Human Japanese

Human Japanese provides a wealth of fantastic educational content presented in a sensible, clear manner. It’s a boon for those returning to studying Japanese after a long break, including those like myself who were once well into the intermediate phase of learning. The app itself however feels woefully outdated in terms of design and functionality, and it’s not a good experience on iPad. The overall UX feels about a decade out-of-date.

Ive only just started, but this is exactly what most apps arent but should be: well designed, thoughtful, and help you do something without any unnecessary frills like badges and gamification. If you enjoy learning about things by starting from fundamentals, this is for you.

The cultural notes (explanations) really set this app apart and make it super enjoyable to learn and move through the lessons. It’s relaxing and enlightening. Top notch.

This is a textbook written by someone who has a deep understanding of the commonalities between the Japanese and English language. It’s full of amazing insights and historical context that should make Japanese more intuitively understandable to native English speakers. It will teach you the syllabary (katakana and hiragana), as well as basic grammar for the formal (polite) manner of speaking, and a lot of vocabulary for common situations. There is a second (intermediate) app that gets into informal speech, kanji, and more complex grammatical constructions. A great pathway to understanding Japanese literature would be to use these two apps and then jump into the third app: Satori Reader, as well as WaniKani for more complex kanji. All of the Japanese examples are fully voice acted. It’s important to get used to hearing the language so you won’t sound strange when you try to speak it. Every chapter ends with multiple choice review questions so you can practice what you’ve learned to retain it better. It even encourages you to re-take these quizzes multiple times to master each question, since the choices are randomized each time. I’ve tried a lot of ways of learning Japanese, but these books have been by far the most insightful and useful resources I’ve found. I got a better understanding of the basics by reviewing the material in this book, and I’m loving the intermediate app as well. The intermediate app covers the vocabulary and grammar for a lot of situations that will be useful if you’re traveling in Japan, such as riding trains and speaking to customer service people, and it gives you a great foundation for understanding Kanji which should help when you move on to other resources like WaniKani.

I ve gotten a deeper understanding with the basics than any other application. This app was a friend of mine’s suggestion and he’s currently in Japanese school.

In my opinion, Human Japanese remains unparalleled and my go-to choice in my recommendations to people starting out with the language. All those years ago when I first used the Intro+Intermediate apps, it was my foundation, my staple with my budding Japanese journey. This beats any novice textbook in my opinion. All these years later I found myself returning to Human Japanese to refresh myself with Japanese. From the bottom of my heart, I thank the development team for creating a truly special piece of work, at a fraction of a cost it would take textbooks to attempt to even come close to this. If you're on the fence, just do it, you wont regret it. Always and forever, ありがとうございます。

Great application to learn Japanese; the author has a deep understanding and it shines through in the lessons. Originally downloaded it for iPhone, able to use it on my M1 macbook as well.

Why have you abandoned the human Japanese app? I just revisited it and was willing to pay an additional $15 in order to have the iPad version. Complete but, why should I bother? Although it should work for both the iPad and the iPhone, you made us pay twice. OK, I’m willing. Oh wait, you no longer care about this app. It’s really too bad since it is quite possibly the best Japanese learning language app ever. It’s really a pity that you don’t bother to answer any questions in app reviews. Completely incomprehensible.

Self learning Japanese, this has been an excellent addition!

I was referred to the program from a Japanese learning group. So far enjoying the course. He makes things easy to understand. Best course for an awesome price.