You can read the menu. Can you order?
You've put real hours into Japanese. Hiragana and katakana come without thinking, you recognise a good stack of kanji, and 定食 and 唐揚げ register instantly on a menu. Then someone behind the counter asks you a real question at real speed and nothing comes out. You know the words. You just haven't had to produce them live, with another person waiting.
The gap between the page and your mouth
Most self-study time goes into things you can do alone: textbooks, kanji apps, flashcards, grammar sites. All of that builds reading and recognition. Almost none of it puts you in a back-and-forth, because that used to mean finding a native speaker who was free, willing to slow down, and patient enough to do it again next week. So reading quietly pulls ahead of speaking, sometimes by years.
Three scripts in one sentence
Part of why reading feels so far along is that there's a lot to decode. Japanese uses hiragana, katakana and kanji together, and one ordinary sentence can mix all three: a verb ending in hiragana, a loanword in katakana, a noun in kanji. Reading that mixture is a real skill, but it doesn't transfer to speaking on its own. Decoding a sentence at your own pace and saying one on the spot use different muscles.
Practise by talking
In Sayelle you speak or type to a tutor that answers in Japanese. In Japanese the verb comes last, so you often can't tell where a sentence is going until it ends. The only cure for that is hearing lots of real sentences and answering them. Scenarios put you in a situation with no script, and lessons teach grammar through conversation. Study turns your past chats into flashcards and listening practice.
What you'll learn
There are more than 200 lessons, starting from zero, with more on the way. The units cover:
- The sounds of Japanese, then hiragana and katakana
- Greetings, self-introductions and first conversations
- Numbers, time and dates, politeness and register
- Family, existence and location, masu-form verbs
- Food, shopping, money, transport and directions
- Reading kanji, adjectives and the te-form
- Requests, permission, the past tense and counters
- Giving and receiving, wanting and hoping, casual speech
Practise on the Shinkansen
The tutor, speech recognition and voice models download once over Wi-Fi (about 4 GB), then run on your phone. A full spoken conversation works with no signal, and your raw microphone audio never leaves the device. You'll need iOS 18 or later, or Android 8.0 or later. Read more about how the offline AI works and what phone you need.
Common questions
Do I need to know hiragana first?
No. The course starts with the sounds of Japanese, then teaches hiragana and katakana, and begins reading kanji after that.
Does it use rōmaji?
Lessons teach kana directly. If you want a reading line under Japanese text, you can choose kana or rōmaji in settings.
Does it teach politeness levels?
Yes. There's a unit on politeness and register early on, and later units cover casual speech and the plain form so you hear the difference.
Does it work offline?
Yes. After a one-time download of about 4 GB, the tutor, speech recognition and voice all run on your phone. Signing in, purchases, syncing and new content downloads still need a connection.
Is it free?
Free to start. Conversations with your tutor are free and unlimited. Lessons and scenarios use practice energy that recharges over time, and Sayelle Plus is an optional subscription that removes that limit and unlocks more content.
Start with your first sounds
Sayelle is free to start. See the other eight languages it teaches, or download it now.
