LingoDeer app review
First of all, it's only for the Asian languages of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Edit 3.17.18: Thank you @watercolourandwashitape for letting me know that the Chinese supported is Mandarin, Not Cantonese/Traditional. So keep that in mind, Chinese learners!
Normally I use Duolingo, but their support for Japanese is unsatisfactory at best. So I looked for a New app to learn Japanese, as I am self taught. I don't remember how, but I stumbled upon LingoDeer. I am SO glad I did. No other app even comes close!
Just a note though, I have only learned Japanese from it and have not tried the other languages.
By far the best feature is that it includes a mini grammar lesson before each group of lessons! This was something Duolingo lacked immensely. There are also options to review words and grammar you already know. Without further ado, let's get into how you play (because believe me, it feels more like playing a game then just learning)
First you pick you lesson category, the first of which is nationality
Once you click on it you'll want to click on lesson tips, which helps with grammar and overall understanding
After reading the learning tips, you're ready for the lessons. There are numerous question types to help you learn. They start with having you pick a Japanese picture that corresponds to the vocab, then you move to placing words in sentences before finally constructing sentences all by yourself!
When constructing sentences, you can either order the characters they give you or type them in yourself. After you finish you'll be able to review the lesson via pop quiz or redo the lesson in challenge mode. At the end of each category there is a story. (Note: as of 3.3.18 it's still in beta form). First you listen to and read the story, answering questions along the way. Then you can record yourself speaking the story and post it to the community where you can listen to others' recordings as well.
More features:
Themes and font options including night mode
Review mode to review all the words a/o grammar you've learned. Pro tip: you can specify which lessons you want to see words from
Character display options. You can choose from any combination of Japanese (kanji i.e. 私), hiragana (わたし), and romanji (Watashi). I personally use Japanese only for the lessons and Japanese/Hiragana for the stories.
Streak to keep you motivated to learn every day
Leaderboards
Super cute deer
There's only two things I can think of to improve the app
There's no autosave. You MUST go down to the back up progress button. I didn't realize this was necessary so when I rebooted my phone I lost my progress
No differentiation between polite and informal terms. So far they've only used the polite forms. Maybe they introduce it later, but I haven't encountered it yet.
Edit 3.17.18: Another slight hindrance is the absence of verbs (with the exception of です) until a later unit, so if this is your only resource I recommend learning a good list of verbs online.
Overall this is an amazing app and I recommend it to everyone, even if you aren't actively learning an Asian language!
If you want to follow me on LingoDeer my username is hannahsox-studies and my Avatar is the same as here. Happy learning!
Love from Hannah 💕
