Skritter is now officially available for Android, just download it from the Play Store (Chinese here, Japanese here). Four months have passed since we released the beta version of the app and it has been …
Acronyms and Abbreviations in Japanese
You may have noticed some acronyms while studying Japanese that use English letters, like “OL” or “NG”. They are used somewhat commonly, and if you hear or see one you might not know what it …
Shapeshifting characters: Alternate forms of radicals
Learning some common character components is essential for effective character learning. This is why Skritter provides character breakdowns where you can see what each part means and how it’s pronounced. Both these are useful for …
How to tackle a large review queue
Learning a language takes time. Even if you can get far with a fairly small number of words if they are carefully chosen, you need to learn thousands and thousands of words to be able …
Kaomoji and Emoji （顔文字・絵文字）
When did the word “emoji” start to be used in place of “smiley faces” in English? I was amazed to hear a non Japanese speaking friend use the word emoji when talking about the graphics …
Want to learn more characters? Start speaking NOW!
italki.com, in partnership with Skritter, would like to help you learn a language by getting more speaking practice. Believe it or not, we think that it will help you learn more characters. Learning a language …
Using mnemonics to learn Chinese and Japanese, part 2
Mnemonics are a powerful way of learning things in general and Chinese and Japanese characters in particular. In the article published here on the Skritter blog last week, we looked at the basics of how …
Using mnemonics to learn Chinese and Japanese, part 1
Mnemonic is a fancy word from ancient Greek used to refer to a learning technique that helps us remember things. It’s common to believe that a good memory is something we’re either born with or …
A brief history of the Japanese writing system
Unless you’re studying Japanese (I assume most of you are!), you may not realize that Japan uses three unique writing systems, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. If you count English which is a mandatory class in …
Improve your character writing by enabling raw squigs
One of the main goals with Skritter is to help you learn to write characters. We believe that using Skritter’s unique combination of real handwriting, corrective feedback and spaced repetition is far superior to using …