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！

  • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    3 hours 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.