manabu japanese

manabu is a supplemental Japanese study tool built around a dictionary that lives entirely on your phone. Look up any word or kanji instantly, then turn what you find into flashcards, quizzes, and writing practice that adapt to what you actually remember. Everything works offline. No ads, no in-app purchases.

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Powerful Japanese Dictionary

manabu is built on JMdict, one of the most complete Japanese-English dictionaries available, bundled directly into the app. Search in English, kana, or kanji and get results as you type, with no network and no waiting. Every entry shows its readings, numbered senses, parts of speech, usage fields, and common-word markers, so you can tell at a glance which meaning you actually need.


Kanji Dictionary

Kanji entries come from the KANJIDIC2 project: onyomi and kunyomi readings, meanings, stroke counts, radicals, and the words and example sentences each character appears in. Browse by curriculum, whether that's JLPT N5 through N1, Japanese school grades, or Kanji Kentei levels, and see how far through each list you've come.


Stroke Order and Writing Practice

Watch any character draw itself, stroke by stroke, using data from the KanjiVG project. Slow the animation to a quarter speed to catch the details, or hide the guide and write the character yourself on a practice canvas. Writing questions inside study sessions ask you to produce a character from memory, then play back the real stroke order so you can see exactly where you went wrong.


Quizzes and Flashcards

Study kana, kanji, radicals, and vocabulary through flashcards, multiple choice, typed reading input, and handwriting. Scheduling runs on FSRS, a modern spaced-repetition algorithm that learns your personal forgetting curve and brings each item back at the moment you are about to lose it. Take optional placement tests to skip past what you already know, or build your own study sets from anything you look up.


Pitch Accent and Audio

See the pitch pattern of a word drawn above its kana, using data from the Wadoku and UniDic projects. Tap to hear any word or character read aloud with the device's built-in Japanese voice.


Sync Across Your Devices

Your progress saves automatically, always. Sign in with Apple to sync your reviews, study sets, and favorites across every device you own, or skip it entirely and keep everything on your phone. manabu works completely offline either way, and you can delete your account and all synced data from Settings at any time.

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Dictionary data: JMdict and KANJIDIC2 are the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used in conformance with the Group's license. Stroke order data from KanjiVG, copyright Ulrich Apel. Pitch accent data from the Wadoku project and from UniDic by NINJAL. Full attributions and licenses are listed in Settings under Credits.

manabu is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Japan Foundation, Japan Educational Exchanges and Services, or the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation.

Privacy Policy: https://evansyu.com/projects/manabu/privacy
EULA: https://evansyu.com/projects/manabu/eula