Kana Lite

Kana Cards Lite

Learn how to read Japanese for free

Kana Cards Lite is a great tool that helps you learn to read Japanese Katakana and Hiragana characters.

Flip through the cards

Using Kana Cards to learn Japanese characters is simple. Each card has all the information you need to memorize and swiping your finger across the screen will show you the next card to study. You can also go back to review a card by swiping backwards. The full version has audio for all cards, but the Lite version has audio only for 5 Hiragana and 5 Katakana cards.

Quick Look-up

To look-up a specific character, you can scroll through the list of all the flash cards you are studying, in the “card table” view. You can also jump directly to a specific deck by using the card deck menu on the right side of the screen.

Select your content

You can customize your study material by selecting one or several decks of flash cards in the options view. This way, if, for example, you are comfortable with Hiragana but want to focus on Katakana, or if you are ready to move on to numbers, you can limit your flash cards, card table and quiz questions to those characters.

Start memorizing (5 cards only)

When “touch to reveal” is “on” in the options view, your flash cards will not initially show the English pronunciation or the translation of the characters you are studying. This allows you to mentally test your knowledge of that character, then check if you were correct by pressing anywhere on the screen and revealing the answer. The Lite version is limited to only 5 “touch to reveal” events per launch

Mix things up

By activating "shuffle" in the options view, you will study flash cards in a random order within their decks. Any time you want to reshuffle the decks, all you need to do is shake your iPhone or iPod Touch to get a new randomized card order. The shuffle option will help you learn the characters without relying on a specific, set order.

Keep your brain on its toes

To make sure you know these characters well, you will be tested on:

translating Japanese to English,
transcribing Japanese to Japanese (between Katakana and Hiragana for example),
translating English to Japanese, and

Tailor your quiz

Quizzes are based on your selections in the options view:

testing material limited to the decks you selected
only 5 questions are available in the Lite version
There are no audio quizzes in the Lite version

Follow your progress

You can view a history of your results by pressing the “score” button in the quiz view. The score view will list your quiz results, scores and time by date completed.