Learning Japanese is maybe one of the hardest languages in the world. iKana is a Japanese learning aide which helps to teach you the two Japanese phonetic alphabets Hiragana and Katakana although it can also extended to teach other alphabets and Kanji.
iKana works via a combination of flash cards, speed recognition and a Romanization test. The best place to start is with the Flash cards which aid memorization. Then you can move onto the speed recognition which tests you against the clock in a multiple-choice test. Finally, the word Romanization helps you practice reading whole words by translating them from kana into Romaji. This apparently helps you learn some Japanese vocabulary as well as improving your translation and reading skills. Note that you can use the Apple Remote to control all of these tests.
The interface of iKana is very slick and the Flash cards are elegantly crafted and designed. iKana takes you through the learning process set-by-step and I especially like the way characters are given English descriptions to help you remember what they look like. iKana has been completely re-written in version 2 to integrate with iPhones which is handy as you can't print out the Flash cards for learning on the move.
With over 740 Japanese characters to choose from, iKana is a comprehensive and elegant language learning aid that will appeal to all those who learn best with Flash cards.
