Liberation Philology Japanese app for iPhone and iPad

Learning Japanese is a much more involved process than switching between European languages, which no one tool can claim to solve. This program focuses on the writing system, using a rolling test to help you learn to recognize the array of characters and scripts that are used to represent Japanese in print.

The program covers the 440 kanji characters which Japanese children learn in the first three years of school, as well as the hiragana and katakana phonetic alphabets. Along the way, you’ll also see compound words that demonstrate how they kanji you’ve learned are combined to express more complicated meanings.

You’re tested on six characters at a time, always mixing new material with characters you’ve seen before in different contexts. Your answers are immediately confirmed or corrected, and periodically a cumulative level will test your ability to pick characters out of a much larger group.

The program can also optionally display romaji transliterations that indicate how characters are commonly pronounced, but users focused on learning to recognize kanji may prefer to leave this disabled.