I am a self Japanese learner. After I finished N4 material, I am still far from the ability to read and hear Japanese. I tried really really hard to learn but I stopped a few times. I thought I learnt it in a wrong way. What's the right approach to do so? I want a systematic way to do so.

Finally, I built my own App to archive that.

You can regard my App as an MP4 player. But I would rather see it as a tool to meet several criteria so that I can really learn efficiently. My philosophy behind learning a language is :

1) Listening. A lot of listening. Learn it like a child. All navigation in my App is based on subtitle timing so that I can easily loop each sentence until I can each and every sound. To the point, where I can slow appreciate the difference of vowel and consonants in Japanese and my mother tongue. Listening help a lot in memorising new words.
2) Interesting. Pick the drama and anime I love. NO MORE TEXTBOOK. Ensure that I would not only love to learn each word, but also remember the scene and even mimic what the characters say. Record them down and compare. Memorise the sentence, not the word only.
3) Fun and relax. If I find the process is painful, it is really hard to sustain. The App should lookup the word for me, help me make flash cards, integrated card quiz, lookup special words in web...
4) Use it. The App should let me record my voice so that I can shadow what the character say. It should also let me Type to ensure that I get the hiragana correct.
5) Monitor Progress. I think this the golden rule. The more I listen the better. The more I speak the better. The more words I learnt the better. The more I type the better. So, I want the App to keep statistics of the above.

Basic functions

The 3 most important functions in SABU

1) Subtitle time based navigation ( forward / backward / sentence loop )
2) Dual subtitle ( understand the gist in your mother first, then you will learn the grammar and vocab naturally )
3) Dictionary lookup ( Swipe on the word or press and hold to find the longest match )

https://youtu.be/oqnutZomQxk

Do you have any plans to port this to Android? I would definitely use it, but I would never buy an Apple phone, becausse I can't afford one. There are lots of people who either cannot afford highly overpriced Apple products (they were expensive and out of my range but okay value until the most recent generation that can reach $1000!!) or simply prefer Android, so I think expanding into the Android market would get a lot more people downloading the app.

I've been looking for a player that can do even just a subset of this for a long time. Your features are exceedingly awesome and I would most certainly use it extensively... if it were available for Android. iOS is a very closed and expensive platform and thus not very suitable for do-it-yourself learning. I love some of the tools already available on Android (Jade Reader, OCR Manga Reader, Rikaichan for Android, EPWING dictionaries, ...) and this would be a great addition, covering an area that is severely lacking at the moment. The iOS audience is smaller and if they can afford Apple devices a budget Android device for learning will probably not be much of an issue, I'd say.

I tried out the app. You definitely need a button to hide/reveal the subtitles. Many times I like to practice trying to listen first and then if I don't understand something, I look at the subtitle. A toggle button would surfice. The app should work the same way even if the subtitles are hidden.

To the people who want an android version. Please note the full app costs $7.99. People keep stating the price of the iphone as an issue soI thought this should be made clear that it is a pay app.

Looks very cool, I look forward to getting my hands on some J-subbed material and trying it out. I can't believe this kind of software isn't more prevalent, I hope Sabu is a smashing hit and people make similar apps for Android and computer.

Stepup is an online Youtube editor/mashup tool that can be useful for language learners/teachers to annotate Youtube videos. Blogged about at memrise.

PS. Can you offer any tips on how to write code for de-conjugation? It seems like a really complicated task!

PotbellyPig, it's already there because I also do the same. ( hehe, I am a heavy user of SABU. I need to hide all subtitle when I listen it the second time ).

Just turn the iPhone sideway ( full screen in landscape mode ) and then press twice on the subtitle. ( press once would toggle to auxiliary subtitle, press twice would be no subtitle ).

What's the difference between $7.99 Sabu and the free Sabuchan?

It'd be awesome if, for common words that Wanikani has freely available voice recordings of, the app used that instead of the text-to-speech.

aldebrn Wrote:Can you offer any tips on how to write code for de-conjugation? It seems like a really complicated task!

It's not so difficult once you know ichidan/godan verbs and how they change with different tenses.
You may refer to conjugation table like the one below and analyse the suffix of the verb and search godan/ichidan verbs in the dictionary you use.

http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/...tion_table

Actually, I spend very little time in the de-conjugation part. I spend more time in recognising Japanese numbers and other functions like, kanji, place number, context-senstive web browser, typing test, built-in flash cards, search from opensubtitles.....etc

aldebrn Wrote:What's the difference between $7.99 Sabu and the free Sabuchan?

Basically, sabuchan is a trial version where you can test all features before you buy it. After all, SABU is not cheap and intended for users that uses it heavily. I made a short anime with japanese/english subtitle and you can test features like dictionary lookup, web search, flash cards, typing, recording..

You can load your own MP4 and subtitles and but there is a 15min limit and 100 words flash card limit in sabuchan.

aldebrn Wrote:It'd be awesome if, for common words that Wanikani has freely available voice recordings of, the app used that instead of the text-to-speech.

Where are the freely available voice recordings? I visited the Wankani website and it just says I'm on the waiting list...

For me, text-to-speech is not the the best but it's okay and fast in response. Since there is a function to play that part of the movie in the flash cards quiz, I can use that instead of text-to-speech if you want to make sure the correct pronunciation.

sabu2014 Wrote:PotbellyPig, it's already there because I also do the same. ( hehe, I am a heavy user of SABU. I need to hide all subtitle when I listen it the second time ).

Just turn the iPhone sideway ( full screen in landscape mode ) and then press twice on the subtitle. ( press once would toggle to auxiliary subtitle, press twice would be no subtitle ).

Okay. i see that function. But I would like it in vertical mode as well so I can use all the Sabu functions at the same time. Such as stopping at each line and repeating it. Etc.. These functions have value even without seeing the subtitle.

Helena4 Wrote:Do you have any plans to port this to Android?

I got this question many times. But I don't know really the market for this paid app on Android devices...
Haha, but you can consider it as a standalone device ( buying a ipod $199 + SABU $8 ). After a year, if you use like I do, you must have already used it for 300 hours and studied 5000 words. And you can always resell your ipod.

sabu2014 Wrote:Where are the freely available voice recordings? I visited the Wankani website and it just says I'm on the waiting list...

For me, text-to-speech is not the the best but it's okay and fast in response. Since there is a function to play that part of the movie in the flash cards quiz, I can use that instead of text-to-speech if you want to make sure the correct pronunciation.

Ah, I looked into this a bit more because I saw the feature on beta.jisho.org (click "play audio" on the left). I see on Jisho's about page that this audio was "graciously provided" by Wanikani, not that it's a freely available resource. Sorry for the confusion .

sabu2014 Wrote:It's not so difficult once you know ichidan/godan verbs and how they change with different tenses.
You may refer to conjugation table like the one below and analyse the suffix of the verb and search godan/ichidan verbs in the dictionary you use.

http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/...tion_table

Actually, I spend very little time in the de-conjugation part. I spend more time in recognising Japanese numbers and other functions like, kanji, place number, context-senstive web browser, typing test, built-in flash cards, search from opensubtitles.....etc

Aha, good to know! Do you use MeCab or similar parser to recognize stems and parts-of-speech and proper nouns and numbers, etc.? The iOS download seems too small to include any of the MeCab dictionaries so perhaps you did all this yourself: if so, kudos!

REPEAT MODE

https://youtu.be/4FFpCxDeUqE

There are 3 repeat methods in SABU. Repeat the sentence once. Repeat it infinitely. A-B repeat where you just want to hear only part of the sentence ( when the sentence is really long ).

My favourite is to loop the sentence infinitely. Once I hear all the words, I would press the remote control to proceed to the next sentence. When I play the video the 4/5th time, I may end up like using 20 mins for a 30 mins anime since I can understand the sentence the first play and skip the the non-conversational parts with the forward button.

PotbellyPig Wrote:Many times I like to practice trying to listen first and then if I don't understand something, I look at the subtitle. A toggle button would surfice.

Beside the "no subtitle" mode in landscape mode. Another tips for you. You can lock the iPhone and train your listening with audio only. Use remote control to go back one sentence. It's like listening to radio while you are working.

sabu2014 Wrote:

Helena4 Wrote:Do you have any plans to port this to Android?

I got this question many times. But I don't know really the market for this paid app on Android devices...
Haha, but you can consider it as a standalone device ( buying a ipod $199 + SABU $8 ). After a year, if you use like I do, you must have already used it for 300 hours and studied 5000 words. And you can always resell your ipod.

As I and some others here said, you cannot expect everyone to go around buying apple devices, they are expensive. I cannot afford to go and buy a separate $200 device just for your app that is a ridiculous suggestion. A $8 app is something I and many android users would pay for if it is worthwhile but telling people to by a $200 device just for your app like it's just that simple is just rude. Nevertheless, you are not obliged to port it to Android, I just thought your comment was foolish.

sabu2014 Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:Many times I like to practice trying to listen first and then if I don't understand something, I look at the subtitle. A toggle button would surfice.

Beside the "no subtitle" mode in landscape mode. Another tips for you. You can lock the iPhone and train your listening with audio only. Use remote control to go back one sentence. It's like listening to radio while you are working.

Not sure if you saw my comment


Okay. i see that function. But I would like it in vertical mode as well so I can use all the Sabu functions at the same time. Such as stopping at each line and repeating it. Etc.. These functions have value even without seeing the subtitle.

FLASH CARDS

https://youtu.be/Qjcn93y92ZM

1) Tap on the word on the subtitle and swipe to add it to the flash cards
2) The meaning of the word and the corresponding sentence is in the flash cards.
3) You can play the sound of the word or that sentence from the movie file.
4) You can check how many words you learnt or memorised in the statistic page.

sabu2014 Wrote:FLASH CARDS

https://youtu.be/Qjcn93y92ZM

1) Tap on the word on the subtitle and swipe to add it to the flash cards
2) The meaning of the word and the corresponding sentence is in the flash cards.
3) You can play the sound of the word or that sentence from the movie file.
4) You can check how many words you learnt or memorised in the statistic page.

Heh, you keep posting 1 min after I do and are probably missing my comment. Please see reply #18

aldebrn Wrote:Do you use MeCab or similar parser to recognize stems and parts-of-speech and proper nouns and numbers, etc.? The iOS download seems too small to include any of the MeCab dictionaries so perhaps you did all this yourself: if so, kudos!

No, I don't know MeCab. I just write it up myself...

PotbellyPig Wrote:Okay. i see that function. But I would like it in vertical mode as well so I can use all the Sabu functions at the same time. Such as stopping at each line and repeating it. Etc.. These functions have value even without seeing the subtitle.

Sorry.. yes I did miss your comments...
The screen in vertical mode is pretty full to add an extra button.. I am thinking about adding the repeat-once, repeat-loop button in the landscape mode... maybe press and hold to change the mode and inherit the existing loop mode in vertical mode..

sabu2014 Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:Okay. i see that function. But I would like it in vertical mode as well so I can use all the Sabu functions at the same time. Such as stopping at each line and repeating it. Etc.. These functions have value even without seeing the subtitle.

Sorry.. yes I did miss your comments...
The screen in vertical mode is pretty full to add an extra button.. I am thinking about adding the repeat-once, repeat-loop button in the landscape mode... maybe press and hold to change the mode and inherit the existing loop mode in vertical mode..

Yes. Adding those controls and inheriting the mode from the vertical position would be optimal for my usage pattern.

It's a good program with a lot of potential. But requires a lot of extra effort to configure a video with subtitles. Case and point, I've been working all morning to get the Tokyo Ghoul ep1 subtitles to line up with the movie. Still haven't figured it out.

Chomskyan Wrote:It's a good program with a lot of potential. But requires a lot of extra effort to configure a video with subtitles. Case and point, I've been working all morning to get the Tokyo Ghoul ep1 subtitles to line up with the movie. Still haven't figured it out.

Thanks for your compliment!!!

I have several ideas to improve it. One is to develop subtitle upload to opensubtitle with movie file fingerprint. One can upload sync'ed subtitle. And the next user would get the correctly sync'ed subtitle according to the fingerprint of the movie file he is using.

I do use the built-in time editing to sync. There are some tips for time syncing. Basically the unsync points would be there the ads are. If you got your subtitle from jpsubber, all the subtitles are sync'ed with the ads there. But the movie file may have the ads removed. So, for every 10 mins, you may see 1 or 2 mins gap between two sentences. I would just go to the following subtitle and press and hold the "-" button to move the starting point of the sentence. For every adjustment of the BEGINNING of the subtitle would also adjust the subsequent subtitles. So, you may need only to adjust 6 sentences for a 60 mins movie.

Another way is to get the mp4 and subtitles from mkv files. For example, kamigami has released mkv with chi/jp subtitles. You can use ffmpeg to get mp4 and subtitles from the mkv. Then you got perfectly synced subtitles.

If you cannot make it, let me know.. let me see if I can make a demo video..