[HN Gopher] Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficien...
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Show HN: A Japanese learning app focused on efficient vocab/grammar
acquisition
Hey HN, it's been 8 years since I posted on here about the launch
of my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo [0] and I'm finally back with
a new app: Nihongo Lessons! Think of Nihongo Lessons as the
textbook to Nihongo's dictionary. It's an app for learning
Japanese, specifically made for learners who are serious about
becoming fluent, and want a guided set of content that will help
them efficiently acquire vocabulary and grammar. The project came
about when Adam Shapiro of Japanese Level Up (Jalup) [1] announced
last April that he was shutting Jalup down. As a fan of Adam's work
I was bummed to hear the news, but realized I actually might be one
of the few people in the world in a position to keep his work
alive. So I reached out, and we came up with a deal where I would
sell Jalup content in my apps. Originally it was envisioned as an
add-on to Nihongo, but after starting to build this out it became
clear that from a UX perspective it felt too bloated and tacked-on
to just shove Jalup into Nihongo. Plus, given that Jalup is built
around one-time content purchases, and Nihongo is a subscription,
the purchases involved would feel convoluted, and people might be
upset that they weren't included in the Nihongo subscription. So,
I started building a separate app that would become Nihongo
Lessons. From a technical perspective, Nihongo Lessons is actually
just a different entry point into essentially the same app bundle
as Nihongo. This gives me a lot of the infrastructure (sync, error
reporting, screenshot generation, etc.) of Nihongo for free, and
makes it easy to share UI, which I do a fair amount of (flashcards,
tutorials, settings). Everything that actually changes behavior
between the apps is stored in a single file as an "app variant"
configuration, so if I decide to create another companion app in
the future, it should be even easier. It's iPhone-only for now,
but iPad will be coming soon. No plans for an Android release at
the moment. Download: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1640204242
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10094326 [1]:
https://japaneselevelup.com
Author : chrisvasselli
Score : 5 points
Date : 2022-12-01 21:21 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lessons.nihongo-app.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lessons.nihongo-app.com)
| killa_kyle wrote:
| Checking it out!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Looks great and I am your target customer prior language
| experience but very out of practice and wanting to go from
| adequacy to fluency), but why phone-only? I was quite
| disappointed as I have a Mac but don't own an iPhone, and while
| I'd be willing to pay for this I don't want to buy a new device
| just to try it out. Another reason is that for study I actually
| like to sit at a desk and make notes with a pencil on paper.
| chrisvasselli wrote:
| Thanks! Phone-only for now just because I wanted to get it out
| the door and focus on polishing a single user experience, but I
| definitely plan on adding iPad support soon. That's good
| feedback that you like studying on your Mac, I'll consider
| putting together a Mac version as well (although the iPad
| version will at least run decently well on any Apple-Silicon
| Mac).
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