Kakugo - Learning Japanese

Philippe Daouadi

About this app

Kakugo is an application that helps learning Japanese. It includes multiple tests to memorize hiragana, katakana, and kanji and adapts to the user's learning pace.

One of the biggest difficulty with learning Japanese is memorizing kanji and
vocabulary. While learning them by just reading and writing them everyday may
work, the more kanji you know, the harder it gets and the more time it takes to
revise them all. Proper tools can help you memorize these huge amounts of
knowledge to more quickly become a fluent Japanese speaker.

Kakugo is one of these tools. It helps learning and revising kanji and vocabulary
in an efficient manner. It uses Spaced Repetition in a unique way that adapts to
the user's pace. If you only have time to revise 30 kanji every day, or if you
can revise as much as 100 kanji every day, Kakugo will adapt and test you
on the right kanji at the right time for you to memorize them. There is no
"kanji of the day" list to revise, you can start and finish a session whenever
you feel like it.

Kakugo also features a wide variety of tests to help you find the best ways that
will help you learn Japanese.

Features include

- Hiragana, Katakana quizzes
- Kanji quizzes by reading and meaning
- Kanji test by part composition
- Kanji writing test
- Vocabulary quizzes by reading and meaning
- Unique spaced repetition formula that adapts to your own learning pace
- Unlimited quiz sessions that allow you to take a quiz at any time, for however long you want, useful to efficiently spend commuting time
- Show similar-looking kanji in answers to teach you the differences
- Kanji and vocabulary sorted by JLPT level
- Clicking on kanji opens aedict3 (a non-free Japanese dictionary) or jisho.org
- Optimized tablet support
- Open source
- No ads
- No internet access required
- Supported languages: English, French
- More to come

Credits

- The kanji quizzes are based on kanjidic.
- The vocabulary quizzes are based on JMdict.
- The kanji similarity database comes from https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/35336 and http://lars.yencken.org/datasets/phd/
- The kanji composition and drawing database comes from KanjiVG.

Ratings and reviews

The best app, bar none, for learning written Japanese. Hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary are all covered, and study sessions are self-paced in the sense that you can study for as long as you like while still making use of the spaced repetition system. My favorite feature is the drawing feature, it really helps with memorizing the characters. Highly recommend!

The best app for learning kana. While I think there are better apps for learning kanji, this one is still decent though, it's still unmatched for kana. And it's open source, so if you want to change or add something, you can do it yourself!

This app is perfect for self directed study, because you can set exactly what to review as you learn more from other resources. And the comprehensive coverage of types of review (especially handwriting practice) is what really sets this app apart from other options. I'm not studying by JLPT levels (N5, N4, N3, etc.) but it's nice that review items are put into a category for each level. I find this app to be better than other options, paid or otherwise.

What's new

- Improved SRS to ask known items less often
- Added multiple translations for each vocabulary word
- Added more words
- Added import/export feature for the database