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iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - yukkuri_kame - 2008-09-20

Visiting japan for a couple of weeks, which means unless I am willing to cough up exorbitant cash to AT&T/Softbank I will be offline a lot, unable to access Anki or Kanjikoohi.

I decided to use the time offline by working on kana. I read hiragana fairly well, but hadn't yet a concerted effort to learn katakana. My writing in both cases is weak. I decided to spend the $8 for the "ikana" app.

It's a neat little app. With two stand-out features: finger-drawn stroke order practice and a "speed test" for kana recognition.

For the writing practice, you get a nice big version of the individual kana which you trace with your finger. When you draw a stroke correctly, the program confirms it, and lets you move onto the next stroke. The writing practice does not help you to draw the kana on a blank screen, so there is always a figure to trace. Ideally there would also be a version of writing practice without that crutch.

The speed test is great for increasing speed of recognition. A little timer bar under the character lends a sense of urgency, perking up those neurons. It's very rewarding to see yourself recognizing in a quick second instead of five.

You can customize your own practice lists, adding individual kana that you want to focus on, and then choose writing practice or speed test. As well, the program keeps a frequently failed list.

Bottom line: Worth the $8 if you need to practice your kana.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - revenantkioku - 2008-09-23

resolve Wrote:I'll try to change it when I get the time
And amazing it is! It took me a few minutes to realize that the interface was just better but it so is. Awesome! Thanks again.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - annabel398 - 2008-09-23

yukkuri_kame Wrote:I decided to spend the $8 for the "iKana" app. It's a neat little app. With two stand-out features: finger-drawn stroke order practice and a "speed test" for kana recognition.
My SO bought this as we're both a little weak on katakana. Overpriced compared to some of the other Japanese learning apps, but nice nonetheless, I agree. However, check the stroke order for katakana "n"... I believe it's incorrect, as the longer stroke should go "north."

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - benwulf - 2008-09-23

Sevenhelmets Wrote:
yukkuri_kame Wrote:I also bought ShinKanji.
Ah nice, I've been wondering about that app, it certainly looked promising.

yukkuri_kame Wrote:I recently switched on the chinese input, to be able to recognize hand drawn kanji. It seems to recognize my pathetic scribbles surprisingly well, but Im not sure how I will use it. I'm also not sure if I should have switched on "traditional" or "simplified" chinese. Which is closer to Kanji?
I have "Traditional" switched on, with "Handwriting" enabled.
I have created a new post to talk about shinkanji and what users on this site think about it
Benwulf

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Dragg - 2008-09-23

Has anybody else noticed the Japanese Iphone games made by Macer? They are designed for Japanese natives and are completely in Japanese. One seems to be a quiz game about Japanese counters and I think the other one has you write out Japanese readings to Chinese characters using the kana keyboard. Another one is apparently about history. I haven't tried them out yet, but one has a free demo version and another is freeware so it might to be worth a looksy for those of us that can understand it. Try typing "macer" in the app search to find them.

The website is http://macer.jp

Edit: oops, I see that dilandau has already pointed out the kanji power one on the first page of this thread.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - GarrettB - 2008-09-30

The iPhone app "Japanese" from codefromtokyo seems to be the best iPhone Japanese dictionary available so far. Reviews seem very positive. Expensive though. Cheap as far as electronic dictionaries, but expensive for an iPhone app. I'll leave it to the experts to pass judgment.

http://www.codefromtokyo.com/japanese

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - resolve - 2008-09-30

It uses EDICT just like all the other iPhone dictionaries out there. Someone took a free dictionary and wrapped it around a pretty interface. Given the content is exactly the same, it seems like a waste of money.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - resolve - 2008-09-30

(to be fair, they've gathered some stroke order diagrams and categorized the words too, but it's still edict. there's probably even an edict interface available for free)

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Jarvik7 - 2008-09-30

Charging 2300円 for a barebones EDICT parser that could have been slapped together in a day or 2 is almost criminal. Especially when you consider that there are REAL J-E dictionaries complete with sample sentences on the Appstore like Longman & WISDOM for only 100-500円 more.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - dilandau23 - 2008-09-30

Yes I happen to agree that "Japanese" belongs on the worst offender list for iPhone applications. In fact I called it out by name before too when I was ranting about charging for Edict wrappers. The categories and stroke order stuff it added all are from free existing databases too I am betting. The edict app I prefer is "wwwJdic". It is free but not offline. With パケし放題 who cares though.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-10-01

I got a 2nd gen Ipod Touch. No jailbreak available for that one yet, so I've just been using the online interface for Anki, but I'd love to have one that worked when I wasn't connected to wifi.

There seems to be a problem with the Study (standard) AJAX version not displaying completely (bottom of the view gets chopped off if its too long), which is a pity because it updates faster than the Simple view.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-10-10

I've been working on a plugin for Anki that allows Anki reviewing on the iPhone/iPod Touch when offline.

http://github.com/ianki/ianki/tree/master

Its still in need of extensive testing but works quite well. There's an issue with large decks of several thousand cards because of the iPhone limiting my database to 5MB, but I have a plan for fixing that.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Dragg - 2008-10-11

There is now an internet radio app for Iphone that specifically features Japanese language audio. There are mainly music stations now, but I also found a Skype conversation in Japanese! The app is called LADIOTOUCH and it is available for free download at the iPhone app store.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - kfmfe04 - 2008-10-11

Has anyone tried this?

http://iflipr.com/

Don't mind paying, but I'd prefer not to jailbreak, if possible...

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-10-13

A little plug for my plugin.

http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/iAnki

It's now compatible with other browsers, and should work on Windows Mobile too.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - kfmfe04 - 2008-10-13

vosmiura, looks great!!!

Would I need to jailbreak an iPod Touch to get this to work?

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-10-13

No, you don't need to jailbreak.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - kfmfe04 - 2008-10-13

That's GREAT!

You've removed the last two reasons I had for not buying an iPod Touch 2G: having to jailbreak and having to be "on-line" to study under an SRS...

I will pick up an iPod Touch tomorrow for the next stage of studying grammar and Kanji in Context under iAnki (just have to decide between 16GB and 32GB now).

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Jarvik7 - 2008-10-13

It looks good but could do with two (obvious) improvements (that you've likely already thought about): more than 400 cards synced per deck (I only run two decks atm, but many expired cards per day due to their size), and being able to continue studying after closing Safari and re-opening on iPhone. The second is due to Safari I'm sure, but there can perhaps be other ways of doing it (such as saving the page and opening through Airsharing).

I'll try it out on Wednesday after the long weekend is over and I have to leave my house.

-edit-
Odd, it doesn't appear to work. "ianki" appears (checked) in the startup part of the Plugins menu after installation, but there is nothing called "ianki server" anywhere.
Anki 0.9.8.3

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - sutebun - 2008-10-13

I could get the server to start up fine with 9.8.3

When I try to sync on my 2g touch though, it gives me loads of errors:
Error syncing deckSadOperationalError) near","Confusedyntax error
u'SELECT *id",

And then it lists a lot of stuff like factid, carmodelid, youngEase1, youngEase2, matureEase2...and so on. At the end it says
FROM cards WHERE type = 2, factid, ordinal ORDER BY priority desc, factid, ordinal
LIMIT 345' []

It's a deck that uses only the basic card model and has 56 cards, so I don't think the deck itself should be an issue.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Jarvik7 - 2008-10-13

Its not that I couldn't get it started - there is nowhere TO start it! Maybe its only an issue on OSX...

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - resolve - 2008-10-13

Checked tools and plugins menu?
If it's not there, it's broken. Check the system console for a log.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - Jarvik7 - 2008-10-13

resolve Wrote:Checked tools and plugins menu?
If it's not there, it's broken. Check the system console for a log.
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] Traceback (most recent call last):
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] File "ankiqt/ui/main.pyc", line 1333, in loadPlugins
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki.py", line 5, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki_ext/__init__.py", line 20, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki_ext/web/SimpleHTTPServer.py", line 15, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] ImportError: No module named BaseHTTPServer

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - resolve - 2008-10-13

It's possible some libraries that iAnki depends upon are not being bundled in the Anki DMG. If the prereqs are small, it could be a simple matter of adding them to the iAnki sources.

iPhone Apps for Studying Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-10-14

Jarvik7 Wrote:It looks good but could do with two (obvious) improvements (that you've likely already thought about): more than 400 cards synced per deck (I only run two decks atm, but many expired cards per day due to their size)
I intend to make the card synching more configurable, so you can choose how many cards to sync; how many new ones versus old ones and that sort of thing.

The 400 limit is a safe limit, but could be higher.

There's a bug on the iPhone Safari's database implementation where it will crash & corrupt the database if it grows to 5MB, so that has to be avoided. Interestingly, if you run iAnki on multiple ports like 8000, 8001, 8002... each one will get its own database of 5MB, so this may be a way to get around the limitaition.

Quote:and being able to continue studying after closing Safari and re-opening on iPhone. The second is due to Safari I'm sure, but there can perhaps be other ways of doing it (such as saving the page and opening through Airsharing).
This problem is already solved on version 0.13b by using a HTML5 cache manifest.

You can now bookmark iAnki on your Home Screen (and get a nice icon too!), and run it any time.