Kiku

Kiku teaches Japanese through short spoken sentences. Each clip introduces at most one new word or grammar point, and every other word in the line has already been taught, so learners can follow everything they hear.

How it works

Lessons present a few clips at a time, each with furigana, a translation and a breakdown of its words and grammar. Words and grammar are then reviewed with spaced repetition on Anki’s default schedule, each time in a different sentence the learner has already studied. New words are recognized in a sentence, heard or read, and grammar is typed into a blank from the start. Once the reviews of a word or grammar point are a week or more apart, they rotate through answers the app checks: filling a blank, building the sentence from word tiles, picking the particle, typing what was said or choosing what it means. Answers can be typed in romaji, which turns into kana, or with a Japanese keyboard.

Beyond the lessons

Kiku includes hiragana and katakana practice, conjugation drills and illustrated stories and podcasts written with the words and grammar the courses teach. Each story unlocks once a learner has studied every word and grammar point it uses. Every character has their own voice and color, and the English for each line stays hidden until the learner asks for it.

The courses

The bundled courses follow the grammar chapters of Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese and contain more than two thousand voiced clips. Learners can also create their own courses from audio and video.