KantanMemory

KantanMemory can help you learn the Japanese language or any language you want with ease. "Kantan" is the romaji of 簡単 (かんたん) in Japanese, meaning "easy".

Outline

Platforms:

• Any platform supporting JVM
• Web (planned)

License: MIT

Features

• Modes:
  • Recall Mode - try to recall the word meaning
    • Display words in kana (仮名)
    • Gradually give hints such as kanji (漢字)
  • Match Mode - match word with correct meaning (planned)
  • Spell Mode (planned)
• Use the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve to generate daily learning lists
• Customizable word lists
• Pronounce the word (planned)
  • Japanese text-to-speech
• Sync learning data to the cloud (planned)

Screenshots

Learning Japanese: Learning German:

Development plan

Resources

• Default word lists for the Japanese language
  • Stored as CSV files

Dependencies

• YAML parser
  • SnakeYAML
• CSV parser
• JUnit

Components

Core components

• Daily learning list generator
  • Wordlist generated consists of two parts:
    • New words
      • User can specify the number of words to learn everyday
      • Default word lists provided in the app
      • User can choose which word list to add new words from
    • Old words to revise
      • Selected from previous learning data, according to forgetting curve algorithm
• Process manager
  • Manage every individual word
    • Based on how familiar the user is with an individual word, decides:
      • Should the user memorize the word again later
      • The new familiarity of that word
  • Manage the list of unrecognized words
    • Add the user's unrecognized words back to today's learning list

Data-related components

• Data reader
  • Read default word list CSV files from the package
  • Read the user learning data of old words
• Data writer
  • Save config to the config file
  • Store learning data in YAML format

UI components

• GUI

Data

User learning data

Format: YAML

Includes:

• List of words that the user has learned
  • Each word in the list records the following data:
    • ID of the word
    • The date of last time the user has encountered that word
    • The number of times the user has encountered that word
    • User's familiarity level to the word

Custom learning resources

• Customizable wordlist
  • User can add their own word lists

Configuration

Format: YAML

Includes:

• Progresses of each word list
• Current word list chosen

Terminologies

• Word list: a list consist of words, each with its writing form, kana pronunciation form and stress number.
  • Daily learning list: the list of words that the user need to memorize in a single day.
  • Default wordlist: the wordlist packed with the software, the new words in the daily wordlist will be from this list if not otherwise configured.
    • Default wordlist: word lists packed with the software.
    • Custom wordlist: word lists created by the user themself.
• (Memorizing) process: in a daily word memorizing process, user need to go over each word in the daily learning list.
• Familiar/known/recognized: user believes they know this word. If confirmed, the word will no longer appear later in the daily learning list.