HiKaChan 1.0 is out!

[TripleJ]

Edit:Having a one day sale before the new updates launch, including quizzes and a few more cool things! Now's the time to get it cheap

Edit: Katakana is now live as well!
The Katakana edition of HiKaChan has just been released to the app store! Thank you for all your feedback and support so far, guys! If you enjoyed the Hiragana edition of HikaChan, please make sure to check this one out!

Edit: Version 1.2 is live
Version 1.2 was released today and adds sound and spoken examples of each characters pronunciation
Thank you to everyone that has supported me so far!

Edit: Version 1.1 is released!
Version 1.1 has hit the app store, with a tonne of updates including:
combination characters and 'ten-ten's as well as bug fixes and faster loading.



For those interested in Japanese or in learning the Hiragana alphabet, my first application just launched in the itunes store. thought I'd make a post here since many people in this forum has helped me a lot during the making of this.

The program is priced at $2.99 and aims to teach you the full hiragana alphabet, including all the 46 characters, their 25 variations (in the pending 1.1 update), as well as a full list of character combinations and features custom drawn flash cards with illustrations and mnemonics for each character.

Currently on my third year of learning Japanese, I've based this program on the ways that i found effective, so I'm hoping that people will find it useful!
Here's the Itunes Link

Please help me out by commenting and adding suggestions if you have any I intend to keep improving this program until it's as close to perfect as possible.

Once again, thanks to everyone that helped out!!

 

[mkrishnan]

Seems nicely done... does it teach kanji also, or only hiragana / katakana? I kind of already know all my hiragana.

 

[Mal]

Heh, I also know my Hiragana (and Katakana), but my wife might appreciate this, at least if she gets her own iPod touch. You might want to mention the price in the post, btw, although I know you've got the iTunes link in there.

For those who are also curious but don't want to take the time, this is priced at $2.99, which I think is fair, though I think it could handle Katakana too for that price.

jW

 

[TripleJ]

Seems nicely done... does it teach kanji also, or only hiragana / katakana? I kind of already know all my hiragana.

For the moment, no Kanji since there's several thousands of those, and I can't draw that fast I'm working on getting the Katakana finished as well, and then I'll probably venture into the Kanji territory.

Doing free periodic updates of 7 kanji or so a week would work, i reckon

Heh, I also know my Hiragana (and Katakana), but my wife might appreciate this, at least if she gets her own iPod touch. You might want to mention the price in the post, btw, although I know you've got the iTunes link in there.

For those who are also curious but don't want to take the time, this is priced at $2.99, which I think is fair, though I think it could handle Katakana too for that price.

Thank you, I've updated the original post I figured compared to what you pay for most Japanese books the price would be alright I'm working on adding Katakana as well and hoping I'll be able to send it off to Apple for review before the end of the week.

 

[Night Spring]

For the moment, no Kanji since there's several thousands of those, and I can't draw that fast I'm working on getting the Katakana finished as well, and then I'll probably venture into the Kanji territory.

Doing free periodic updates of 7 kanji or so a week would work, i reckon

You could try adding kanji in the order they are learned by Japanese school children. See, for instance:
http://www.jref.com/language/grade_breakdown_kanji_gakunenbetsu.shtml

 

[joekun]

It's cool to see a lot of Japanese learning apps hitting the app store, nice work! I wish this stuff had been available when I was first learning.

 

[mkrishnan]

Doing free periodic updates of 7 kanji or so a week would work, i reckon

If it could somehow be a "kanji a day" kind of thing, perhaps with the new day's kanji downloaded from the net or something, that would be really fun. Maybe I just need to bookmark a kanji a day website, though, and start visiting it.

Here's just another thought to throw out there... does the language support let you use the fingertip writing recognition without changing the system language? Having a person trace out the kana is going to be much more efficient in having them learn it than having them just look at it.

Anyway, nice work, keep it up.

 

[jwflutterby]

Hope my husband doesn't see these, I write his Christmas lists in Katakana so he doesn't know what he's getting

 

[Night Spring]

Here's just another thought to throw out there... does the language support let you use the fingertip writing recognition without changing the system language? Having a person trace out the kana is going to be much more efficient in having them learn it than having them just look at it.

The handwriting input is for CHINESE -- so it only recognizes Kanji, not hiragana or katakana. And some of the Kanji is slightly different than the ones regularly used in modern Japanese, so it could be very confusing for beginners.

 

[Mal]

Hope my husband doesn't see these, I write his Christmas lists in Katakana so he doesn't know what he's getting

Heh, brilliant idea. I'll have to keep that in mind.

jW

 

[mkrishnan]

The handwriting input is for CHINESE -- so it only recognizes Kanji, not hiragana or katakana. And some of the Kanji is slightly different than the ones regularly used in modern Japanese, so it could be very confusing for beginners.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't being clear... I am not an iPhone developer, and so I was not sure at what level the writing recognition input method is available at the API level... if it can only be used in the context of Chinese input, yeah, it's pretty useless here. Hopefully Japanese handwriting is on the to do list....

 

[Night Spring]

if it can only be used in the context of Chinese input, yeah, it's pretty useless here. Hopefully Japanese handwriting is on the to do list....

Well, for a native speaker with a college level education, the Chinese handwriting recognition is pretty usable to input Kanji, and the current Japanese keyboard input method is also quite excellent, so I kind of doubt hiragana and katakana handwriting recognition is high on Apple's todo list. Personally, I'd prefer they implement copy and paste first!

 

[Mal]

Well, for a native speaker with a college level education, the Chinese handwriting recognition is pretty usable to input Kanji, and the current Japanese keyboard input method is also quite excellent, so I kind of doubt hiragana and katakana handwriting recognition is high on Apple's todo list. Personally, I'd prefer they implement copy and paste first!

I actually agree to a point, even though I'm not a native speaker. I love being able to draw in characters I don't recognize and run them through a translator, but with the phonetical characters that's not important because I can input those with the existing methods just fine. I do wish they would do a Japanese-specific Kanji input, since the character sets are different, and I can't imagine it'd be too difficult, but so far I haven't had any trouble using the Chinese kanji input.

jW

 

[mkrishnan]

the Chinese handwriting recognition is pretty usable to input Kanji

Now I'm lost. I thought in your previous post you said this was not possible (unless the phone is operating in Chinese language mode, where it would be possible but not useful)?

P.S. If you're a college educated native speaker, why do you need this program anyways?

 

[TripleJ]

Thank you for the suggestions! I'll see what I can do about a kanji app as well I'm pushing to get sound-examples added at the moment, so you can hear the proper japanese pronounciation of each character as well

 

[Night Spring]

Now I'm lost. I thought in your previous post you said this was not possible (unless the phone is operating in Chinese language mode, where it would be possible but not useful)?

P.S. If you're a college educated native speaker, why do you need this program anyways?

Handwriting input is not possible for hiragana and katakana. It is possible for Chinese characters (=kanji), by putting the keyboard in Chinese mode. The post I was responding to was asking if one could use handwriting recognition to help beginning learners practice writing out hiragana and katakana, which I pointed out was not possible. But the Chinese handwriting input is still useful (and fun!) for native speakers and advanced learners who already know kanji.

And no, I don't need this program, but I noticed it in the app store and thought that the use of visual image and sound association as aids in learning Japanese writing was very interesting, and when I saw a thread about it here, I stopped by to see what people were saying about it.

 

[TripleJ]

Just quickly, I'm considering adding a sketchpad to the app so you can practice drawing the characters on the go as well, without pen/paper. Would you guys mind giving me a yay or nai for whether this is a good idea or not?

Thanks!

 

[joekun]

I would say that's a great feature, especially if you set it up so that the sketch pad box has those lines that help you "balance" the characters as you write them.

 

[TripleJ]

Version 1.1 hit the app store last night with lots of updates and fixes!
Please see the top post and the iTunes link for the full update list!

Version 1.2 will add sound as well
Thank you to everyone who's commented or bought the application so far!

I'll see what I can do about adding a sketchpad as well!

 

[Mal]

Just quickly, I'm considering adding a sketchpad to the app so you can practice drawing the characters on the go as well, without pen/paper. Would you guys mind giving me a yay or nai for whether this is a good idea or not?

Thanks!

Definitely a good idea, and would be even better if it was able to identify how close you were to the actual character. Dunno how hard that would be though, so I'd be perfectly content with the sketchpad as you're thinking of it.

jW

 

[Lesser Evets]

Thank you to everyone who's commented or bought the application so far!

I'll see what I can do about adding a sketchpad as well!

The moment it gets hiragana and katakana I buy.

 

[Clyde099]

Very cool app.

 

[TripleJ]

The moment it gets hiragana and katakana I buy.

Katakana is on the way Putting the final touches on it and sending it to review for this weekend, meaning it'll probably launch in 7-10 days, once apple's approved it At the same time, sound examples will be added and I'll start work on a sketchpad.

Thanks for the positive comments, guys! As always any suggestions are more than welcome

 

[TripleJ]

Version 1.2 was released today and adds sound and spoken examples of each characters pronunciation

 

[TripleJ]

The Katakana edition of HiKaChan has just been released to the app store! Thank you for all your feedback and support so far, guys! If you enjoyed the Hiragana edition of HikaChan, please make sure to check this one out!