Today is launch day at Sudo. Kanjica, our kanji reading app for Brazilian learners of Japanese, is available on the Google Play Store starting now. The iPhone version is coming soon to the App Store.
Why another kanji app?
Because almost none of them were made for Brazilians. The world’s most popular kanji apps are excellent, but they share two limitations for anyone studying in Brazil: they are all in English, which forces learners to study Japanese through a second foreign language, and most of them treat kanji as a memorization item, an isolated flashcard disconnected from any real text.
Kanjica starts from a different premise: you learn kanji by reading. Recognizing a character on a flashcard is one skill; recognizing it in the middle of a sentence, with context, reading and meaning clicking into place, is a completely different one, and it is the one that matters when you open a manga, a website or a JLPT exam.
How it works
The heart of Kanjica is a library of graded readings: 120 original texts spread across JLPT levels N5, N4 and N3, written so there is always something at your level, challenging in just the right measure. You read, tap the kanji you do not know, see the reading and the meaning instantly, in Portuguese, and keep going without leaving the flow.
Progression follows the JLPT levels because that is the yardstick Brazilian learners already use: beginners read short, direct N5 texts, and exam candidates advance through N4 and N3 readings with matching vocabulary and structures.
And everything is in Brazilian Portuguese. Explanations, translations and interface: no more cascading mental translation from Japanese to English to Portuguese.
Who it is for
Kanjica was built for the Brazilian student of Japanese anywhere between early N5 and N3 prep: self-taught learners, language school students, descendants reconnecting with their family’s language, and people studying to work, travel or do an exchange in Japan. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan and one of the largest populations of Japanese learners in the West; it is about time a serious tool existed for this audience.
Get it now
Kanjica is available on the Google Play Store as of today. The iOS version is in development and will reach the App Store soon; if you are on iPhone, follow the Sudo blog and social channels to know the moment it goes live.
Happy studying, and happy reading. 頑張って！
Kanjica is a product by Sudo, a digital product studio from Brazil, also the maker of Parly, Sudo Forms & CRM and Softdex.