YuSpeak: Learn Japanese/Korean 4+

Fun and making great progress in a short time!

I have studied Japanese formally for over 20 years, including a minor in Japanese from a university and living in Japan for over five years. However, because I did not have the opportunity to use my Japanese on a daily basis, my skills have weakened greatly. I have tried a variety of apps and websites to review basic and intermediate grammar, and by far my favorite is Yu Speak. Although there are some slight errors, I love the spaced repetition, the quirky characters, the native speaker audio and videos, and the fact that using it for around an hour or two a day over a week, I am already able to understand more of Japanese TV. I am recommending it to fellow instructors at Defense Language Institute, and will feature it in an upcoming training, well worth the cost for the premium membership.

Developer Response ,

I forwarded your review to our teachers and developers and they were all thrilled knowing how you liked our app!
Can you drop us an email at support@yuspeak.com when you have some spare time? We'd like to give you a small gift :)

Good, but a little frustrating if you can’t pay for a subscription

I got this app to learn Japanese and I really like the way it teaches so I was glad I found it but, after 16 lessons (including 6 for just the alphabets) you have to pay a subscription. Personally, I don’t have any money that I could use for this subscription so I was bummed until I found out if you save up enough coins you can buy a temporary subscription. I really wanted to keep using the app so, I did just that, I saved the required 180 coins for a 3-day subscription. It took a while because I could only get about 6 coins a day (I don’t know if there was a more efficient way) which I mostly get because I know running an app can be really expensive. I got through a fair amount of lesson in that 3 day period but didn’t retain a lot of information because it takes a while before something to sticks in my brain. I thought that I could just keep reviewing those lesson while saving up more coins to get another subscription, but you can’t. After the subscription period ends, you have absolutely no access to the lessons you did, you can’t replay them and you don’t have access to just the singular words for review. Like I said, I get running an app can be expensive but I’d rather just have ads if anything that way those who can pay can have an ad-free experience and those who can’t pay can still learn. Or, at the very least, still have access to lessons unlocked during a premium period.

Not worth it if you don’t want to pay

YuSpeak is actually a great app to learn Korean. I found it really entertaining and helpful for improving my sentence making and speaking skills, but beware that starting with the 11th lesson (“How is my skirt” for the Korean version) lessons are only available upon subscription. It’s too bad, because the level of content taught is actually quite basic and it’s not worth subscribing for someone who’s already at or near an intermediate level. Also, only monthly and yearly subscriptions exist, which means there’s no cheaper one time purchase option that gives you unlimited access forever like some other apps. I would say, unless you’re willing to pay for the subscription or learn everything within a month, stick to textbooks and free websites and save your money in the long run (with content you have unlimited access to). I might have even considered paying for the app if I were given lifetime access for like 30 bucks, but I think a monthly subscription adds up and is too pricey given the content of the app (it’s basically Duolingo, but with actually useful and not nonsensical sentences).