I'm looking for a good Japanese vocabulary app for my iPod Touch and I came across this new one:
Japanese Sensei (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/japanese-...34304?mt=8)

I've downloaded the free version to try it out. Anyone using it?

I'm also looking at:
Japanese Words and Phrases (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/japanese-...88128?mt=8)
Japanese Audio Flashcards (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/free-japa...69014?mt=8)
Accelastudy Japanese (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id286909968?mt=8)

The prices vary, but I'm looking for a good collection of vocabulary words for a beginner, with audio and example sentences with audio. Also a test feature would be good. Any recommendations?

CJ

I don't know if it has ever been suggested but I just had a quick vision of what a kanji.koohii.com app would be like.. You could log in, select and make stories in one section, and review by drawing the kanji on the screen with your finger. There could be a forum and statistics of reviewed kanji section as well... Maybe some body should get started I'm sure plenty of people would pay something for it

cjane Wrote:I'm looking for a good Japanese vocabulary app for my iPod Touch and I came across this new one:
Japanese Sensei (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/japanese-...34304?mt=8)

I bought this app and absolutely love the audio/sentences portion of it... i wish someone could turn this into an Anki deck

[Katsuo]

Hashiriya Wrote:I bought this app and absolutely love the audio/sentences portion of it... i wish someone could turn this into an Anki deck

6,000 of the sentences have been made into an Anki deck: Smart.fm uses the same sentences as Japanese Sensei, though the latter has more (6,000 vs. 10,000). The sound recordings are different; Smart.fm's speakers tend to put more expression in.

With ten thousand words Japanese Sensei can be used as a basic talking dictionary.

oh really? i didn't know they were the same as each other.. thanks Katsuo. i wonder if smart.fm is going to ever release the rest of their advanced sentences to equal upwards of 10,000?

Those who want the CFT Japanese app-- it's on sale until Feb. 3 for $16 US. (20% off of its $20 US price.) It's a good app for what it is, but I'm not too thrilled with EDICT. I played around with it a bit, but I have Anki already, so I don't need the flash cards, and I have stroke order pretty much nailed cold. It is handy to have the on/kun readings, though.

I prefer my Kenkyuusha and Daijirin dictionaries. The updated version of the Kenkyuusha is for the most part better. They made it slightly easier to page through by adding an almost transparent 4-way pad you can turn on/off very easily, and they made it easier to bookmark almost anything.

I have no clue what they added to the Daijirin. There's so much stuff lurking in there that it's hard to tell. It boggles the mind. (Hell, there's a 四字熟語 dictionary in there somewhere.)

[Katsuo]

Three apps I tried recently: Jishop, waeiwa, Feed Me!

Jishop
• Kanji dictionary.
• Recently released for iPhone, has been around for a while on Windows.
• Main interface is an extended radical list.
• Free version covers the 1,006 kyoiku kanji. There are two larger paid-for options.
Comment: Layout and content are a bit like Halpern's Kenkyusha Dictionaries. Interface is a bit quirky and doesn't really suit the small iPhone screen. I'd be interested to know other people's opinions on this app.

WaEiWa (和英和)
• Japanese/English dictionary
• Uses JMDict (like Kotoba!)
• Features include incremental search and word jump
• 115 円
Comment: Has less features overall than Kotoba!, but the two mentioned above are useful.

Feed Me!
• Learn some basic Japanese vocabulary.
• Feed the words you learn to a monster.
• Aimed at children.
• Free
Comment: A few of the words are not that basic, e.g. 楕円（だえん）

Anyone else noticed "Jibbigo"?
They claim "Jibbigo is a bi-directional, natural speech-to-speech translation app that lets you converse with a speaker of another language through spoken language.".

Japanese-English is Y3200 - and currently number 6 "top grossing" on the Japanese app store.
No way I'm going to buy it, but it'd sure be interesting to see how good it is.

I bet it's just a frontend for babelfish or google translate.

-edit-
It says it works offline. I can't imagine that it works very well at all. It probably just tries to detect a few words in whatever you say and then match it to a phrase. If whatever you are saying isn't something along the lines of "Take me to the airport" then you're probably out of luck.

Machine English<->Japanese text translation is still barely above the level of complete gibberish on every other platform, so I doubt an actual workable solution has been lingering in the shadows unnoticed.

Apparently this is a product from a group at Carnegie Mellon University, and it's based on machine learning from large amounts of data (sounds a lot like google translate).

So what it is doing is
1) speech-to-text (voice recognition)
2) automatic translation (English to Japanese, or Japanese to English)
3) text-to-speech (speech synthensis)

I think 1 and 3 are resonably mature technologies (already supported by the iPhone OS?),
but like Jarvik7 mentioned, the state of the art in automatic language translation is not exactly what I'd call good.

There is a 2-part (promo) video on youtube from the Science Channel

The hilarious part is, they "demo" it with Japanese (0:55 sec in part 2):
The dialogue (my transcription):
Question: Can you tell me where the nearest bus stop is?
Translation: 一番近いバス停はどこか教えてもらえますか

So far so good.

Response: まっすぐ歩いて、角で右を曲がってください。
Translation: Down the block and to the left.

WTF! It just sent him in the wrong direction! :O

avparker Wrote:Response: まっすぐ歩いて、角で右を曲がってください。
Translation: Down the block and to the left.

WTF! It just sent him in the wrong direction! :O

Haha, her expression is like "I think that's not what I said"

I'd like to point out that on some games, especially Square-Enix (that means the new Final Fantasy 1 & 2 games too that just got released!) games that have been released as Apps can be played entirely in Japanese if you just change the operating system language on your iPod/iPhone

sweet. I got to get a touch soon, it will save me so much time doing my reps on those long bus ride to school and back.

hah, well get one soon as Square-Enix is having a big sale now on their games: http://kotaku.com/5480528/square-enix-ip...go-on-sale

that's great. More japanese stuff, the better.

This may have been mentioned already, but is there an iPhone app for smart.fm's IKNOW Japanese Core 2000 course? I tried to type in 'IKNOW Japanese app' on the Apple website and nothing came up.

I ask because last year I started Core 2000 (Steps 1-3) but it was so timeconsuming I gave up. If it was on an app I would consider restarting it.

Yoroshiku!!!

Oh wait .. is this it?

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSto...8&s=143460

I don't have an iphone yet. If anyone has smart.fm app, can you tell me, can you access all the same thigns - I mean the Core2000, dictation, and brainspeed - with this app.?

It's a different set up then the actual online one.

i wouldn't recommend studying directly from iKnow (been there, done that) import the decks into AnkiMini and study on the iPod/iPhone from there

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I just downloaded the original to my Ipod and it works like a charm. Excellent graphical update and no problems with the slowdown or anything. Great way for me to get a little Japanese reading practice while experiencing a classic (I've never played the first FF until now).

Hashiriya Wrote:I'd like to point out that on some games, especially Square-Enix (that means the new Final Fantasy 1 & 2 games too that just got released!) games that have been released as Apps can be played entirely in Japanese if you just change the operating system language on your iPod/iPhone

As in, you don't have to download them from the Japanese app store? You can just download them from the US one (Australia in my case), switch the OS to Japanese, and the game dialogue will change to Japanese too?

If so, sweet.

Thank you god for the wonderful wonders of localization

avparker Wrote:So far so good.

Response: まっすぐ歩いて、角で右を曲がってください。
Translation: Down the block and to the left.

WTF! It just sent him in the wrong direction! :O

But that's because everything is inverted in Japan!

[Katsuo]

Kotoba! has been updated and now includes multi-radical search for kanji. Pretty good for free.

justin.tv available as an app now
Edit: tested and works great... you can select the channel language under the "more" menu... lots of japanese stuff you can watch now