With the alphabet. Hiragana and katakana are 92 characters, and with picture mnemonics they take one to two weeks at ten minutes a day. In Llearny the alphabet is free, and the course continues from there: grammar, vocabulary, listening.

Harder than Spanish, easier than its reputation: the grammar is logical and the pronunciation is simple. The real hurdle is the writing system, and mnemonics take most of that away. Reading and basic conversation are a matter of months, not years.

Not by staring at a chart. Tie each character to a picture: あ looks like an apple and reads "a". Add audio and short daily drills, and hiragana takes about a week, katakana the next.

Yes. In Llearny the whole alphabet, the first 10 course lessons and then one new lesson a day are free, along with the dictionary. A subscription removes the daily limit and unlocks practice.

No. It works both for people starting from zero and for learners who want to reinforce what they know through practice. You can skip the alphabet.

Ten to fifteen minutes a day beats two hours once a week. The course is built for short daily sessions, and streaks with lives help you keep the rhythm.

Your streak is protected by "lives." If you have lives, the app will ask whether to spend them to save your streak — it's your choice. Decline or run out of lives, and the streak resets — but lesson progress and dictionary aren't affected.

Yes. We support .apkg export for Anki. The export button is on the Dictionary page.

For best results, speak out loud. If that's not an option — build the sentence in your head before revealing the correct answer.

Yes, more languages are already in the works.