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Kana Learna
Author: Deathbringer Submitted: 20th December, 2009 Favourites:1
Genre: Miscellaneous Downloads: 248
Rated:


KANA LEARNA

This is a game i initially created just for myself, but i decided to polish it a bit and release it to the general public. I was inspired to create it when i downloaded an otherwise excellent ebook called "Leran Japanese Fast", which came with two games for learning Hiragana and Katakana with. However these games were so awful i thought i could do better myself!

The games in question presented you with the Romaji (that's Japanese written in the A-Z letters) and then gave you a choice of 3 Kana to click on. If you got it right you got a squeak sound effect, if you got it wrong you got a burp sound effect (no, really). There was no visual way of telling if you were right or not, so the games had the effect of annoying everybody around you.

By comparison Kana Learna is completley silent, using visual means to tell you if you are right or wrong. It also displays the correct answer after you choose, so if you don't know and guess correctly you aren't left wondering what it was you chose.

Hiragana and Katakana are included in the same game, which may not have been the best idea, but oh well... They are colour-coded. This can sometimes make the answer pretty obvious, though - with only one pink or green answer to choose.

CONTROLS

ENTER - Start game / return to game from right/wrong screen
UP - Return to game from right/wrong screen
LEFT - Choose first answer
DOWN - Choose second answer
RIGHT - Choose third answer

KNOWN BUG

A few kana describe the same sound, and sometimes the random numbers used to "randomly choose" wrong answers may choose the same sound as the right answer, giving you "two right answers", one of which is actually wrong. But of course the goal of the game is to know what the symbols are, not keep track of your "score".

OTHER NOTES

When you think you are getting the hang of certain symbols it pays to also practice writing them. See if you can still write them later on or the next day!

Different books may have different romanisations of the kana, so answers may vary slightly. I used two sheets of kana with romaji that i found on google images. Certian books may also omit the "combined" kana, as thier meaning is "obvious" if you know the two symbols they are made up of. This game, though, teaches them alongside the basic ones.

Kana, like some letters in the roman alphabet such as Z (sometimes resembling a big 3 in some people's writing) may be written slightly differently in different fonts. You may want to study the Japanese sections of multi-lingual packaging/instruction manuals in order to get a feel for these differences.

Hiragana (green) are 'curly' symbols used alongside Kanji (adoped Chinese letters of which there are around 2000 in common use in Japan - no i'm not going to make a game with all of them in!) to write Japanese words. Katakana (pink) are "angular" symbols used to write foreign loan words / provide a pronunciation guide to foreign words in Japanese. Words such as pasokon (personal computer) and surippa (slippers) will be written in Katakana. Katakana is also used for japanese particles, which are used between some words to describe thier relationship with other words.

Review This Download



 


http://www.felney.co.uk/games/felneysoft/klik/released/kana/kanalearna.zip (456.69 kb )



Posted by Callebo 20th December, 2009

I had no idea what the symbols meant, but I guess this is good for someone that's trying to actually learn!
 
Posted by XeEmO 21st December, 2009

I was actually planning on doing this for both Hiragana and Katakana. Cool stuff.
 
Posted by nim 23rd December, 2009
Rated :

Nice simple game. I think it'd be good for anyone learning those alphabets. To improve, you could add options to separate Hiragana and Katakana and add some stats to keep track of the user's progress. 4 stars for being a good idea, well made, but with room to improve. Nice work
 
Posted by Deathbringer 23rd December, 2009

I was planning on making more "intermediate level" games where both Kana are seperate but you have to actually type in what they are rather than just multiple-choicing. Maybe i'll do it over Christmas but i also have comics to draw, and my NGC entry to start
 
Posted by nim 28th January, 2010
Rated :

There's another game that sounds very similar to your idea. Check out "Flashcards" - http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7551
 
Posted by Deathbringer 5th February, 2010

Hmm, i didn't know about that.

Maybe an "educational" category could be added in the Downloads section? *hint hint*. Even if it would have very few games in to start with it might encourage people to make more.
 

 



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