Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the core of Origa. This page covers where words come from, how cards are built, and how to add your own.

Built-in dictionaries

Origa ships with bilingual dictionaries — Japanese to your language. When you add a word, the dictionary supplies the translation, part of speech, and reading. You do not need to type translations manually unless you want to override them.

If a word is not in the dictionary, Origa skips it during batch creation. You can still add it manually with your own translation.

Audio pronunciation

For supported words, Origa includes recorded pronunciation sourced from NHK and other native-speaker corpora. The audio plays on the card during review and when you preview a word.

Not every word has audio. Coverage is best for common vocabulary and JLPT-level words.

Adding cards

There are four ways to create vocabulary cards. The full flow is described in Getting started; in short:

Text. Type or paste Japanese; Origa tokenizes and looks up translations.
Image. Run on-device OCR to extract Japanese text from a photo.
Audio. Transcribe a .wav recording with on-device speech recognition.
Anki deck. Import an existing .apkg file. Origa auto-detects the word and translation fields.

When you add multiple words at once, Origa shows a preview list. You confirm which to keep; duplicates are skipped silently.

Pre-built word sets

Instead of building your own list, you can import curated sets aligned to common study paths:

JLPT levels. Official vocabulary organized by N5 through N1.
Textbooks. Minna no Nihongo and Irodori, organized lesson by lesson.
Apps. Duolingo (English and Russian tracks), Migii JLPT prep sets.
Content. Vocabulary extracted from specific anime, starting with Spy × Family.

You can import sets during onboarding, or later from the Sets page. Each set creates cards in your collection; you can review or remove them at any time.

Card fields

A vocabulary card carries:

The Japanese word or phrase
Reading (furigana for kanji)
Translation in your language
Part of speech
JLPT level (if known)
Audio (if available)

Most fields fill automatically when the word exists in the dictionary. You can edit any field after creation.

Managing your collection

The words screen lists every card in your collection. Filter by JLPT level, by source (imported set or self-added), or by review state (new, learning, mature). You can search by Japanese or by translation.

To remove cards, open the card detail and delete. Deletion is permanent — there is no trash bin.