When reading examples of each lesson, the audio bar is on top, It would be better if each example had it’s own player.
And for vocabulary examples, as for grammar it should have a translation and an audio. I understand that having an audio for each example it would take too much resources, but not for the translation
Penguins?
A feature I’d like to see implemented is the ability to create custom groups of grammar you would like to use the cram feature for.
I took this idea from 絵でわかる日本語 where they have a page called 「〇〇シリーズ」リスト. In there they have grouped similar grammar points in order to better study them and really understand the differences between them. Some can mean completely different things while others are just nuances.
For instance they have groups for grammar points that use もの, わけ, 限る to name a few. While I understand that some of these could comprise 20 or more grammar points it could provide a stimulating exercise every now and then.
Obviously this feature would be more suited to users who have mostly or completely gone through the grammar points available on Bunpro than those who just started out.
What I wouldn’t give for vocab only review to show the hiragana for SRS 0-3 with the kanji under it and then once you reach SRS 4 it shows Kanji only with the furigana on hover. This way you can first learn how to pronounce the kanji/vocab first instead of having to hover over it each time it comes by. I’ve spent more time just forgetting the kanji 3 words later because I’m trying to just figure out how to pronounce it.
I hope this is the right place for this. I think a lot of the sentences for にくい might have been intended for づらい? The grammar point says:
The nuance of にくい is that (A) is a task that is difficult to do, because of the required skill level, or similar factors. This is different from づらい, which focuses more on a task that is difficult due to being unbearable/hard to endure for some reason.
But then all of the following are example sentences that don’t seem to fit:
あの人とは話しにくいです。
甘くないケーキは食べにくい。
性格が元彼女に似ているから、話しにくい。
怖いことはしにくいです。
この会社は働きにくいけど、働かなくてはいけない。
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the grammar point, but it seems like all of those should be づらい.
Not sure if it’s been mentioned before, but I think adding a grace period to the concurrent days studied would be really beneficial.
I lost a lot of motivation seeing my days studied drop back to 0 for the 2nd time and almost quit entirely because of it. Unfortunately, life happened and I couldn’t make the time to study. My studies have suffered because of it too since I use Bunpro as the main source of grammar. The only one keeping me active is Kanji Garden cause they have up to 3 days you can miss without losing your day streak. Been struggling to get back into the rhythm knowing I have to start back from 0 again.
Don’t know what system is ideal, but the way Kanji Garden implements their system is that you gain a day for every couple of consecutive days studied. Not sure how many days of studying it takes to get one grace day to miss studying.
I know it’s been a hot minute since this post, but a dialect option would be really helpful for me. I’ve been practicing 名古屋弁 to talk to a friend in Aichi. Sometimes he sends me a “wwwwwww” and I get concerned, haha 
Keeping you in my thoughts 
Arrow key up to toggle furigana on reviews would be huge.
Now that I’ve really dived into the site I think my #1 request is for an option to be formal/casual/both types of sentences. The random jumping back and forth between them in reviews is so beyond frustrating.
I constantly get things wrong because my mind has gone okay lets put this formal, whoops no it wants casual now even though a moment ago we had 3 sentences in a row in formal or vice versa. Not to mention most of what I’ve reviewed off-line and taught by my Japanese teachers has all been formal and really that’s what I want to remember/learn again/review for now when it comes down to it.
Casual in a lot of languages can come after you mastered the world of formal.
I’ve always considered learning casual as contributing to formal, because so many formal sentence structures still utilise informal elements. Granted, I’m not learning in a classroom, so we’re gonna have different viewpoints. But I personally think that casual and formal go hand-in-hand a lot of times, and it’s useful to understand various formalities even if you’re focusing more on one in particular.
I do think the option to simply choose would be useful for your kind of situation though!
I think that it is fine/better to have them mixed as using teineigo is not that large of a speedbump. It is not a big jump from one to the other (although I do admit it feels big when starting out). As severian said, “casual” forms make up the base of sentences even when using teineigo. Sticking です at the end of a sentence is not too difficult. I guess using ます is a bigger hurdle for beginners but it helps train you to easily use the conjunctive form (連用形) of verbs, which is something that is used constantly with other aux verbs besides ます. I am not sure this is explained anywhere in the N5 materials, actually.
Regardless, there is a feature to go back and change your answer if you want to use that. I think the prompts do let you know if teineigo is being looked for when it is wanted.
The problem stems from things like った, んだ, だった, けど instead of the more formal, especially when you combine it with other stuff. My mind is creating a formal response automatically but then having to jump between causes frustration. Its also causing me to second guess my answers on review of even non-casual stuff because I’m like wait, this has a だ in it so is this a type of casual response…I’m not sure, etc etc what will bunpro want. Been here for almost 2 weeks of full on studying and my N5 anything that doesn’t involve heavy casual jump back and forth is SRS 5-6 already because its a nice review of everything I know while things like my う verbs is at SRS 0. Its frustrating.
Talking with my teacher about it just yesterday and the difficulties. Do agree that everything we go over is 95% formal thus my huge desire to keep focusing purely on formal for the time being.
Overall, yes I can just say screw it and give myself the answer gaining SRS but then the formal is being pulled along with it in said SRS. However I want to make sure what comes across is 100% because I do the same with vocab. I know what that kanji means but unless I 100% pronounce it right I fail it on purpose so that I make sure I learn it fully and properly instead of just pushing it off until later that maybe the next time in a few days I’ll pronounce it right.
Hhhmmmm I didn’t use Bunpro until after I was already past N5 (in fact, even now I only use it to add/review old or familiar grammar points) but I do kinda see your point. I think perhaps this is a case of needing clearer prompts. I actually have a general issue with lots of the Bunpro prompts as they rely too heavily on non-literal/usage based translations for my tastes, although the orange coloured more detailed prompts mostly help with that but not always.
I will say that I have personally always wanted a grammar resource that revisits these more basic topics as it progresses, partly to help with issues like the ones you are having. For example, having a more detailed explanation of verb forms as an N4 lesson etc - the thing is that it is hard to integrate that into Bunrpo’s system and, equally, the vast majority of this stuff is picked up intuitively over time or in bits and pieces via reading many different explanations of different points. So, lacking that, I think perhaps the lessons on です and 一段 and 五段 verbs could have more detail or add more detail in those little fun-fact boxes or whatever. E.g., です・ます being 丁寧語 and at the end of sentences, explaining that the “ます form” is actually a common inflection of verbs (I know the term 連用形 is used in later explanations but I am not sure where it is introduced or why it isn’t mentioned here), that ます is an aux verb, etc. I am aware this is a lot of information for beginners (hence my ideal grammar guide having this stuff introduced in steps) but I think it would be helpful to have it on one place or, at least, the expected place. Perhaps even ます can be introduced as its own grammar point to stop things getting cluttered.
In fact, looking now, 連用形 is introduced as an N3 grammar point (in the context of it being used as a conjunctive in sentences). This point covers both the verb and adjective conjunctive form (perhaps this should be two different points to begin with). I guess the use of the verb’s conjunctive form as a conjunctive in sentences is not something that comes up until the N3 exam but the verb’s conjunctive form to connect to aux words is something that comes up as soon as you start learning Japanese (due to ます etc) so perhaps some N5 level appropriate explanation or lesson of this usage could be implemented?
(I actually have a similar complaint/idea in regards to the way case marking particles are introduced without mentioning that they are case marking particles. This is another one of those things where they are introduced really early out of necessity so I understand why flooding beginners with technical language would be not ideal but I still think a “fun-fact” mention would be good. Or, ideally, a whole lesson on case marking particles and what they are/how they differ to other particles - yet another thing that is probably hard to implement with the Bunpro cloze deletion system.)
Sorry, frozenice, this reply turned into a general feedback thing halfway through hahaha
haha no worries! That makes sense and I see where you’re coming from as well. Think you nailed it there overall.
To add, when studying in some of these books a lot of the review follows a very similar pattern to help drive in the main focus of what you’re trying to learn in that chapter. I am a bit surprised actually there are not more “plain sentences” for the early N5 SRS and then ramp up as you clear those. Site probably needs a few upgrades to do that or the grammar split up for the N5 pieces.
All these little “gotchas” I’ll call it, while learning the grammar along with new words/kanji you’ve never seen before in a sentence just seems like a bit much for anyone. Especially for lets say someone starting to learn one of the most complex languages in the world. I don’t think I could recommend this site for people brand new to Japanese or those who don’t have an initial solid base of understanding.
I would absolutely love a deck creation option! even if it’s limited to something like 2 or 3 decks per accounts outside of the general review deck.
I’ve used Bunpro for over a year now and I have over 500 grammar points in my review deck. Selecting all the grammar from a specific textbook separately through the cram feature is a huuuge time eater, no to mention the amount of times I’ve accidentally refreshed the page after selecting 50 or so grammar points, only to have to reselect all of them again ;-;
This is a minor gripe, but would it be possible to mark previously learned synonyms on the bunpro.jp/learn page in the same way as bunpro.jp/grammar_points/ pages?
i.e
When looking at a grammar page via /learn page
Thanks.
How about some kind of visualization/tabular overview of the grammar in Bunpro?
E.g. for each grammar entry the synonyms sections could show this for the displayed grammar point.
The visualization could enable you to compare the formal register and on what kind of words the grammar can be applied to (adjectives, verbs,…) at a glance.
This would allow deepening the understanding of grammar points, especially what is the right context to use them.
Additionally there could be an overview page that groups somewhat connected grammar roughly and links to pages containing the same kind of information as above.
This would be another Unique Selling Point for Bunpro, at least I don’t know any other tool doing hat.
Maybe this could even be based on existing data that is already in your database.
Could there be an option for the to copy Both english and japanese to clipboard? I often like to pop the example sentences into my own SRS. The Japanese works fine, but when I copy both at the same time I get weird formatting errors.
(Same goes for the grammar definitions under “Details” in the “Information” panel)
