[[Languages]] # 日本語 (Japanese) - [[Japanese Phrases]] ## Helpful Links > [!TIP] Duolingo for learning Japanese > While [[Duolingo]] works well for alphabetic languages, in my experience it struggles with logographic languages such as [[Hanzi]] (Chinese) and [[Kanji]] (Japanese). As such, I would recommend avoiding it for learning Japanese, and instead use some of the below tools and guides instead. | Link | Description | Name | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------- | | [Learn Japanese](https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/) | A pretty thorough guide for adult native English speakers to learn Japanese. | [[Tofugu]] | | [Learn Hiragana](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/) | Hiragana is essentially the Japanese alphabet, and one of the first things you should learn when picking up Japanese. | [[Tofugu]] | | [Learn Katakana](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/) | Katakana is fairly 1:1 with Hiragana, but is primarily used for transcribing foreign words, and for writing foreign loan words such as ホテル (Hotel). | [[Tofugu]] | | [Learn Kanji](https://www.wanikani.com/) | An online tool for learning Kanji via a spaced-repetition system. Essentially flashcards with some extra magic to help take advantage of memory formation quirks. | [[WaniKani]] | | [English-Japanese Dictionary](https://jisho.org/) | One of the most powerful, and useful, English-Japanese dictionaries out there. Absolutely indispensable while learning Japanese. | [[Jisho]] | | [Kana Practice](https://realkana.com/) | An online tool for practicing both Hiragana and Katakana, which I recommend using after following the above guides for the mnemonics they provide. | RealKana | | [Google Translate](https://translate.google.com/) | While not perfect, Google Translate can at least shore up any gaps in scenarios where you need to figure out what something means in a timely manner. | Google Translate |