this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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Language Learning

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What application or services helps you learn the most? (lemmy.selfhostcat.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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In the past I’ve mostly done Anki for Chinese and Japanese but am looking for something else since I’ve fallen off Anki.

For Chinese I really need a service that I can read and OCR words to easily identify in a dictionary. I’m at a high intermediate or low advanced level but looking up words is annoying.

For Japanese I just need input for an intermediate level.

  • Clozemaster?
  • Italki?

Listing services I’ve found

  • Clozemaster (but has a bad model now)
  • tutor with something like italki
  • Anki
  • busuu
  • librelingo
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure what's best for Mandarin or Japanese specifically, but if you can read and want something that reduces friction, have you looked into LingQ? I am using it for reading, listening a lot in French. It also supports importing YouTube content.

I think at your level you should focus on native content... a lot of native content. Anything that helps you with consuming a huge amount of content is great. Use the language by consuming.

most apps like duolingo, bussuu, babbel usually teach you in a rigid path on topics you might not even have an interest in. For example if you are not interested in cooking, sports, the chapter on cooking,sports will be very boring.

Only apps I would recommend are those that teach in a high frequency way. ie teaches high-frequency words, sentences, grammar points and etc. I ditched apps as soon as I could read a book.

I feel apps like to keep you in a learner mode that is how they make money, I feel as soon as you can consume content in that language, you are a user of the language, so consume content instead. make mistakes, learn from them and keep consuming.

I like LingQ because I can import everything i want to consume in 1 place, from books, podcast, YT series, music and etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think at your level you should focus on native content… a lot of native content. Anything that helps you with consuming a huge amount of content is great. Use the language by consuming.

This is good advice! Thank you very much.

LingQ

Boy does that free version suck. Seems helpful but idk about 15$ a month helpful.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yea, you have to see your budget too. Chinese and Japanese are popular enough, so i think there should be similar free readers. Link below is LUTE, not sure of chinese, jap support. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eqCQnZQCfow