KanaCard

application to help Japanese Language Students with hiragana and katakana

One of the first steps in learning to read and write Japanese is to learn the kana. The kana are two syllablaries: hiragana and katakana.

This is not a flash card program. It's meant as a reference and allows you to easily hear the pronunciation of a kana and find the romaji needed for it's input in an IME.

This is a Hiragana/Katakana card with sounds. It consists of two pages: one for katakana and one for hiragana. Clicking on a character plays the sound associated with the character and shows the romaji used by the Japanese Language IME (Input Method Editor) for keyboard input of Japanese characters. It includes most of the special Katakana characters (特殊音/tokushuon) used for pronunciation of loanwords.

All of the common Kana have animated images that show how each Kana is written. Double-click on any of the images with a dark-orange border to see the Animated Image showing how it is written. Animation speed is selectable as fast/normal/slow from the pull-down menu on the animated kana display. Stroke path information for drawing the animated mages come from the KanjiVG project.

I tried to make a very simple application you will use frequently when learning the language and outgrow once you are comfortable with the kana.

This application does not collect any personal information.