言こと音ね

Learn Japanese through music.

A tiny lyrics player for the Mac. Every line comes with furigana and a Chinese translation, and opens up into its phrases, its words and its grammar.

Free and open source · 550 KB · macOS 13+ on Apple silicon
Kotone with 夜に駆ける open: lyrics with furigana on the left, one line taken apart on the right
Try it

Every line, taken apart

This is a line of 夜に駆ける the way Kotone shows it. Point at a phrase to find its Chinese, click it for its words, and turn the furigana or the translation off.

  • Phrases matched to the Chinese, color by color, even when one piece of Japanese wraps around the rest (から is 从…起).
  • Each word's reading, part of speech and JLPT level, and how it's conjugated from its dictionary form, one step at a time.
  • The grammar points it uses, with a note on how they work right here.
Read along

Lyrics that follow the song

Each line lights up as it's sung, with its reading above it and its meaning beside it. Turn the furigana or the translation off when you're ready to go without.

Kotone plays through the Spotify app on your Mac and never pulls it to the front: you stay in the lyrics. A song that isn't on Spotify can use an audio file of your own.

Kotone in dark mode, with 初めて会った日から taken apart
Annotation

Written by your Codex, checked by Kotone

Add a song and ask your own Codex to annotate it. It runs on your ChatGPT plan, several lines at a time, and each line shows up as soon as it passes the check.

The check is not another model. Kotone re-derives every reading, every conjugation and every link to the Chinese from what Codex wrote, and anything that doesn't add up goes back to be fixed.

✓溶けるて形→ 溶けて matches the lyric
✓会うた形→ 会った reading あった
✓奪うた形→ 奪った godan, う → った

✗呼ぶ marked ichidan, but an ichidan verb ends in る
↻sent back to Codex to fix
Grammar outline

From a grammar point to your songs

Every grammar point you meet is collected in one outline, with the lines in your own songs that use it. Save the lines you like, and look words up by JLPT level.

The grammar outline: 連体修飾, with three lines from 夜に駆ける that use it
Add a song

One search, and it's in

Search for a song and Kotone finds it on Spotify, with time-synced lyrics from four sources and its cover. Only the original Japanese is kept: the Chinese is written fresh for you, never copied from a lyrics site.

Track and coverSpotify
Time-synced lyricsNetEase Cloud MusicQQ MusicKugouLRCLIB
KeptThe original Japanese, line by line
Never keptTranslations from lyrics sites
550 KBto download. It uses the WebView your Mac already has, with no browser bundled.
N5–N4is who it's written for: Chinese speakers starting out in Japanese.
MITlicensed and open source. Your songs and notes stay on your Mac.

Start with a song you love

Kotone is free. Download it, add a song, and read along.

Download for Mac