Gogaku (語学 – ごがく), meaning the study of foreign languages or linguistics, is the name I chose because its purpose is to study Japanese as a foreigner.
As for myself, I have always had these three interests: reading, technology, and Japanese. English grammar came naturally to me, so I became interested in Japanese grammar, finding it to be engaging and a challenge. What I struggled with most was vocabulary memorization, and adding kanji to that, there came a point where I hit a wall in my progression. But I liked a challenge.
I’d been studying the Japanese language passively since high school, but a few years ago, I decided that I would take my studies seriously. After some months of building a structure and routine, I noticed that I used a textbook as my curriculum, a dictionary app that I discovered had a flashcards function built-in – although it was not in a practical location and I nearly missed it – a notebook to practice writing with, and a popular website with all sorts of useful articles.
Four different resources, I thought. Inefficient and impractical. I could make it work like everybody else, but then it occurred to me that I could make it a project. Create a place where all of my Japanese resources and tools are together.
There was one other thing that bothered me about language learning, too. Whenever I tried to practice reading, either I’d get stuck on too many words I hadn’t been exposed to yet, or I hadn’t learned the grammar to make the words make sense together. Wouldn’t that be really useful, I thought, if there was a resource to practice reading comprehension, constrained to my level of vocabulary and grammar.
I realized that if I could see the value in this, I couldn’t be the only one. This was for everyone. Soon, there was someone else whose vision aligned with mine. We created a company.
So, to put it all together, we devised a plan to create an app that would contain all resources into one place and constrain reading practice to match one's level of comprehension. Thus, the conception of Gogaku.
Maybe you want to be able to read the subtitles of anime in its original language, or read manga or Japanese literature. Maybe you want to be more connected to the culture, or travel to Japan and be able to communicate effectively while there. Maybe you are like me, even, and simply appreciate the language for its own sake. There are perhaps more reasons to learn the Japanese language today than with any other language. Gogaku was built for every one of those reasons.