The best way to learn Japanese speaking

1. 1

   You say sentences out loud

   Speaking is a skill you only build by speaking. An app that only taps and swipes trains recognition.

2. 2

   It uses whole sentences

   Sentences teach word order, endings and rhythm that single words cannot.

3. 3

   You hear native-style audio

   Listening and speaking feed each other. You need to hear how it should sound.

4. 4

   Feedback is specific

   Knowing which word you missed is more useful than a red cross on the whole sentence.

5. 5

   It is short and daily

   A ten-minute habit you keep beats a long course you drop.

Every sentence goes through the same four steps, and the last one is the point.

• Order

  Rebuild the Japanese sentence in English from a bank of words.

• Translate

  See the English and build the Japanese sentence word by word.

• Listen

  Hear the sentence in Japanese and type what you understood.

• Speak

  Say it out loud and see which words landed.

Japanese puts the verb last and marks each part of the sentence with a small particle such as は, を or に. Rebuilding sentences makes that order familiar, and saying them aloud gets the rhythm right. Pitch accent matters, so listen closely.

• Hello

  こんにちは

  Hello

• Thank you

  ありがとう

  Thank you

• A first sentence

  駅はどこですか。

  Where is the station?

Play buttons use your device’s own voice and appear only when it has one for Japanese.

An app builds habit, vocabulary and the muscle memory of speaking. It does not replace talking with people. Once you can say a handful of sentences, find a conversation partner or tutor and use what you practised. See how long Japanese takes to plan your time.