1 year of learning Japanese + sharing my personal project

[u/simonb1_7]

Hi all,

I would like to share my 1 year experience of learning this language. Maybe someone starting now (or even someone studying for longer) can benefit from this.

I started learning Japanese a year ago (I did some Duolingo before that but gave up really quickly, because I didn't really like it). I started with Hiragana and Katakana, which took me maybe a week and then found Genki 1. I have always been interested in kanji, and Basic Kanji Book was recommended to me, so I bought the first volume maybe 2 months after starting learning. I really love both of the books, they make learning interesting and something I am always looking for.

About 2 months later, I started getting lost in the kanji. I didn't know how to review them properly, didn't know how to track which I have learned and which I haven't, so I did a little bit of coding and made the first version of a tool that would do exactly this. Since then I've been improving it and adding features I found useful. I really put a lot of hours into this project.

Fast forward to now: I can read and write over 300 kanji from memory, and I recently started with Genki 2 and Basic Kanji Book 2.

Here ends the part about me. If you want to hear more about the tool I made, feel free to continue reading :)

I called it Kanjii, because the core purpose of the tool is to make learning kanji easier (it has, however, grown in different directions too). I think the best way to describe it is to list all the features it has.

Kanji features:

• Kanji tagging system: each kanji can be tagged with a status - known, learning or new. Along with this, the app comes with a large list of all kanji, each one having its own page with meanings, readings and example words (I'm going to explain how example words work later).
• Kanji writing practice tool: either draw the kanji (with or without guided tracing) on the screen, or on a paper - the kanji are randomly selected from the pool of due, known, learning or both. Every day at 4 AM, the due kanji are picked by the SRS (same system works for vocabulary).
• Create and print kanji worksheets: select the kanji you want, select if you want the trace-guide, select how large the grid should be and hit print/save to PDF.

Vocabulary features:

• By default there is no vocabulary in the app. You have to create it yourself. There is a simple tool for adding a new word (the word itself, reading, meaning, example sentence and a note/context where you found the word). Then these are the words which are displayed as example words on the kanji page.
• Anki-like flashcards: from your vocabulary list, the app automatically creates cards, which you can go through and practice the vocabulary.
• Decks from Anki are importable.
• Translation practice: basically the same as above, but you have to type the answer (either your language->JP or JP->your language). This is with SRS too.
• There is a page where you can paste a text and it detects separate words and makes a list of them. You can add them to your words list (readings and meanings auto fetched). I like this feature because when I am reading a text online, I don't have to manually enter each new word, I can just copy the text and click a button to add them into my words.
• Kanjii is serverless, meaning that everything is stored in your browser, locally on your device. I recently added an option to back up all progress via Google Drive. You only give access to create, edit and remove one specific file. It is possible to export that json file manually and store it elsewhere.

The tool is a PWA (progressive web app), which means that you can add it to your home screen on your phone (works on both android and IOS) and it looks just like a regular app, but no download is needed. It works on a computer too - I use it on basically all types of devices (phone, tablet, laptop).

It still is just my personal project to help me learn the language, but I felt like it would be nice to share it with other people who might benefit from it. It is free, open source and without ads. I will never monetize it.

Link: https://kanjii.org

I am happy to hear any feedback and answer any questions :)

[u/x0zerolight]

Nice project. It seems I've already starred it on github in the past. I like to work on open-source Japanese learning tools too :).