Tova Translate
Wake. Trace. Speak.
Learn a language one character a day — trace every stroke, say it out loud, and get scored on your device. A family of daily-drill apps from the makers of Tova Translate.
Two courses are live, each tuned to its own writing system and level framework — same trace-and-speak loop, different curriculum.
One hanzi a day from HSK 1 — 150 foundational characters with Hanyu Pinyin and tone, authentic stroke-order tracing, and on-device pronunciation scoring. HSK 2–6 queued as a Pro content drop.
Start with Hiragana and Katakana, then move into JLPT N5 kanji — each kana and kanji traced stroke by stroke, with romaji readings and on-device pronunciation scoring. Higher JLPT levels queued as a Pro content drop.
Hangul jamo and TOPIK vocabulary with romaja readings — the same trace-and-speak engine, arriving after Japanese.
A daily drill, not a lecture. Three short touch points keep the loop tight enough to maintain a streak but light enough that you'll actually do it.
A daily reminder brings you the day's character. Trace every stroke in the right direction, in the right order — that's it. ~90 seconds.
A short AI conversation using the character in context. On-device Whisper transcribes you — pronunciation scored, not just passed.
A 30-second clip of a native speaker using the character — a movie line, a song lyric, a street sign. Passive, no quiz.
Real screens from the app. Stroke validation uses Make Me a Hanzi median paths. Pronunciation scoring runs on-device via Whisper Tiny — no audio leaves your phone.
The phrases you bookmark in Tova Translate are the ones you actually want to remember. The matching Tova Learn app reads them automatically.
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Free download. The daily drill is free forever. Unlock the full curriculum — HSK levels in Chinese, JLPT levels in Japanese — plus unlimited daily drills and custom phrase packs with Pro.
Honest answers about what ships at v0.1 and what's still coming.
It's a daily reminder, not an alarm. Pick a time in Settings and your Tova Learn app sends a local notification; tap it to open that day's character. Apple doesn't let apps replace the built-in alarm clock, so this is a gentle scheduled nudge — not a loud alarm sound.
OpenAI Whisper Tiny runs on your device — Apple Neural Engine. Your microphone audio never leaves your phone. The transcript is matched against the target phrase character-by-character to produce a score.
Tova Learn Chinese opens with HSK 1 — 150 foundational characters, about 150 days of daily content. Tova Learn Japanese opens with Hiragana and Katakana before moving into JLPT N5 kanji. Each level is enough to validate the loop before expanding; HSK 2-6 and higher JLPT levels are queued as Pro content drops, and custom phrase packs from your Tova Translate Favourites also fill the queue.
Tova Learn Japanese is live on the App Store now (Hiragana, Katakana & JLPT kanji), alongside Tova Learn Chinese. Tova Learn Korean (Hangul, TOPIK) is planned. Each is a separate app under the Tova Learn family, sharing the same trace-and-speak engine and on-device Whisper pronunciation scoring.
Same team, same brand family. Your saved Favourites in Tova Translate become a study queue in the matching Tova Learn app automatically when both are installed. The "Learn this" button on a Chinese, Japanese or Korean result card deep-links straight into a drill.