LearnJapanese

LearnJapanese teaches you to read, write and say the two Japanese alphabets - Hiragana and Katakana - one character at a time. Every one of the 92 characters comes with a native pronunciation you can hear, a stroke-order animation you can copy by hand, and a real Japanese word that uses it.

It is a quiet, single-window app with no lessons to unlock and no streak to keep alive. Flip through the characters at your own pace, open the chart when you want the big picture, and take a quick quiz when you want to find out what actually stuck.

Highlights

1. Both alphabets, all 92 characters - the complete Hiragana and Katakana sets, each with its romaji reading so you always know how it sounds.
2. Hear every character - a clear recording for each sound, one keystroke away. Press Space to replay it, or use the arrow keys to move through the alphabet and hear each one as you go.
3. Learn the strokes - watch the character being drawn, stroke by stroke, in the right order and direction. Replay it as many times as you like while you copy it on paper.
4. A word to go with it - every character is paired with a real Japanese word that starts with it, written in Japanese, in romaji, and in English, so the sound sticks to something you can actually use.
5. The whole chart at a glance - open the full alphabet grid, see how the rows and columns fit together, and click any character to jump straight to it.
6. Test yourself - a quick multiple-choice quiz shows a character and asks for its reading. Your best score is kept separately for each alphabet, so you can watch both of them climb.
7. Start from the beginning - a short built-in guide explains what Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji actually are and the order most people learn them in. Handy on day one, easy to turn off after that.
8. Hands on the keyboard - every button has a key. A and S switch alphabets, G opens the chart, T starts a test, H shows the strokes, and the arrows walk you through the set.
9. Made to look at - light, dark, or follow your Mac's appearance, plus a choice of typefaces for the Japanese characters themselves.
10. Works completely offline - the characters, the recordings and the animations all ship inside the app. No account, no streaming, nothing to load.

How it works

Installing LearnJapanese takes less than a minute:

1. Download LearnJapanese and open the downloaded .dmg file.
2. Drag the LearnJapanese icon into your Applications folder.
3. Open it from Applications (or Launchpad) - it is already verified by Apple, so it just opens.

The app opens on Hiragana, at the first character. Press Space to hear it, press H to watch it being written, then press the right arrow for the next one. When you have been through a row or two, press T and let the quiz tell you which ones you really know. Switch to Katakana with S and do the same. Ten minutes a day gets most people through both alphabets in a couple of weeks.

Perfect for

1. Absolute beginners - the first thing to learn in Japanese is the kana, and this is exactly that, with nothing else in the way.
2. Anyone learning to write by hand - stroke order is hard to pick up from a static chart and easy to pick up from an animation you can replay.
3. Daily drilling - a short quiz with a best score per alphabet turns review into something you can finish in five minutes.
4. Students on the side - a small window you can keep open next to your textbook, class notes, or a show you are watching with subtitles.
5. Anyone who wants it offline - on a plane, on the train, or with the wifi off, the whole alphabet is still there.