iPhone tool Japanese Flash opens up ‘social learning’

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Japanese Flash, the vocabulary study app for iPhone and iPad, on Friday introduced a social aspect to studying Japanese in its new version. Users can now “crowdsource” their own knowledge to help others in the community.

The release is the first step by developers Long Weekend LLC to transform language learning by empowering students to develop study materials socially, directly on their mobile device.

“Experienced Japanese learners can now tell us when an example sentence has a problem, or add a definition if a dictionary entry doesn’t include all usages. We’re now laying the groundwork to push the updated information back out to everyone, so everyone benefits – like a Wikipedia for learning Japanese,” explained Ross Sharrott, one of Long Weekend’s founders.

“At some point, every learner has said a new vocabulary word to a Japanese person, and then be told, ‘we never use that word.’ Dictionaries don’t have this sort of detail, and so we intend to build it socially,” Sharrott added.

Japanese Flash was released in April 2010 to favorable reviews in the Apple App Store, and has been featured on many Japan-focused blogs and websites. It helps learners remember Japanese vocabulary, contains a 149,000+ word dictionary, and has access to over 50,000 example sentences.

The new version is available on the Apple App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/japanese-flash/id367216357?mt=8