Welcome to
Flashlingo!

Why learn Japanese with Flashlingo?

Japanese has around 125 million speakers, spoken almost entirely within Japan, and its vocabulary underpins a huge amount of globally exported culture — from anime and manga to video games and cuisine — which is part of why so many learners are drawn to it.

How the levels work

Every language deck on Flashlingo comes in three levels, so you can start where you actually are instead of where a textbook assumes you are.

• Beginner — the 500 highest-frequency words: greetings, numbers, everyday objects and simple phrases.
• Intermediate — broader everyday vocabulary spread across 24 topic categories, from food and travel to family and work.
• Expert — less common but genuinely useful words that push you past textbook basics toward natural, fluent vocabulary.

Tips for learning Japanese vocabulary faster

• Japanese uses three writing systems together — hiragana, katakana and kanji. This deck pairs words with romaji (Roman letters) so you can learn pronunciation immediately, without waiting to master reading first.
• Word order differs from English (the verb comes at the end of the sentence), but for vocabulary building that mostly doesn't matter — focus on meaning first.
• Verbs don't conjugate by person the way they do in English or Spanish — “I, you, he” all use the same verb form, which removes a whole category of memorization other languages require.
• Pay attention to long versus short vowel sounds — they can change a word's meaning entirely, even though they look like a small difference in romaji.
• Once vocabulary feels solid, learning hiragana (the phonetic script) is a natural next step outside this deck — it will make everything you've already learned easier to read.

A few words to start with

Konnichiwa (hello), Arigatou (thank you), Onegaishimasu (please), Hai / Iie (yes / no), and Sayounara (goodbye) are a good everyday starting set.

FAQ

No — words are shown in romaji so you can build spoken vocabulary first, then add kanji reading as a separate step whenever you're ready for it.

Word order and particles take some adjustment, but verb conjugation is simpler and far more regular than in most European languages, which balances things out.

Spoken vocabulary is useful immediately, while reading fluency in three scripts takes much longer to build — starting with words you can actually use keeps motivation high.