Keolah Learns Japanese is an Open Source Japanese learning software for the Windows operating system that is most useful for students who already know the basics of the language. New students who do not know any characters won’t be able to use the program efficiently as it requires at least basic knowledge of the three alphabets.

Users who already know at least one of the alphabets can use the program for various tasks. This includes practicing the characters of each alphabet, translating words from Japanese into English and vice versa, and conjugating words.

Depending on the selection, lessons are either displayed as multiple choice tests or direct input tests.

The options can be used to change the screen resolution of the window and, more importantly, the difficulty. The default difficulty is set to first grade which an be changed all the way up to high school and advanced.

Japanese students can use Keolah Learns Japanese to practice Japanese vocabulary and their Japanese skills. Probably the biggest drawback right now is that the learning software does not start at the very beginning. It would be great if if would offer options to learn the alphabets and vocabulary before running the tests.

For now, this is not the case and that’s why users need a solid understanding of Japanese to make use of the program. And since it is possible to translate the other way round, it may be useful for Japanese students who want to learn English.

Students of Japanese can download the latest version of the Open Source software from the Sourceforge web page.

Another excellent program for Japanese students is Kanji Sketch Pad which can be used to learn how Japanese symbols are drawn correctly.

A standard Latin alphabet for instance has 26 characters, and depending on the language you want to learn a few special characters like ä,ö,ü and ß if you learn German. Compare that to the three Japanese scripts Hiragana and Katakana (referred to as Kana) and Kanji. A student of the Japanese needs to learn the 96 characters of Hiragana and Katakana (48 each) plus between 800 and several thousands of Kanji characters depending on teacher and desired language skill.

Students usually start with the Hiragana and Katakana characters before they move on to learn Kanji. With Kanji, it is mostly a matter of memorizing the characters, their meaning and how they are drawn.

The software Kanji Sketch Pad aids Japanese students in their Kanji learning efforts. It is offered as a free version that contains 80 Grade One Kanji and a commercial version with no limitations for $5 (or $10 are for the Cerebware Vocabulary Trainer which comes with the full Kanju Sketch Pad software and offers more than just learning Japanese.)

The program consists of several modes to teach Kanji to the Japanese student. It displays characters and explanations, shows how those characters are drawn, offers free hand drawing and drawing aids to teach how those Kanji are drawn perfectly on screen, tests that test what has already been learned and statistics for progress information.

It usually begins with information about a character and how that character is drawn. The program uses animations to show where where each stroke starts. A left-click on the interface activates the sketch pad to draw the character that was displayed before. It is possible to add visual aids in that mode that show where each stroke begins.

Mnemonics are used to teach character meanings or pronunciations, which can aid the learning if you can get used to the visual and verbal aid. A multiple-choice test to identify a specific character is displayed every now and then. If you get it right you can continue with the lesson, if you get it wrong that character will be the next in your lesson.

Kanji Sketch Pad offers several features that make it an interesting program for Japanese students. The biggest setbacks are the missing online help and that it is only available in English and not in other languages (not really a drawback for English natives). A detailed seven part program tutorial is available on the developer website. Users who download the application should read the complete tutorial before they start their first lesson.

The extra $10 for the full program are well invested considering that you would not buy the program if it would not aid you in your learning efforts. I could not find a download link of the software on the developer’s website, the download portal Softpedia offers downloads of the latest program version.

The website explains the difference between Japanese and western smileys:

“Apparently, Japanese Smileys(Emoticons) are read vertically while eastern Smileys(Emoticons) are read horizontally. And Japanese Smileys have more variation than eastern ones. I think the reason is that while American(alphabet) letters in computer are 1 byte, Japanese letters in computer are 2 bytes, so Japanese letters can have more characters.”

Most look simply crazy to me, they have smileys with 15 and more letters. The translation is sometimes funny as well. (Making a promise by liking little fingers with each other < — What the hell does that mean ?)

If you’ve got some time to spare take a look and enjoy the site. Maybe you find one or two that are useful for you.