Learn Japanese Kanji: Benky‪ō‬ 4+

It does the job as a way to learn and remember words. The generated voice can occasionally be difficult to understand. The UI takes a bit to get used to, but for the most part makes sense. It is possible that some words exist in different categories or lists. When you quiz yourself over time you can see multiple of the same flash card. This isn’t ideal, but I guess could be handy to really ensure you know a word. One feature I really really wish is to be able to edit existing flash cards, such as by expanding their meaning. I don’t agree with some of the word translations ( or some words could be said multiple different ways when displayed without any context) so it would be amazing to be able to tweak or add to existing cards. A second feature would be the ability to create my own flash cards. Some words I learn do not exist in the app, so I cannot perform any training on them. This app has very nice data displayed and overall is fun and very handy for learning.

I've been using Benkyo Pro (including the additional content) for a few months. I'm very glad that the developer is continuing to work on the app. That's a big plus. I use this app for the FlexSRS flashcard system. Once I put the things I want to study into it, I really like how it works. It's very smart. Unfortunately, it's being held back by some major issues. This app is organized in a way I'm not familiar with (decks, JLPT, lessons, grades, etc), and it's difficult to use as a normal person who just wants to do flashcards. This app needs ONE unified vocabulary list with ONE entry per term that works with FlexSRS. Common phrase "sumimasen" has four entries across two vocab lists, and two of those only have half the definition. There also needs to be a list of the cards that are in the FlexSRS deck where I can remove individual cards from the deck. As it is now, I have to do it by memory. There problems are ridiculous and difficult to deal with, but hopefully they'll be fixed in a future update. The widget update was very useful. I'm pretty unhappy with the update that makes visually distracting changes to the writing flashcards, like telling what to draw right where I'm trying to draw and alerting me whenever the broken identification system thinks I'm right. The border turns blue too for some reason. I hope the app will become more simple and functional soon.

I’ve spent a while trying to teach myself Japanese, but as someone who likes to get into the nitty gritty aspects of things, a lot of my options felt like they were just a few inches short of what I needed.

The likes of Duolingo and Lingodeer spend a lot of time trying to get you to run before you know how to walk and, in my opinion, often feel like they unintentionally make learning japanese more challenging as a result.

Benkyo does a lot more to help break down those building blocks, letting you choose what to study and helping hone your weak spots. They have a library hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary, all sorted by reading level, with tools designed to help you automatically review what you choose to put in your flash card pool. They also have sections that let you practice your writing, which is really helpful for kanji especially.

The only thing it’s missing is grammar, but the Sensei app has that covered. Admittedly, I wouldn’t mind a more thorough way to review it, but it does more than enough on its own.

The only thing I wish it had that is a way to intuitively look at your pool of flexSRS flashcards after you’ve added them. I’ve had to re-search a lot of my flash cards to put them in my lists.

Either way, it’s well worth your time if you want to learn Japanese. It’s designed to be used in tandem with other courses, but it’ll do a LOT of the heavy lifting for your studies.