What is Reddit's opinion of Kotoba - Advanced Japanese?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Through out the day I study using my phone whenever I get a chance. I have an android, so the apps I use the most are Kotobachan and Japanese Kanji Study.

At the end of the day, I usually practice reading aloud using my Tobira textbook. I just got n2 level Shinkanzen set. I will start going through those books soon.

I wish I incorporated more kanji writing practice.

Reading aloud is super helpful! I recommend it, especially if you have a Japanese friend you can pester into listening and helping you.

I use Kotoba-chan. It is focused on vocabulary and divides the words into JLPT level and frequency. It also shows a lot of example sentences in order to learn how to use the words.

I also recommend Obenkyo to learn kanji. They are listed by JLPT level or RTK. You can also use it to learn vocabulary but the JLPT list is a bit out of date. It includes Tae Kim Japanese Grammar Guide. But it doesn't show example sentences.

The AttainJ Japanese courses are good but expensive.

The trick is to buy them on Udemy. They often have promo codes. They are having a sale now. For the early Black Friday sale, they started at $10 USD each and keep climbing a dollar or two each day.

Search for Udemy Coupon Codes for discounts throughout the year. Never pay full price!

https://www.udemy.com/user/online-japanese/

The other gem is Renshuu.org The premium Renshuu Pro is where you get most of the grammar and more. Well worth the monthly fee for the grammar but basically free for everything else. And it's good.

A free option for learning kanji on an Android phone or Android tablet is Kotoba. Excellent way to learn kanji.

That's some of the stuff I've spent my money on and found them to be excellent and great value.

So there's this open source app that's pretty good but could use some improvements, it's called Kotoba-chan.

• https://github.com/sh0/kotoba-android
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ee.yutani.kotoba

Instead of writing one from scratch perhaps you could improve it? My main suggestions would be:

• The ability to also show romaji transliterations instead of just kana.
• Being able to tap on the phrases to hear a speech synthesized pronunciation of them

Other things that would be cool:

• Illustrations/photos for the words in the dictionary. (There are a lot of words, so it might be hard, but you could add photos for the most common ones. If the photos are creative commons licensed on flickr, for example, you can link back to the photographer page from the app)
• A more organized interface for the app that walks you through it, step by step.
• Nicer typography.
• Duolingo-style gamification. (Lives, sound effects, etc) Would be nice if it was optional because some people don't like this.
• Ability to plot charts of progress over time.
• Daily reminders to practice.
• A Github-like streak chart with how much you practiced.
• Ability to post progress on Facebook, etc.

If you absolutely must start an app from scratch, you can at least reuse the database from Kotoba-chan. It's pretty good.