I've seen some Japanese typography found on tv/music title cards these past few years that are made of mostly (if not completely) straight lines and at extreme angles (diagonal lines are much more vertical. It's often katakana as well.
The strokes are either made of thin and thick blocks, fountain pen-like strokes, or very thin pencil-like strokes. The strokes are hyper extended stylistically with "serif-less" "lift-off". The look is comparable to the same style in Korean/Hangul.
I've seen it tons of times, but for the life of me, I cannot find a decent example. This is the closest I can find (the "オ" and "メ" are pretty spot on, but for example the "ダ" and "イ" are still a bit round), but there are definitely better examples.
Does anyone know if this style is called by any specific name? I would like to study the style more but I have no idea what to search for.
Also, if anyone can drop some links to similar-looking fonts, that would be great too.
Thanks!

インㇰ゙リ゚ㇱ・カーディカノ English Katakana
-∅ -æ -ɪ -ɤ -ɛ -ʌ ア イ ウ 𛀀 オ ∅- ㇰ カ キ ク ケ コ k- ㇰ゙ ガ ギ グ ゲ ゴ ɡ- ㇲ サ セィ ス セ ソ s- ㇲ゙ ザ ゼィ ズ ゼ ゾ z- ㇱ シャ シ シュ シェ ショ ʃ- ㇱ゙ ジャ ジ ジュ ジェ ジョ ʒ- ㇳ タ ティ トゥ テ ト t- ㇳ゙ ダ ディ ドゥ デ ド d- チ チャ チ チュ チェ チョ ʧ- ヂ ヂャ ヂ ヂュ ヂェ ヂョ ʤ- ッ ツァ ツィ ツ ツ𛀀 ツォ θ- ッ゙ ヅァ ヅィ ヅ ヅ𛀀 ヅォ ð- ㇴ ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ n- ハ ヒ ホゥ ヘ ホ h- ㇹ゙ バ ビ ボゥ ベ ボ b- ㇷ゚ パ ピ プ ペ ポ p- ㇷ フヮ フ𛅤 フ フ𛅥 フ𛅦 f- ㇷ゙ ブヮ ブ𛅤 ブ ブ𛅥 ブ𛅦 v- ㇺ マ ミ ム メ モ m- イ ヤ 𛄠 ユ エ ヨ j- ㇽ ラ リ ル レ ロ ɻ- ㇽ゚ ラ゚ リ゚ ル゚ レ゚ ロ゚ ɫ- ウ ワ ヰ 𛄢 ヱ ヲ w- ン ŋ- ヮ 𛅤 𛄢 𛅥 𛅦 -w-
other monophthongs アー ɑ イー i ウㇽ ɚ オㇽ゚ ʟ̩
diphthongs アウ æw アㇽ ɑɻ アㇽ゚ æʟ アーㇽ゚ ɑʟ イウ iw イㇽ iɻ イㇽ゚ ɪʟ イーㇽ゚ iʟ ウウ ɯw ウㇽ゚ ɤʟ 𛀀イ ej 𛀀ㇽ eɻ 𛀀ㇽ゚ ɛʟ 𛀀ーㇽ゚ eʟ オウ ʌw オㇽ oɻ
vowels pronounced differently in certain contexts ア ɑ (word-finally and before /n/, /m/, /ŋ/) イ i (word-finally and before /ɪ/, /ʌ/, /ŋ/) 𛀀 e (before /n/, /m/) 𛀀 ej (before /ŋ/)
punctuation ・ word separator 、 comma 。 period ？ question mark ！ exclamation point … elipsis
numerals 〇 zero/no(ne) 一 one 二 two 三 three 四 four 五 five 六 six 七 seven 八 eight 九 nine 十 ten/-ty (-teen if placed first) 十一 eleven 十二 twelve 百 hundred 千 thousand 万 ten thousand/-ty thousand
Sample text (The Lord's prayer) アㇽ・フヮーヅㇽ・ホゥウ・アㇽㇳ・イㇴ・ヘブ𛅤ㇴ、 ハロ゚ウㇳ・ビ・ヅァイ・ネイㇺ。 ヅァイ・キンドゥㇺ・コㇺ。 ヅァイ・ヰㇽ゚・ビ・ドㇴ アーㇴ・ウㇽッ・アㇲ゙・イㇳ・イㇲ゙・イㇴ・ヘブ𛅤ㇴ。 ギㇷ゙・オㇲ・ヅィㇲ・デイ・アㇽ・デイリ゚・ㇹ゙レㇳ゙、 𛀀ㇴㇳ゙・フㇽギㇷ゙・オㇲ・アㇽ・チレㇲパㇲイㇲ゙、 アㇲ゙・ヰ・フㇽギㇷ゙・ヅォウㇲ゙・ホゥウ・チレㇲパㇲ・イギㇴㇳㇲㇳ・オㇲ、 𛀀ㇴㇳ゙・リ゚ーㇳ゙・オㇲ・ナーㇳ・イㇴトゥウ・ティㇺㇷ゚テイシㇴ、 ボㇳ・ディリ゚ㇷブㇽ・オㇲ・ㇷロㇺ・イーブ𛅦ㇽ゚。 𛀀イミㇴ。
(Nihon-siki-based transliteration) a^ru hwadu^ru ho^uu a^ru^to i^nu hebwi^nu, halou^do bi du^ai nei^mu. du^ai kindo^u^mu ko^mu. du^ai wi^lu bi do^nu â^nu u^ru^tu a^zu i^to i^zu i^nu hebwi^nu. gi^bu o^su du^i^su dei a^ru deili ^bore^do, e^nu^do hu^rugi^bu o^su a^ru ^tire^supa^sui^zu, a^zu wi hu^rugi^bu du^ou^zu ho^uu ^tire^supa^su igi^nu^to^su^to o^su, e^nu^do lî^do o^su nâ^to i^nuto^uu te^i^mu^pu^teisi^nu, bo^to de^ilibu^ru o^su ^huro^mu îbwo^lu. eimi^nu.
Unfortunately, small versions of 𛀀 チ ヂ 𛄢 don't exist in Unicode and 𛀀 𛄢 𛄠 𛅤 𛅥 𛅦 don't have font support, at least on my phone. You can use え 𠄌 于 ヰ ヱ ヲ to bypass those annoying boxes.

Ok hear me out. Felicity, from the first Style Savvy game, calls us “Sweet Tea” a lot, right? As a kid, I didn’t think much about it. I’m from the south myself, we love our sweet iced tea. But I’m realizing now that I’ve never heard anybody use it as a nickname- usually it’s sweet PEA, or sweetie.
Now, as an adult, I’ve studied Japanese for several years and even at one point thought translating video games would be super fun, right? Well, as any of you who study Japanese know, when you’re speaking Japanese and use a word that is borrowed from another language, you write it in Katakana. So, naturally, this may become confusing at times when it’s English being spelled out phonetically, because some words will be very similar or even identical, causing mistranslations to occur every now and then.
スイーツティー would be the English words “sweet tea” written in katakana. Of course Japanese has its own words for sweet tea, but again, if we are spelling the English word in Japanese phonetics, this is how it’s spelled out; for example on Lipton Tea, it’s スイーツティー, right?
Now, Japanese doesn’t use spaces much in words or phrases, so the pause is indicated by the character ツ- which, in a Japanese word is pronounced tsu, most of the time the vowel “u” making a pretty short sound but can be longer; however, when ツ is used in English words, it’s incredibly rare for the “u” part to actually be part of the word. Usually it’s in place of a consonant to indicate a pause, whether in the middle of a word like “kitty”, or at the end of a word, like “cat”. When it’s a T sound in the middle of ONE word it’s small like ッ, but if it’s stopping a word that ENDS in a T sound, it’s big like ツ.
Okay. So let’s recap. スイーツティー is how we would write sweet tea in English, in Japanese, in katakana- right? So then what is スイーッティー? Sound it out- if the first is sweet•tea… the one with the small ッ is not a full stop in the middle and is… sweetea… sweetie. Sweetie. IT’S SWEETIE.
Now, I have never played the Japanese version of the original ds game (Girls Mode), but I do know that some older Japanese games didn’t include a full keyboard with smaller characters since it was already hard enough to see the normal sized ones in pixels- so some games just assumed the players would already know the words and be able to understand what they were, I guess sorta like how some English games were in all caps back then because they couldn’t be bothered to try to make the more ~curvy~ lowercase letters when anyone could read caps just fine, and there just weren’t enough pixels to do it without making the font super big and take up a lot of space.
So these are my theories:
•Felicity has been calling us Sweetie the whole time and NOT Sweet Tea, because the spelling of the two are identical if you only have big katakana to work with- so whoever translated and localized the game read it as sweet tea, because that was the literal translation.
•If the game DID have the small katakana, either same thing as in the first theory, or even possibly whoever originally wrote her dialogue made a spelling mistake. Either way, it was a translation error- whether it was the original writers spelling sweet tea, or the localizer translating the translation.
Regardless of what happened, I think it's a very endearing silly nickname that got in the game because Felicity herself says she was named after a Southern Belle, and I can definitely see it going past someone's head since we do love our sweet tea down here- I definitely think it made her memorable. I didn't even realize it was probably a translation mistake until just now, age 25, at midnight playing the game and wondering if anyone calls each other that, only to have a lightbulb moment that it sounded like SWEETIE, which we DO use daily in the south.
Anyway, idk who is actually going to sit down and read all of this, but I had to let everyone know because this stuff fascinates me. I love learning how languages work, and how tiny translation errors go over our heads sometimes haha.
She was trying to call us sweetie this whole time. But I always loved being called sweet tea 😭

I mean, whenever I play a game that is localized into Japanese, it's much more condensed due to the word length (as there is Kanji) but in certain titles made for kids they just transcribe it in hiragana or katakana instead of using the actual kanji for it, for example セーブ (Сохранить) but the actual word is 保存 (хранение) - the only time I saw this actually used was upon playing 薄桜鬼 - which is one of my favorite type of 乙女ゲーム (Девичьи игры)
To put it into perspective, here are the differences between JP > RU when it comes to the amount of character spacing it consumes on both the buttons and UI:

日本語	Русский
オプション設定	Настройка параметров
ゲーム再開	Возобновить игру
最初から	(Новый) игры
続きから	(Продолжить) игру
ゲーム終了	Конец игры
タイトル画面に戻る	Назад к титульному экрану
ゲーム設定	Настройки игры
音声設定	Настройки голоса
動画設定	Настройки видео
字幕設定	Настройки субтитров
サウンド設定	Настройки звуков
グラフィック設定	Настройки графики
セーブ・ロード	Сохранить и Загрузить
明るさ確認	Проверка яркости
初期値に戻す	Сброс настроек по умолчанию
初期設定	Настройки по умолчанию
言語	Язык
戻る	Назад
キャンセル	Отменить
決定	Решение
難易度	Уровень сложности
操作確認	Проверка работы
画面位置調整	Настройка положения экрана
解像度設定	Настройка разрешений
設定に終了	Конец настройки
画面モード	Режим экрана
輝度調整	Настройка яркости
垂直同期	Вертикальная синхронизация

Also, when it comes to RPG games or Souls / Elden Ring character stats, do they use the full word / sentence or shorten shose as well:

日本語	Русский
生命力	жизненная сила
精神力	интеллект
持久力	стойкость
筋力	силы
技量	ловкость
知力	мудрость
信仰	вера
神秘	колдовство
運	удача
素性	класс
防御力	защита
攻撃力	атаки
移動力	движение
魔力	магические очки
抵抗力	сопротивление

In hindsight:

• Even though Russian is longer than ENG / JPN, would it mean that they have to resort to abbreviating most of the words in the UI as the space for them is smaller?
• If Russian verb or action from the UI is long, do they bother to squeeze in the entire sentence or word into the allocated spot by shrinking the font size?

Im looking for this font that can best be described as a mix of halo theme, alien, and katakana. I saw it on a post a bit ago and am having trouble looking it up. Any ideas?

So, if you play Tomodachi Collection (DS game) on an American 3DS, you can name miis in Japanese (hiragana or katakana) because it uses a Japanese keyboard that's within the game.
Playing Japanese Tomodachi Life on an American 3DS, though, (possible with a spicy 3DS) you cannot name characters in Japanese because it uses an English keyboard within the 3DS.
Korean Tomodachi Life is a different beast. Not only do you face the same keyboard thing as in the Japanese game, but there is no Korean font stored within an American 3DS! So all the text characters show up as ? blocks. It's still pronounced correctly by the text-to-speech but it bugged me so much I can't really play it 😭

When I was in 6th grade, our teacher asked us to do a group presentation about a different country. One of my friends was on my team and he chose Japan, because his dad is Japanese.
We worked on the assignment and researched and printed stuff and pasted images and stuff on a display we were making.
During the process I was asked to memorize and recite the Japanese national anthem, so I printed it on a piece of paper and worked on memorizing it for a few days.
The day of the presentation came, and I did my thing and my class was impressed and my friend was impressed that I'd done it.
Anyways cut to recess and my friend and I were chatting about the presentation and his experience being half-japanese, and he was telling about his dad and stuff.
I thought about his dad immigrating to our country, how he must miss Japan, how our culture might differ from his, etc.
With this in mind, I unfolded the piece of paper with the anthem on it, fully romanized, printed in Word 2003 or something, probably in comic sans font or something. I looked at the document, and thought about this poor man, so far away from his beloved Japan.
"Take it", I said, nodding sagely (probably) as I passed the piece of paper to my friend.
"Huh?"
"You should give it to your dad."
...
...
...
"Huh? Why?"
I was taken aback, I hadn't thought this far ahead.
"Because ummm... he misses his home and stuff."
"And what's this gonna do?"
"I don't know, it's a reminder of his home I guess."
"This doesn't even feature any kanji, katakana, hiragana." he said, matter-of-factly.
"Yeah but it's his country's national anthem."
"We have a printer at home, he could print it anytime."
I just sat there dumbfounded, I wanted to show some solidarity, but now I felt like a huge dumbass. We probably switched to a different topic (idk it was probably Pokémon, soccer, or our predictions for the 2007-2008 financial crisis that hadn't happened yet).
I guess as an 11-year old you're bound to have a few social faux pas every now and then, this was one of my worst.

こんにちは！ I've just started learning japanese some months ago but I don't need help with the vocals specifically, I need help because idk how to write them on their small font on my phones keyboar and I need them mostli for katakana. I would like to write "di" for example and I think "di" is デイ but i need the small イ.

I would like to plot some text in Japanese, and have been looking for single-stroke fonts for hiragana, katakana, and kanji that will work with for plotting, with or without the Hershey Text conversion utility for Inkscape. I've found one that looks promising (OneLineFonts' CJK, $45), but I wonder if there are other options? Paid is fine, but free is nice.

Answer

Double check that you're not reinventing the wheel! Don't assume the application and its addons you're using aren't just old or haven't been elucidated to the existence of other work. fugashi already exists to do this.

Preface

Anki is a flashcard app that I'm using to learn Japanese. I've reached a point where I feel I know enough kanji to begin jumping into sentences. I've downloaded a deck with a couple thousand, fairly simple sentences. Anki happens to have an addon (Japanese Support) that can render small hiragana above kanji (called furigana) if a card's "Reading" field is formatted properly (the card also has an "Expression" field). An example would look like: 日本語[にほんご].

Problem

The sentences deck I've downloaded provides an accurate reading in the "Reading" field for the sentence in the "Expression" field, but it's exclusively in hiragana and contains spaces between the words and particles. The Japanese Support addon can technically overwrite this provided reading with the formatted reading I desire, but it's not 100% accurate. Also, these 2 fields have a bold tag surrounding the word the sentence was created for which would get erased in the "Reading" field by this addon.
Because the format is pretty simple, I figured I could write a Python script to execute in Anki's console to edit all of the "Reading" fields.

Input

I've found 5 types of words/readings that appear in all of these sentences. Below each case is:

1. An example sentence as found in the "Expression" field (Note: Japanese [and by extension Chinese] are monospace font so punctuation characters don't actually have a space following them)
2. Its provided reading from the "Reading" field (Edit: made the spaces more apparent)
3. The format for furigana I'm trying to achieve by "combining" 1 and 2 together.

Types

1. The kanji's reading contains or ends with the same hiragana as the following particle or hiragana word. See 母は in the beginning.
   1. 母はまだ外国に行ったことがありません。
   2. はは は まだ がいこく に いった こと が ありません。
   3. 母[はは]はまだ外国[がいこく]に行[い]ったことがありません。
2. The kanji has hiragana following it that is part of the word but not the kanji's reading. See 行った after the bold tag.
   1. 母はまだ外国に行ったことがありません。
   2. はは は まだ がいこく に いった こと が ありません。
   3. 母[はは]はまだ外国[がいこく]に行[い]ったことがありません。
3. Similar to 2 but the hiragana is before the kanji. See お名前 at the beginning.
   1. お名前を片仮名で書いてください。
   2. おなまえ を かたかな で かいて ください。
   3. お名前を[なまえ]片仮名[かたかな]で書[か]いてください。
4. A combination of 2 and 3 but, again, not part of the reading. See お母さん in the middle.
   1. 彼のお母さんは美人です。
   2. かれ の おかあさん は びじん です。
   3. 彼[かれ]のお母[かあ]さんは美人[びじん]です。
5. The opposite of 4. That is, kanji surrounding hiragana making up a single word. See 朝ご飯 after the comma.
   1. 今、朝ご飯を作っています。
   2. いま あさごはん を つくっています。
   3. 今[いま]、朝[あさ]ご飯[はん]を作[つく]っています。

Some Observations

1. Any kanji will have at least 1 and (probably) no more than 4 hiragana for its reading.
2. The "Reading" field has spaces and given 1, the length of the "Reading" field is always greater than the length of the "Expression" field. Removing the spaces results in a length that's at least as long as the "Expression" but probably longer in most cases.
3. Because the "Reading" field is exclusively hiragana (and punctuation), I can consider any katakana and digits as if they were kanji. Their readings will also be in hiragana.
4. The bold tag is an HTML b tag. If spaces were to be applied to the "Expression" field, these tags would align with each other with respect to the spaces.

Edits: Additional Observations

1. The bold tag in fact contains only a single word. 1 down, the rest of the sentence to go...
2. を is a unique particle that's never used in word readings. Most of the muddy hiragana (e.g. ぐ and ぴ) are similarly never particles so must be part of a word. A few other hiragana are also never particles and I need to look them up.
3. The same number of spaces in the Reading will need to be applied to the Expression because they're made of the same words and particles.
4. Particles (usually 1, 2, or 3 hiragana in length) are always surrounded by spaces, even multiple particles in a row (e.g. に は). Not all words are spelled as kanji and most hiragana are also used as particles which might create false positives if a split is used with all known particles.

My Attempts

My 1st attempt was a naïve approach of using 2 indices to travel through the "Expression" and "Reading" strings to construct a new string with the furigana format. This failed because it's when I discovered cases 3 - 5 in which the word's hiragana either caused the reading to be missed for a kanji or too many hiragana were captured for a kanji's reading. My code for this attempt.
My 2nd idea tried to split the "Expression" on hiragana (retaining delimiter) and the "Reading" on spaces (don't need them), but I quickly realized this would break cases 2, 4, & 5 kanji. I didn't bother coding this up.
My 3rd idea, I thought I'd try to approach this like a knapsack. Me being terrible at these types of problems though, I couldn't seem find a way to create a value for either the kanji or groups of characters in each string.
My 4th and current idea returns to my 2nd. Because idea 3 got me thinking about scoring stuff, I thought I'd try and see if I could combine substrings together from the "Expression" field to try and get as close as possible to the "Reading" field after splitting it on its spaces (joining disjoint sets comes to mind).
Because this is a sentence, after splitting, any substring can only combine with its left or right neighbor. Substrings can only be combined and never be split again. I feel like the "state" of the "Expression" substrings can be given a score and combining neighbors can reevaluate this score to see if it's gotten closer to the "Reading" state.
I'm not sure how to code this idea, but this would result in the "Expression" essentially having spaces that align it with the spaces of the "Reading". All of the hiragana substrings not part of a kanji word would align with the same amount of previous spaces in the "Expression" as they appear in the "Reading". This would then easily let me know what the reading is for every word in the "Expression" in order to convert it to the furigana format.

Output

Using the 1st sentence above, this would give me this result (Edit: increased spaces to make them more apparent): Expression: 母 は まだ 外国 に 行った こと が ありません。 Reading: はは は まだ がいこく に いった こと が ありません。
Can anyone help me with this?
Does anyone have a better or simpler idea to do this?

I've been trying to create a comprehensive Kana chart for my younger students (10-13yo), and wanted to see if I could get any useful feedback from this subreddit.
Here is the link to the PDF.
Reasoning for style choices I've made:

• I've made it read horizontally from left to right (instead of vertically from right to left) to make it easier for English L1 learners of Japanese since I have younger students who have a hard time with changing the way they scan a chart for information. I also usually print this out two pages per page(one piece of paper front and back), so that the first two pages actually are side by side, and the third and fourth page are also side by side on the back of the same paper.
• I've used the Kyokasho font that Apple includes in their OS, since I want to encourage my students to write their kana like that instead of the typed font that connects stroke, like the third and fourth strokes in き, for example.
• Included examples for how small つ is used and the ー in katakana is used, since students tend to forget.
• Included special katakana combinations, which appear in people and place names relevant to my students.

Please let me know if you notice anything, or if you have anything that is not included that would have been helpful for you as a beginner learner! And if you are a beginner learner or know anyone who would find this helpful, feel free to use it :)
​

What font is this all saints underground logo? Is the Japanese katakana an attainable font as well?

Hey everyone. I'm about to start working on a text renderer for educational purposes. I'm thinking about storing all of my characters in a large texture atlas. I want it to have unicode support, so I'll have to figure out which characters are needed. The most obvious way to do this would be to just add new characters to the atlas as they're encountered. I'll be using stb_truetype for getting font bitmaps, so each new character would involve reading from the font file. My first question: would this cause the application to slow down or hang every time a new character is encountered? If it wouldn't, then the post can end here lol
If it is slow, it wouldn't be a huge issue for languages that use alphabets or syllabaries, but logagraphic writing systems (chinese characters, for example) could take a long time to build up a cache. What would be some solutions to this problem? I was thinking about using a table of the most common ~2000 characters, and loading them all at once when the first chinese character is encountered. Does that sound like a good approach? If it does I'd need a frequency table for all major languages. Is there a database like this available in a machine-readable format?
​
Edit: I think the solution would be to use use unicode blocks instead of languages for grouping characters.
When a new character is encountered, check to see what block that code point resides in, and load that block. This wouldn't be enough for very large blocks (namely CJK unified ideographs); for those I'd still have to find a frequency table, but there are only 10 blocks with more than 2000 characters, 8 of which are CJK, so finding these tables manually would be feasible
Then the only issue left to sort out would be language detection for CJK characters (the top 2000 Chinese hanzi aren't the same as the top 2000 Japanese Kanji or Korean Hanja). A rough solution would be to assume chinese initially, but swap to Japanese if hiragana or katakana are encountered, or Korean if hangul are encountered
I'm not sure how to handle traditional vs simplified hanzi though. Loading the appropriate characters by frequency would be the same as in japanese or Korean, but traditional and simplified characters aren't placed in separate unicode blocks, so I'm not sure how to efficiently determine which kind of character the user has input. Worst case scenario I could include a "force load simplified/traditional" switch in my application

These are the features and differences I've noticed in the version of Word I'm using:

• The heading section (previews) is replaced by displaying characters (kana) instead of letters.
• The pilcrow icon found in a paragraph is replaced with the icon depicting two arrows.
• The date system instead follows either YYYY-MM-DD or without the year it's just MM-DD (There is an option to add the era)
• Instead of cm / in or pt / pkt. - Paragraph spacing is referred by character and line spacing, this is indicated by the following Kanji: 字 (Characters) or 行 (Lines)
• Tategaki (縦書き) - Enables Right-to-left writing formatted vertically, when enabling this, it also affects the indent and line spacing, as they adhere to the vertical structure, the icons associated with that get flipped as well.
• Genko Yoshi (原稿用紙) - Gridded pages (Does not work when the editing language is other than JPN) - It's customizable, can change grid color, page orientation, paper size, the formats available are only by 20x20 or 20x10.
• Convert Hanzi / Kanji to Hangul (Korean) and vice versa (there's an attached Korean dictionary for this as well.)
• Chinese Conversion (Simp. > Trad. & vice versa)
• Japanese greetings (あいさつ文) - based on occasion, season, and time) - There are templates for adding formal opening or closing statements as well.
• Mailings: There are additional variants like Chinese envelope (comes up as a separate prompt titled: Chinese envelope wizard) For Japanese envelopes or letters, it opens up a separate blank document with the allocated template made for it, with a prompt.
• ルビ (Small Hiragana / Katakana readings beside Kanji) - by clicking the icon ア亜 (located in the home tab, around the font section) brings up a prompt showing you the options for Furgana: such as the font, and position, you can even change what it can be.
• Encircling characters - Adding a shape bordering a character or replacing the contents within it.
• Shading characters - it's a separate function (not the same as highlighting)
• Adding a word to a dictionary expands more: such as word classifiers, what part of speech it is (i.e. family surname, company name, legal name, etc.) and so on.

In hindsight:

• Do you know any examples of the PL version of Word that makes it different from the English counterpart?
• Are there any elements that have been altered to adhere to the conventions of to the Polish (language) when it comes to features or shortcuts?
• What features are only exclusive to the Polish (or other Slavic) variants of Word but do not merge over to the English one?
• Is there any difference with the metrics used to determine paragraph spacing or indents?

I was having a tough time years ago learning hiragana/katakana when someone recommended this Slime Forest Adventure game to me and I learned both in a few days. I have recently been getting my son to use it and I'd forgotten how great it was. Here is why!
Different fonts: it throws the kana at you using different fonts (some more stylised, some more basic). This helps you to read them in a real world environment.
Kana grouped by similarity: instead of learning in order like ラ, レ, リ, etc, you learn in groups that look similar, like ワ, ウ, ク. This helps you to distinguish between these right away.
Uses SRS: this game was doing SRS before Anki became so popular. I don't need to explain why SRS is so great.
Fun RPG: it looks basic but it's a serviceable RPG game. As for me, I just spent all my time in the first forest grinding battles but you can go as deep as you like.
Anyway, if you are learning kana then I highly recommend it. Apparently it does kanji too but I never used it. It also seems there is now a web version.

These are the following features I've come across when using Word in Japanese - They do not cross over to the English version:

• Genko Setting (原稿用紙) - For this to work, you need to set both the UI and editing language to Japanese, along with having the Japanese version of MS installed, which is a square grid background to assist in the positioning of writing Kanji, Hanzi or Hangul.
• Tategaki (縦書き) - Enables Right-to-left writing formatted vertically
• Convert Hanzi / Kanji to Hangul (Korean) and vice versa (there's an attached Korean dictionary for this as well.)
• Conversion between simplified/traditional Chinese characters (there is an option to manually select, clicking the dictionary icon positioned around the bottom right corner triggers another prompt to classify the word, which form to select upon conversion, etc.)
• Japanese greetings (あいさつ文) - based on occasion, season, and time) - There are templates for adding formal opening or closing statements as well.
• Mailings: There are additional variants like Chinese envelope (comes up as a separate prompt titled: Chinese envelope wizard)
• Mailings: For Japanese envelopes/letters, it opens up a separate blank document with the allocated template made for it, with a prompt.
• ルビ (Small Hiragana / Katakana readings beside Kanji) - by clicking the icon ア亜 (located in the home tab, around the font section) brings up a prompt showing you the options for Furgana: such as the font, and position, you can even change what it can be.
• Encircling characters - Adding a shape bordering a character or replacing the contents within it.
• Shading characters - it's a separate function (not highlighting)

The differences I've noticed so far:

• The heading section (previews) is replaced by displaying characters (kana) instead of letters.
• The pilcrow icon found in a paragraph is replaced with the icon depicting two arrows.
• Instead of cm / in or pt / pkt. - Paragraph spacing is referred by character and line spacing, this is indicated by the following Kanji: 字 (Characters) or 行 (Lines)
• When enabling vertical R-L writing, it affects the indent and line spacing, as they adhere to the vertical structure, the icons associated with that get flipped as well.
• After implementing Genko Yoshi, it's a feature you cannot undo once completed, the only "way" to redo it is to open another blank document starting from scratch. The grid becomes embedded in the page itself.
• Genko Yoshi will grey out when reverting Word to English or in another language, as it does not support them, it's a Japanese-exclusive feature. (Though this also exists in both Korean and Chinese versions of Word under different names, they may work differently according to the conventions of their languages)
• There are also features I've noticed that may've been merged over from both Korean or Chinese versions, as I've encountered their dictionaries on this version of Word.

In hindsight:

• Have you spotted any differences between the Vietnamese version and the English one regarding certain functions or their placements?
• Have the metrics regarding paragraph spacing been changed or remained the same as the English counterpart?

These are the following features I've came across when using MS word in Japanese - They do not cross over to the English version:

• Genko Setting (原稿用紙) - For this to work, you need to set both the UI and editing language to Japanese, along with having the Japanese version of MS installed, which is a square grid background to assist positioning of writing East Asian characters.
• Tategaki - Enables Right to Left writing formatted vertically
• Convert Hanzi / Kanji to Hangul (Korean) and vice versa (there's an attached Korean dictionary for this as well.)
• Conversion between simplified / traditional chinese characters (there is an option to manually select, clicking the dictionary icon positioned on around the bottom right corner triggers another prompt to classify the word, which form to select upon conversion, etc.)
• Japanese greetings (based on occassion, season and time) - There are templates for adding formal opening or closing statements as well.
• Mailings: There are an additional variants like Chinese envelope (comes up as a separate prompt titled: Chinese envelope wizard)
• Mailings: For Japanese enevelopes / letters, it opens up a separate blank document with the allocated template made for it, with a prompt.
• ルビ (Small Hiragana / Katakana readings beside Kanji) - by clicking the icon ア亜 (located in the home tab, around the font section) brings up a prompt showing you the options for Furgana: such as the font, position, you can even change what it can be.
• Encircling characters - Adding a shape bordering a character
• Shading characters - it's a seperate function (not highlighting)

The differences I've noticed so far:

• The heading section (previews) are replaced by displaying characters (kana) instead of letters
• The pilcrow icon found in paragraph is replaced with the icon depicting two arrows
• Instead of cm / in or pt / pkt. - Paragraph spacing is referred by Character and line spacing, this is indicated by the following Kanji: 字 (Characters) or 行 (Lines)
• When enabling vertical R-L writing, it affects the indent and line spacing, as they adhere to the vertical structure, the icons associated with that get flipped as well.
• After implementing Genko Yoshi, it's a feature you cannot undo once completed, the only "way" to redo it is to open another blank document starting from scratch. The grid becomes imbedded in the page itself
• Genko Yoshi will grey out when reverting Word back to English or in an other language, as it does not support them, it's a Japanese exclusive feature. (Though this also exists in both Korean and Chinese versions of Word under different names)
• There are also features I've noticed that may've been merged over from both Korean or Chinese versions, as I've encountered their dictionaries on this version of word.

In hindsight:

• Do you know any examples of features from the Russian localization of word that do not exist in English at all?
• Have you spotted any differences between the Russian version and the English one regarding certain functions or their placements?
• What features in the RU version of MS Word that cater specifically to Cyrillic that does not cross over to English? Are there any features that are crossed over from the Ukrainian version as well
• Have the metrics regarding paragraph spacing being changed or remained the same as the English counterpart?