour thereā¦ youāll get the point
Another vote for the Tsurukame app on iOS. It has all but become my primary method of accessing WK, since it can be done literally anywhere easily. Shirabe Jisho is also my mobile dict. app of choice.
Still figuring out what app/service set I am going to use going forward, so all the other input in this thread is greatly appreciated!
I will admit I review WK and do dedicated study / news reading practice primarily on desktop, but I use my phone for all lookups while reading books / manga.
Currently trying out Yomichan to Anki on Desktop, since it gives me that nice one-click to create a flashcard with the context sentence, but I really donāt like Anki.
But Kitsun took too many import steps for me, so that didnāt work great either.
Iām on Android and use:
Takoboto (primary dictionary app, great word lists feature)
Akebi (for all word lookups where I need to draw a kanji or look up with wildcards, like where I see a kanji compound without furigana and know none or only 1 of the component kanji)
Obenkyo (for kanji writing practice)
I also use Poket Casts as a podcast app and listen to ā4989 American Lifeā (and sometimes " Japanese with Teppei and Noriko" or āBilingual Newsā) as listening practice.
I somehow never heard of Nativshark before but I checked it out and really like it. Thanks for mentioning it.
Think Iāll go for the 15,- per month subscription, that 1500,- is absurd imho. I canāt imagine anyone actually paying that.
that 1500,- is absurd imho. I canāt imagine anyone actually paying that.
It is. Ive seen 1 person in the discord server buy it, but when asked about it they said theyre arent trying to sell lifetime its more of an option for people who want to support the site.
Itās set up to send individual words as the front of the card, but there are example sentences in Akebi you can send over also. You could probably set it up so that the example sentences are sent to a field that appears on the front of the card. Mine currently send to the back:
. Even if it were just saving sentences to a bank for cloze generation on a PC that would be fine as a stop-gap, since all my reading happens on my tablet.
