do you want to learn japanese maybe you just didn't know where to start
hey dyce quirk i'm a little bit low on cash right now perfect because in this video i'm going to
be showing you my top five favorite free japanese language learning apps that i've come to just know
love and use all the time and in addition to that if you stick around till the very end of the video
then i'm going to be showing you my very favorite japanese language learning resource which can be
used from anybody in a beginner stage of learning the language all the way to an intermediate stage
so please make sure you stick around for that and before we get started i have a few disclaimers
first off i'm not personally sponsored by any of the apps or resources that i'm going to mention
in this video in this video i'm talking about ones that i've personally used and i personally think
are great for different tools secondly i didn't list these in any particular order i basically
am going to be telling you some cons and pros for each one of them and how they can be an excellent
tool for helping you learn japanese so with all of that said let's not waste time and let's get to it
before we get started with the list i wanted to give two honorable mentions first off anki
anki is a great flash card app but it doesn't really teach you japanese so that's why i
didn't include it in this list and the second is lingodeer and i so desperately wanted to include
lingodeer on this list but when i went to the app and i was testing it out it didn't have enough
free content for it to fit that free criteria which is a big point uh in this particular
list so if it had more free content it most certainly would have been on this list believe me
i love it but i can't put it on because it's not free let's start with number five duo lingo now
before you roast me for putting this on the list i know about the cons okay let's list a couple
first off they have some weird sentences uh which really aren't very practical that they teach you
secondly they have some weird pronunciation for a different kanji because the app doesn't really
recognize that kanji can have multiple pronunciations and sometimes it's wrong
and also there are so many ads it's like after every single lesson is an ad
and that could take up so much time uh we also know the big one he's always watching
however duolingo has a number of great pros going for it as well first off if you have just started
learning japanese and you are just starting your journey then this is a great app for learning
hiragana and katakana which are two of the three alphabets in the japanese language and it's great
for learning those characters in addition it's great for learning vocab and surprisingly enough
grammar when i first downloaded the app it didn't have all of this grammar but they've added that
since the beginning uh which is totally awesome to me uh in addition the duolingo app actually is
kind of in a gamey kind of format so that helps to keep you engaged and it also has a streak system
which is going to keep you engaged as well so yeah there's a lot of good pros for duolingo
and if you're just getting started this is a great place to start build your vocab learn some of the
hiragana and katakana you know get that down and then also you can learn a little bit of
grammar here as well but it's definitely not the best for grammar so yeah those are just a
couple really good things from duolingo number four memrise now personally i think this is
all around just a better app than duolingo and that's because it has just as much grammar
it has a load of content all of the sentences that you learn on the app are actually just a
little bit more practical and in addition you also get native japanese speakers saying all of the
words for you and all of the phrases so you can actually see video of them saying the words and
personally that's just awesome like i love that because it not only helps you just see what the
mouth looks like when they're saying the words but you also get to hear it a little bit better
and obviously they're not going to mispronounce any of the characters that are listed so that's
super cool and the biggest kicker of all which i think is amazing no ads which is awesome this
is why i love this one over duolingo because i just feel like i'm giving just as much time to
adds as i am to my study whereas in this app doesn't happen uh one of the biggest cons with
this app though is that it doesn't really give good grammar lessons so this is great for vocab
and for just learning phrases and stuff but it's really not great for learning the grammar so that
you can make your own sentences so uh let's go on to number three tai kim's guide to learning
japanese now this app is really different from the first two but first let's look at the pros
it has a lot of grammar and it's very thorough and it's grammar explanations
number two it has uh just loads of material for you to go through it'll take you forever to get
through everything in this app number three it has no ads which you know that's a big thing for me
and number four it also teaches it from a japanese perspective which is very very interesting because
in duolingo and memorize it actually teaches it from an english learner's perspective so it adds
articles like the and stuff like that it adds subjects which typically are left out of japanese
sentences and this app actually teaches you from a japanese mindset so it'll remove those
and it might be a little bit more difficult when you first get started to get into that
but later down the line it could be very helpful for your japanese learning so this is a really
great app but it has some major cons as well if you're just getting started this app it doesn't
really play like a game kind of like duolingo and memorize so that can make it a lot less engaging
it also doesn't have a streak system so if you're having a hard time getting back into it every day
this might not be the app for you in addition uh there was one more thing i wanted to mention
and that was it's basically a book okay you're downloading an app book uh and i don't think
that that's the best for when you're just getting started if you're using it as a reference tool
or using it for a certain grammar then it is excellent so just keep that in mind when you're
using this app number two easy japanese now this particular app is way different than the other
ones because it tries to teach you japanese by having you translate japanese news articles um
let's look at the pros real quick okay first off it is excellent for practicing your listening
and your reading skills and that's because every article also has an audio recording of the article
so you can listen to it or you can read it really awesome for just practical learning in general in
addition it also has a number of different tools that you wouldn't normally have if you just had
the article in front of you like a dictionary tool and just all of this great stuff it also
has jlpt practice tests which if you haven't heard of jlpt jlpt is the japanese language proficiency
test and essentially if you want to get a job in japan you have to test into jlpt3 there's five
different levels five being the lowest and it goes five four three two one one being the highest
and if you can test in the jlp t3 then you could probably get a job in japan but if you can't then
it's going to be much more difficult so that's really a great resource to have inside of an app
and in addition you also get to learn a little bit about japanese news so that's really a cool pro
some of the cons are first off this is definitely not for beginners uh even though it has some
kind of easier articles it's definitely for more like high beginner to low intermediate it also has
a very very very intimidating uh interface like when you jump on the app you will be intimidated
and it'll be difficult to navigate the interface until after you've messed with it a little bit
uh however i wanted to include it on this list because if you are in that range like kind of
late beginner to early intermediate this could be a really excellent way to step up your game
uh and to step up your japanese learning and if you're higher than that then this is an absolute
must uh for anybody that's practicing their japanese at a high intermediate or intermediate
level to just like a pro level uh so definitely make sure you check out that app and number one
hello talk now this is like a social media app for learning a language basically you tell them what
language you're good at and you tell them what language you want to learn and then it pairs you
up with people so essentially on this app you can see posts in japanese for practicing your reading
skills you can make posts in japanese and it gives them a chance to correct you so you're practicing
your writing skills you can use an audio portion of the app where you can either talk to people
directly or you can put posts with your audio and people can correct that so you're practicing your
speaking you're practicing you're listening because other people can do that with you
and the coolest thing about this app is it doesn't matter what level you're at this is a great app
for whether you're a beginner or whether you're a pro and i mean like pro okay because you're
speaking directly with people from japan uh in addition this app should be used in conjunction
with whatever app you're using so if you're using duolingo or memorize tae kim's guide to learning
japanese uh japanese easy doesn't matter you should be using this app in conjunction because
every time you learn a new skill in one of these other apps or you learn new vocab
you should be trying to put it into sentences inside of hellotalk so that you can practice some
of the big cons for this app are it's not going to teach you any lessons or any grammar so you're
going to have to get that from some other place in addition sometimes because you're kind of learning
from an actual native speaker when they correct you you might not know exactly what you did wrong
and you might have a hard time kind of getting that correction back or translating that
correction to you however this is kind of a good thing too because when you go to japan
you're naturally going to have some conversations where you don't understand each other and you kind
of have to work through it so this is just great practice for that there's also one more con that
i want to bring up and it's kind of both a pro and a con at the same time and that is
the more you put yourself out there the more you're going to get back from it and you really
do have to put yourself out there when it comes to hello talk because there's all of these different
ways that you can engage with native speakers of japanese and there's a lot of japanese people that
actually want to speak with you to practice their english too but you really have to be willing to
make mistakes you really have to be willing to put posts out there even if you know you're not
going to get it correct every time you really have to be willing to actually speak with some people
from that native language and the more that you do the better you're going to get and the more you're
going to get out of this app and again with this app you should be using it in conjunction with
everything else so this is a great opportunity for you to grab something that you learn in this app
bring it in here make a post make a mistake or two maybe try experimenting combining
different grammar points and putting them into one sentence and then having somebody
correct you so that's kind of everything that i wanted to say about hellotalk it's a great app
but there's one more thing the bonus that i promised you guys and so because you've
reached this point in the video i know that you are serious about learning japanese and i
want to share with you my number one my number one resource for learning japanese for free online and
before i do uh if you found this video informative or helpful please consider smashing that like
button or subscribing we put out weekly content about japan its culture and travel so i just hope
that uh you'll consider that but our number one resource for learning japanese for free online
better than all the other apps is george trombley's japanese from zero youtube series where
he takes you step by step from the very beginning learning japanese and there's a number of awesome
pros first off he's super engaging it's super great grammar lessons and there's so much content
uh but also um you know he's just a really funny guy so i would definitely recommend that you check
it out i'll put a link in the description and also some of the cons it is a youtube channel so
it doesn't have an app um it is free but it's kind of light on vocab you would have to buy his book
series to go along with it which you don't need to go through the course it's totally awesome and
also it's really kind of a little bit long but that's great because you're going to be learning
a super huge amount of stuff thank you all so much for checking out this video
if you found it helpful please remember to like and subscribe and also if you know of any other
apps or any other materials or resources that are really awesome for learning japanese please
leave them down in the comments i appreciate you all and with all that said dice quirk out
you