nowfound

Alternatives

Products that do what Learning Chinese and Japanese with graphs and trees does

Just for fun, I built a language learning tool. It represents Chinese and Japanese as graphs of characters, with connections indicating given characters can form a word. It can also decompose characters to give clues on how they're pronounced, analyzes words to understand which ones are commonly used together, and more. It's fully interactive, supports offline use, generates flashcards, has sentences from humans and from AI, and plenty of other features. Check out the README for details. https://github.com/mreichhoff/HanziGraph

  1. 1IM

    The idea is actually quite simple. As a Japanese learner and a coder, I've always wanted there to be an open-source, 100% free for learning Japanese, similar to Monkeytype in the typing community. Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned. But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion…

    Sep 2025 · kanadojo.com

  2. 2LJ

    Hi HN, Just wanted to share a tool i've been working on to help with my own study routine. It’s a browser extension called Lingoku. The idea is simple: we spend hours browsing the web in English every day. This tool replaces some of the english words with Japanese vocabulary based on your japanese level (Similar to Toucan, but with a better user experience). It’s basically an attempt to make the "i+1" method actually passive, you understand the sentence because it's mostly english, but you pick up Japanese words naturally from the context. It uses an LLM in the backend to make sure the…

    Dec 2025 · lingoku.ai

  3. 3AA

    2018 · play.google.com

  4. 4
    Laoshi239

    Learn new words with flashcards to master Chinese faster

    2021

  5. 5IT

    Built this because tones are killing my spoken Mandarin and I can't reliably hear my own mistakes. It's a 9M Conformer-CTC model trained on ~300h (AISHELL + Primewords), quantized to INT8 (11 MB), runs 100% in-browser via ONNX Runtime Web. Grades per-syllable pronunciation + tones with Viterbi forced alignment. Try it here: https://simedw.com/projects/ear/

    Jan 2026 · simedw.com

  6. 6NS
  7. 7

    Turn anything into a language lesson, instantly

    2022

  8. 8AF

    I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News. Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention. There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com. It's only for Android so far. The free version includes…

    2012

  9. 9
    YiChi94

    Learn to speak fluent Chinese Mandarin

    2021

  10. 10

    Learn Japanese with clarity, context, and confidence

    2025

  11. 11
    Backwords105

    Learn a new language right from your wallpaper

    2018

  12. 12

    Learn Chinese one sentence at a time, right-click to analyze

    Jun 2026 · hanclip.com

  13. 13

    Learn Japanese hiragana and vocabulary with cute characters

    2023

  14. 14GA

    I've been fascinated by the Japanese language and culture for a while now, and I wanted to create a simple, no-fuss way for beginners to get started. So, I built *[Nihongo](https://nihongo.site/)*, a free and open-source web app designed to help you learn the fundamentals of Japanese in about a month. The name of the app, Nihongo (日本語), is the Japanese word for the "Japanese language." You can check it out here: *[https://nihongo.site/](https://nihongo.site/)* And for those who like to tinker, the code is available on GitHub:…

    2025 · nihongo.site

  15. 15LC

    2014 · getchicory.com

  16. 16LJ

    2021 · kumalearn.com

  17. 17IB

    Hi Everyone, I recently wanted to learn Japanese with duolingo but it kept giving me repetitive lessons. So I built an app that gives a variety of lessons from anime. You can try it out here:https://kanjieight.vercel.app/ Thanks everyone.

    Nov 2025 · kanjieight.vercel.app

  18. 18IB

    Hey HN! I’m Alex, and one of my favorite ways to learn languages is by reading novels. Currently I’m reading 三体 (3 body problem), but one problem I've always had is it takes ages to look up words, and add them to Anki flashcards so I can remember them. 三体 is especially brutal with so much sci-fi vocab. That’s why I built Readly. I snap a pic of the page I’m reading, it loads the text in-app and lets me lookup words, add to Anki-style flashcards, or ask AI questions about the text, all in a single tap. It's a huge time saver. My specific learning strategy, if anyone wants to replicate it: 1.…

    2025 · readly.ink

  19. 19LC

    I've recently launched a startup called Native Tongue. Our vision is to make language learning fun, fast and effective. We've released our first product "Mandarin Madness", which is to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary. Its available on android and iOS. Its for beginners to intermediate, including those with no experience. Please go here for more information and to download the app: http://mandarinmadness.com/ Our company website is http://nativetongue.com/ We would love to get some feedback on our mobile apps. We would also like to speak to people interested in language learning and…

    2012

  20. 20IB
  21. 21DB

    Hi HN I built this app while learning Japanese kanji after struggling to find a tool that showed how kanji are structurally connected through their graphical components. The core feature is a recursive DAG-style component graph (“Kanji Atlas”) that breaks kanji down layer by layer into radicals and graphemes, so you can visually explore how characters are constructed and related to one another. Demo at https://mykanji.app/components/kanji/鬱 I also built in a lot of my own opinions about how a learning tool should feel and work. Some features: 1. A kanji memory…

    May 2026 · mykanji.app

  22. 22

    Grow Chinese Vocabulary

    May 2026

  23. 23

    Chinese vocab, drilled into long-term memory. Free, offline.

    May 2026 · wordbrushchinese.com

  24. 24LC

    2017 · pingtype.github.io

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →