Kana Complete is a complete solution to help you master reading and writing the two Japanese kana syllabaries hiragana and katakana, and explore their sounds with a native speaker. Learning kana is an important stepping stone on the path to Japanese literacy. The ability to read kana will open up a world of new study and reference materials to you that are closed to anyone limited to romanized Japanese. And besides that, its fun!
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http://www.epochrypha.com/kanacomplete
At a price competitive with apps offering less than a third of the functionality, Kana Complete provides you a feature-rich learning experience, including:
- An engaging, dynamic drill which will help you recognize kana, learn their sounds with a native speaker, and track your progress. Choose one of several beautiful Japanese scenic backgrounds.
- Flashcards for traditional kana study.
- Practice learning to write kana using the proper stroke order and the shape of NATURAL written forms, based on the way Japanese actually write kana.
- Lots of detailed information about Japanese writing, and how kana is actually used as part of writing Japanese. No other kana app in the store has this kind of guide.
- Hiragana and Katakana tables complete with native speaker pronunciation: tap the kana, hear the sound.
- A comprehensive Japanese pronunciation guide with many speech samples to highlight important pronunciation concepts. Learn what you need to know to sound good in Japanese.
THE DRILL
The drill introduces kana to you a few at a time, and gives you engaging, fast-paced practice with recognizing them. Every time you touch a kana you hear the native speaker say the sound associated with it, so you learn kana the way you learned the alphabet, with constant repetition of symbol and sound. When you confuse one kana for another, the drill will make sure you see them together until you learn to distinguish them.
A detailed progress review lets you see how you are doing on every kana. The drill has many options which let you customize how it works, allowing you to adjust the challenge to your own pace.
Using the drill is just like playing a game. You can pull it out whenever you have a little spare time, and easily stop whenever you need to do something else.
FLASHCARDS
Flashcards are a time honored way to memorize almost anything, and theyre one of the most popular devices for learning kana, too. Relax and study at your own pace with virtual stacks of kana flashcards. The flashcards also have customizable options.
On any flashcard, you can hear the pronunciation of the kana any time you like.
WRITING PRACTICE
Practice writing kana anytime, anywhere right on the iPhone screen. Learning to write kana with correct stroke order and direction is very important, and also one of the best methods to truly master them.
Most Japanese fonts have shapes that are different from what kana look like when hand written, so other apps which base their writing exercises on fonts do not set you up to write properly. With Kana Complete, you can practice all of the basic character shapes with realistic hand-written models so you learn to write kana characters which look NATURAL.
You can even turn the writing model off, and try to write the kana from memory. And, of course, the native speaker is right there, too.
INFORMATION & PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Kana Complete has detailed articles to help you learn about how Japanese writing works and how kana is used within it, and the detailed pronunciation guide tells you everything you need to know to more effectively listen to and imitate native speakers. Learn important facts about vowel length, unique consonants, pitch accent and more, with native speaker audio samples to demonstrate every concept.