New features in this iteration

• option to turn off tooltips
• click to display kanji information in statistics view
• shift-click for options on some buttons
• October 2010 standard Jyouyou kanji
• User defined keywords
• preferred language preference
• Spanish keywords
• French keywords
• Spanish, French and German automatic lookup on wwwjdic
• added Hispadic and Wadoku to list of online dictionaries
• Chuta.jp queried for English and preferred language
• sieve for custom list of kanji
• searched word in waeijiten is highlighted (verbs and adjectives decline)
• minor interface improvements
• improved character count for more accurate overall statistics
• Kanji Notebook (2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, Kanji Oddysey)
• phonetic data (work in progress – 75 groups at present)
• Import images
• Images and Audio copied to media folder
• Image Editor from pixlr.com

The kanji in the statistics panes can be clicked to get basic information about the kanji, its keyword and the KKLD index. there is also a checkbox to mark it as known.
Kanji Notebook contains more data on 2537 kanji, covering the 2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, and Kanji Odyssey lists. My motivation to build Kanji Notebook was to get a sort of dictionary that showed the data I wanted, and allowed me to add my own notes and importantly change the keyword. The dataset from EDRDG originally started with keywords from Heisig. These are still there as the first word and were driving me crazy. Jim Breen said he was going to clear up these entries way back in 1995 but I still want to scream when I see “old boy” for 君. The keywords from KKLD are better, or sometimes my own keyword. I haven’t included KKLD keywords but there is the option to add them yourself. The KKLD index from EDRDG‘s data is included to help with a look-up. (If you managed to get the iPhone app before it disappeared putting a ~ before the index number allows you to search for it)
The example words are from vocabulary extracted from records in Kanji Sieve. Therefore all vocabulary should be relevant to your interests.

There is automated look-up of Internet dictionaries for a kanji. I find it interesting to search google images to see if I can guess a clear meaning or see how it is being used. You can explore kanji using the browse tab, to get lists by grade, radical, phonetic, kakitorikun screen, or Kanji Odyssey group.
Kakitorikun is a great piece of software for the Nintendo DS. It’s main drawback is it’s completely in Japanese. With Kanji Notebook I can at least easily put an English keyword to kanji on a given screen.
Kanji Odyssey from Coscom is an excellent e-book based on the frequency of use of kanji. It has many examples and recordings of native speech. I recommend it. An added bonus is their completely free update program. Recently I got a new CD from them when they updated for the 2010 Jyouyou. Absolutely free, not even postage costs. That’s a rare service these days.

There is the beginnings of language support for languages other than English. Spanish and French keywords are included. They will be displayed in preference to English when the preferred language is set in preferences. This also controls what language is used to query chuta.jp. However I found that the returns are very short so English is also submitted. wwwjdic will use the preferred language when searching for vocabulary.
Complete translations of the interface are unlikely at the moment however.

That’s it for now. Next potential release will be January. I really need to spend some more time on documentation! …

Downloads

More about Kanji Sieve

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2
3. Kanji Sieve v0.2

Another month another set of improvements to Kanji Sieve.
In this release I concentrated on getting data in and out of the program.

• It is possible to import records from a previous version.
• As I strongly believe that the data belongs to the user it can all be exported in a variety of formats to be used elsewhere.
• You can use a built-in mini browser to search for texts at your favourite sites.
• Plain text and audio can be imported.
• Chuta can now be viewed online on PCs and Macs
• There is a choice of 7 online dictionaries to search for word meanings
• Individual dictionary lookups are automated
• The layout is now more flexible
• There is a full screen mode for reading
• There is an online help system (in progress)
• The interface colour has been toned down
• Interface and navigation improvements

I was hesitant about using Chuta online display. It was the only way at the moment to implement it for the PC. Chuta only stores a search for a limited time and while chuta is fast it does take a while to compile the custom page. I would prefer to work with cached data. What I do in the online display is check to see if the remote cache has expired and if it has fetch it again. It’s not ideal when loading the Chuta pane in the program but it is the best for now. I also had to sacrifice some screen real estate to get feedback that the program hadn’t frozen. After the first time your own cache should speed loading. Mac users can still work with the cached data by setting a preference.

There are now several dictionary urls to chose from. I think jisho.org (denshi jisho) in a mobile phone version or risukun are the fastest and cleanest. Jim Breen’s wwwjdic is comprehensive but you need to pare down the interface via the preferences to avoid information overload and clutter. The Japanese dictionaries from Wordbank, Yahoo, Goo and ALC all have ads to a varying degree. ALC is the worst, which makes for a very cluttered window without expanding it.
As I like to automate where I can you can submit a search just by clicking a button in the wordlist. You don’t have to type or copy and paste if you don’t want to. Owing to the imprecision of looking up words automatically you have to chose the correct version from the results and paste that into your wordlist yourself.

There is a mini-browser to help with getting text into the program. I dislike jumping from program to program so I wanted something “right there”. However it’s not as capable as a proper browser like Safari or Firefox (and on the PC you’re stuck with the dreadful Internet Explorer engine). And there is no ad filtering. One way around this is to use Evernote and your usual browser to collect interesting text then access your Evernote account from with Kanji Sieve. ( note: Kanji Sieve does not store or access any passwords, history etc. This is all handled by your computers browser software and stored elsewhere on your system. (Safari on the Mac, IE on Windows) Apart from accessing the help files through a browser, the software does not in any way call home. The only data going out are submissions to chuta.jp and dictionary sites for word lookups.)

I am happier with the PC version this time around. Overall I really think this is becoming a usable and useful tool.

The online help is a work in progress. I will be writing it over the next month or so. After that it will be on to version 0.5 to release sometime in November.

The downloads are here.

––update 04Oct10––
bug release v0.4.1 released 3 Oct

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve 0.5 released
2. Kanji Sieve for Windows
3. Kanji Sieve 0.3 Mac

The downloads are here and I have a movie demonstrating Kanji Sieve instead of help files.

––update 01Aug10––
And already I have an update. When I was setting conditional formatting for Windows I inadvertently removed the record highlighting from the list view. Version 0.3.2 adds this back. I haven’t uploaded full packages for this just the Kanji Sieve Data.usr file. Replace the .usr file in v0.3.1 with this file. Unfortunately I haven’t implemented import of records yet, so any records you have will have to be re-entered.

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress
2. Kanji Sieve Windows coming soon
3. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released

Kanji Sieve for Mac v0.3 is ready. Unfortunately due to pressing matters elsewhere this is about as far as I can go for now.
Unavoidably that means it could be a few months before a Windows version appears.
Rather than sit on the Mac version which is functional, now that I have permissions for the Chuta dictionary and Flashcard Deluxe features I decided to upload it.

The windows version has a huge problem at the moment. A core screen is just not rendering properly no matter what I try. Ugly I could live with but this is completely unfunctional, the css doesn’t render properly and the Japanese becomes mojibake. I *think* it is due to the Internet Explorer version I am using under XP, but until I can explore this under Vista or Windows 7 I’m at a complete loss. If I can find the time I’ll do my best to get a Windows version working. Although I’m now leaning towards just cutting this function from the windows version rather than chase after workarounds in Internet Explorer.

So here we are at version 0.3

What does Kanji Sieve do?
It takes a piece of text entered by the user and first it breaks down the kanji usage to show you which kanji are used by grade and how often they are used in the text. Then it submits the text to chuta.jp. Primarily this is so the text can be parsed to allow individual words to be extracted into a list. Using online dictionaries the user can then put meaningful definitions to the entries in a wordlist. Finally a tab-delimited flashcard deck is generated that can be used with the iOS app Flashcards Deluxe. If multiple pieces of text are entered a listing of the 20 most frequent unknown kanji can be generated, unique to the user and the pieces of text they find interesting.

My thesis is that the 1006 kyouiku kanji are the best target for Intermediate JSL students. The grade school groupings break these down into manageable chunks. If you follow the grade school groupings there is also a wealth of Japanese learning material available. Keywords are only a tiny part of learning a kanji. Indeed thinking about it as learning to read and write, rather than learning kanji would be much more useful. That said you need to learn by reading and using Japanese. Reading targeted at your interests, providing you with a vocabulary you might actually use. SRS systems can help but words and characters need context and to be meaningful in order to be remembered and used properly.
Kanji Sieve may help with this part of the process.

I have ideas about the process of learning individual kanji, which I hope to cover in a post some day.
I feel it needs several elements.

• You need to find meaning in the characters – by breaking them down and understanding their structures.
• You need to break the task down into manageable chunks. – 2000 kanji isn’t a manageable chunk.
• You need a variety of methods and tasks – to stop you getting bored or only being able to function in one method.
• You need to find it immediately useful – to be able to use words in real life situations.

I am very grateful to Professor Nakamura for giving me permission to use the Chuta web dictionary in this solution. For the full Chuta experience go to チュウ太のweb辞書, where you will find many more language options than are available in Kanji Sieve and I also recommend the Reading Tutor site
Also thanks to Ernie the maker of Flashcard Deluxe for permission to incorporate a link to his app.

Kanji Sieve Mac 0.3 runtime download page
You will also find a movie demonstrating the solution on this page.

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve for Windows
2. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
3. Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress

I finally bought myself an iPod Touch about a month ago. I wanted something to allow me to use electronic flashcards on the move. On the train I can use my DS and Kakitorikun but it’s impossible to use pen input properly on the bounce around tube journey. With the Touch I’ve more than doubled the amount of time I can study on the otherwise mostly unproductive daily commute, although I read a bit less as a consequence. I also find myself using it at other spare moments, a couple of minutes here and there going through flashcards.As a device it’s almost what I’d hoped for since my first Palm device by Sony. Lot’s of storage, lot’s of good apps, a good screen, small and light it easily goes in a shirt pocket, good battery life, a good reasonable price as long as you don’t need the phone or 3G functionality.
The oversights. No pen input. For kanji learning and quick notes and just drawing a pen is indispensable. A finger just isn’t good enough; it’s like a blunt jumbo crayon compared to a 0.1 Rotring pen. That said the multi-touch interface is nice, except for all the erroneous button pushes and link clicks. And you can forget about ever using a stylus on the current screen. If they are all like the one I bought it’s not much of an improvement over a finger.
What I dream of now is for an iPod DS. two screens in a clamshell. One multi touch the other pen input.
With a user replaceable battery while I’m dreaming.
I don’t care about lack of Flash. This seems to be the new version of the OS wars. That the OS is locked down by Apple is of more concern. At least I’d like to see more interoperability between apps beyond cut and paste. I’ve been using an ad blocker for so long on my MacBook that it’s a bit ugly seeing all those ads on the web again, and there sure ain’t going to be any blockers for browsers on the iPhone OS.

The core of the experience is the Apps. Odd given that the iPod is touted as an MP3 player and the iPhone as a phone but really they are the Newton finally realised albeit without handwriting recognition.

Anyhow what’s on my Touch?

Flashcards

My first stop was to get flashcards going.
Anki was more or less dismissed. I don’t really like the somewhat unfriendly linuxy desktop application and without jailbreaking by all accounts the iPhone experience is limited. That said a lot of people like it and you may have a better experience with it than me. (Anki is good for is getting my lists out of smart.fm though)
I was very disappointed at the functionality of iFlash Touch (free, but really only an extension of the desktop app). It’s very basic compared to the desktop application. About the only good thing I can say is the sync between the desktop and the iPod is easy. It’s a shame because I like iFlash but I think the developer is too busy with his life and studies to keep up with the runaway iPhone market.
I looked at Mental Case, which has a Mac desktop client, but I didn’t want the extra expense and something didn’t quite click with me, too many bells and whistles perhaps. It does have trial and lite versions so it’s easy to see if it’s a good fit for you.
There are many I suppose dedicated Japanese flashcard programs but I find it very hard to sort of anything of quality. I’d prefer to come up with my own lists. What wanted was straight forward import and export. An SRS system preferably a bit more sophisticated than a basic Leitner card system. Text styling. Pictures and Audio support would be a bonus, I don’t use them at the moment but you never know.

Flashcards Deluxe (£2.40 , $4, 450円, €3)
I went with Flashcards Deluxe in the end. It’s fairly simple but still full featured.
It has support for three sides per card and two categories and a flag.
You can colour cards and style the text. This is all achieved with html tags so it is easy to set up your list in a text editor.
Import is via a WiFi link to a server. (Apple won’t let anyone sync over a USB cable). The author provides a webpage and use of a server for you to upload your cards. If you want you can also share your list with other users. He also gives details how to set up your own server. Export is by email or back to the server.
From the app itself you can access Quizlet.com if you don’t want to make lists yourself or duplicate effort in making lists from popular texts. Although due to sheer volume I wonder about how useful quizlet is and what quality the lists are.
You can also make and edit lists within the iPhone app. It’s completely standalone really.
It’s drawbacks. Well it could be I’m not used to the iPhone OS yet but in Flashcards Deluxe the settings and interface seem a little bit sparse and disorganised. Replacing the ? button for a cogwell icon would be a start, and reserve the ? for when you are giving extra information about the app or interface would be a start. That said after a little exploration I’ve found out most things.
It could also do with a Desktop client. However I have an idea about this for my Kanji FileMaker projects; after all it’s only a webpage away.

Smart.fm (free)
This is the other flashcard app I have installed. I liked Smart.fm when it was still iKnow. Now I don’t use it so much after the redesigns. Mostly it’s just too laborious to make your own lists and almost impossible to export them. (Although you can export via Anki and making a list from a textfile is in progress) The iPhone app is nice but has limited offline functionality, and is only a subset of what is possible on the smart.fm site.
There is another app (unaffiliated with Smart.fm) iKnow Touch (£1.20) that uses API’s that smart.fm publish to download entire lists that looks a bit more interesting, as it doesn’t rely on a constant connection. I only found it while checking links for this post.
–update on iKnow Touch– I’d save your money. iKnow Touch downloads your lists, (and the audio card by card), but that’s all. You can read them but not test yourself on them. I don’t need to sync with my progress on iKnow but it’d be nice to have flashcard functionality, or export, or copy and paste, so I can use them in another program. It’s also the first app that’s crashed on me. I can’t recommend this.

Dictionaries.

For most uses I prefer electronic dictionaries over print versions. Lighter and easier to search. As long as the battery holds out and you don’t drop them.

Kotoba!. (Free).
Can’t beat free as a price. Kotoba! uses JMDict data as do most of the Japanese dictionaries and applications you see in iTunes and on the web, especially the free ones. So mostly all that differentiates these apps is the interface or price. Kotoba! does everything I want for now, why pay more for JMDict or Edict data.
I may succumb to the uninspiringly named Japanese later on, it looks to have better cross references and a cleaner interface, but the £10 price is offputting. Across the store 60p and I’ll buy without much thought; £5 I’ll probably buy if it fills a need and looks like quality; £10 and I really stop and think; over £15 and it needs to be extra special. The immediacy of the App Store is dangerous, all those costs add up.

MSDict Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary.
( £6, $10, 1200円, €8 ) This is a good implementation of the print version the Oxford Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary, including its essays. Edict is fine for what it is, but it gives no guidance or differentiation. What it lacks is professional editing and compilation. I’m willing to pay for that and £6 is very good value for an electronic version of this dictionary. I already own the print version and thoroughly recommend it as a first E-J dictionary. It’s limited in its entries but should have most of what you may need as a beginner but more importantly it gives good examples and usage guidance. As a J-E dictionary it has the problem that you need to know the reading to use the index. You could use the Chinese handwriting fingerpainting recognition, but it is sometimes hit and miss. It would be nice to have multi-radical search for kanji. There are also hotlinks in the entries to allow you to explore cross references and it has a history function.
There is another version of this dictionary in the store that is the same price, has a nicer icon, but I think has put in English audio instead of the articles from the print dictionary. I’m unsure. I can speak English so the audio is not really any use to me and misses the point of a dictionary primarily designed for English speakers.

Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary. (£15, $25, 2900円, €20)
I usually call this KKLD but for some reason officially it’s KALD. No idea what A stands for. It is one of my favourite print dictionaries and I was delighted to find it in the App Store, it was released in late April. This has the best interface of any of the electronic dictionaries I have on the iPod. It’s a very well made implementation of the print version. It includes all the essays and appendices as well. It looks wonderful. All the kanji are hotlinked making it very simple to explore the compounds. It still has SKIP, which was a good invention for paper dictionaries, but to be honest only Jack Halpern’s dictionaries use it. Now that it’s electronic there’s no good reason not to have multi-radical as well. There isn’t a radical index which is a pity, nor are the numeric indices searchable which is a pity as I can’t quickly cross reference with Edict as I can with the paper version. There is an English index which is a huge bonus. A nice feature is you have a choice between romaji and kana for the readings, which was always a criticism of this dictionary especially by the “romaji is evil” camp. The quality of editing in this dictionary beats any other kanji reference currently available on the iPhone platform. It is expensive though in the App Store ecosystem, but compared to the print version it’s a bargain.
––update 17Jun10––
This seems to have disappeared from the UK, Japanese and US app stores. I’ve no idea why.
I hope it hasn’t been withdrawn permanently it’s an excellent dictionary and I’d like to see it supported. (I’m showing an update I can’t access in iTunes) I only hope iOS4 doesn’t break it now.
––update 18Oct10––
I asked the publishers, enfour, about the disappearance. All they can say is that it is an “internal matter”. I can only speculate that it’s a rights issue. I hope they can sort things out.

Eijiro Touch. (£5.50, $9, 1000円, €7)
Not so good. No copy. No hotlinks. The barest of interfaces. A fairly useless flashcard system. It’s a pity as I like the Eijiro dataset. I thought this looked like the best of the dictionaries on the App store that use it as the others looked overly gaudy and unprofessional. For now I’ll just stick to Eijiro on my MacBook where I can cross reference it and copy and paste. Maybe this app might improve and in the meantime I don’t want to throw good money after bad to explore the other eijiro apps on the store.
––update 25Jun10––
And now this has gone from the App store, and stops working under iOS4. Good riddance.

Learning Programs

Many of these seem a bit cheesy or are at too basic a level. By and large I’ve ignored them.

Japanese Sensei Deluxe. (£9.50, $10, 1200円, €8 )
This caught my attention though. On the face of it it’s a custom flashcard app, that introduces words ten at a time, in no discernible order other than relative difficulties over a couple of hundred lessons. So far so blah. What earned my money was the audio and example sentences. Every sentence and word has a native speaking it. Every word had an example sentence. It is all searchable like a dictionary. That alone would have convinced me. As a bonus there are some nice review games. A multi choice quiz, where the audio is also used. A matching pairs memory card game. Sentence building from the word elements. Select the correct particles game and a draw lines to match pairs game. These provide necessary variety to my flashcard studies. The interface is ok although the reviews criticise it, I think the programmers are looking for a designer to spruce it up a bit. I’ve come across some audio doesn’t quite match what’s written though which is a bigger problem. It’s rare though. Sometimes it’s a different particle. Other times the complete sentence is different from what’s printed. Both are always correct though, it’s not bad data, just oversights in matching up the thousands of sound samples. The other niggle is any word you look up is added to your flashcards, I’m not sure I want this, at the very least I’d like to be able to edit what has been added.
I bought the full version as I wanted to use its potential as a dictionary. It does have a free lite version, where you can buy the extra levels from within the app.

Fun and Miscellaneous

路線.Locky (free)
This is a very clever graphical representation of timetables for the Nagoya underground. I go to Nagoya and I’m not sure how useful this information is because the trains are so frequent but I keep this just because of it’s uniqueness.

駅.Locky (free)
Crowd sourced train and station information for Japan. Most of it is offline but you can download and store it on your phone. Obviously all in Japanese and quite hard to go through at times, but with a bit of planning it might be useful on a trip around Japan.

Shueitai Type Specimen Book (free)
This is a reproduction of an old specimen book. Doesn’t do much but the typefaces are beautiful especially the kana which tends to be much more expressive than the kanji typeforms.

Stanza (free)
An ebook reader. It seems full featured although I’d prefer to scroll rather than “turn” pages. Reading is doable but not ideal, although I used to read on my Palm and the iPod has a much better screen. Check out the free versions of Lafcadio Hearne‘s first hand accounts about Meiji period Japan as in-app downloads from Project Gutenberg. You might also search out “hana” in Feedbooks if you’d like to attempt to read something in Japanese; also available for download in-app. There are also translations of famous Japanese authors such as Natsume Soseki’s Bothcan.

Related posts:

1. Applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone
2. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
3. Flashcards Deluxe 2.7

Or outside of Japan the DSi XL. But a friend has brought me a Japanese DSi LL a month or so ahead of the European launch. Who needs an Apple iPad?
It’s a really nice gadget. It feels much more substantial than a DS lite. There’s a big difference in build quality. The bigger screens make a huge difference, the pixel count is the same but the size matters it makes it more like a computing device rather than a gaming device. On the Japanese version you get a nice DSi Ware built in dictionary,明鏡国語楽引辞典 , if you haven’t already got something similar already as a cartridge for the DS 漢字そのままDS楽引辞典, and two brain training type games, one kanji, one maths.

A partial drawback is that unlike the DS lite, the interface is localised. It has a Japanese system and that’s all. At this stage I feel confident enough to manage but once it would have been very much a click and hope for the best affair.
Another drawback that I didn’t anticipate is that they’ve changed the power plug shape and the AC/DC adapter isn’t universal volyage. I can’t use my existing USB lead or power supply from my DS lite. I have to get a UK adapter or a step down transformer so I can charge the battery. doh!

The advantages of a Japanese model. I have it a month before most people, it’s a little cheaper, I could have gotten a white one (I went with red, it’s fairly smart) but most of all I will have potential access to Japanese region locked software. I won’t miss the region locked European software as almost all the titles I own are Japanese. I don’t see that changing. I bought my original DS lite to use in learning Japanese. The LL is an upgrade for it.
It is by no means as capable as an iPad might be. BUT it is here now, it’s cheaper and for the moment the software available for learning Japanese and the ability to haave written kanji input makes it much more useful to me.
If the iPad ever gets proper pen input and development of good kanji titles that might well change but I think that will take at least a year or two; an ice age in computing terms.
Now to get my transformer, and a little help from my wife to get the Internet and DS shop working!

Related posts:

1. Japanese on an iPod Touch
2. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
3. Fingerpainting Kanji in OS X

Long ago before I started learning Japanese, FileMaker Pro was one of my favourite programs. Then I started spending most of my time on Japanese and FileMaker was sidelined, especially as it didn’t support Japanese characters at that time. It’s interesting though, I get the same fun from learning Japanese as I did when I solved a problem using FileMaker.

Lately I’ve taken a look at the Kanjidic2 XML file. I’d like to do a little more than a standard dictionary search. The various sites and standalones don’t quite do what I’d like. I’d like to be able to pull out the data for which JLPT2 kanji are also Grade 4 for instance. I’d like to add my own notes, set up my own cross references, link it to Kradfile, link it to websites, get rid of the most annoying Heisig definitions (old-boy for 君 springs to mind). I have ideas for kanji learning I’d like to integrate. Although I wonder if I won’t have Yet Another Japanese Dictionary Reader in what is already a crowded market.

Anyhow to start to do this I need to put it into a database. FileMaker is the only real candidate to do what I want easily.

So I’ve bought myself an early Christmas present of FileMaker Pro 10 Advanced and have set about relearning it and learning how to do some new things with it. Initially I’ve been working with the Kanjidict2 xml file and am learning how to extract the data I want using XSLT and putting that into FileMaker so I can work with it.
It’s fun. Now that I understand a bit more about XML I think it’s a wonderful way to transport data.

The project at Monash University run by Jim Breen and the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group is an amazing resource as well. It seems to be the de-facto standard for Japanese dictionaries on the Web. Once I get the Kanji database started I’ll start looking at integrating JMDict into it.

While importing Kanjidic I noticed some very minor data inconsistencies. (two entries in a single field)
I submitted a bug report to Jim Breen by email and was surprised to get a very quick reply from him. Especially as I hadn’t read his guidelines for emailing him. I would have thought he was too busy to reply to emails like this.

Watch this space (but don’t hold your breath as I’ve very little spare time). Eventually I’ll upload what I come up with to see if it’s useful for other people and to hopefully get some feedback.
I also have a lot of half-written posts for this blog I need to finish off! So little time so much to do!

Related posts:

1. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 1
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2
3. FileMaker Kanji Project – Progress 3

Now when I type an extra character or omit one, Kotoeri will also suggest words near to the one I typed. You can recognise these words because they have their correct reading in brackets beside them. This furigana will also be inserted. By doing it this way I think you are more likely to remember the correction and not become over-reliant on the spellcheck.
Japanese obviously don’t have these problems. Usually if you can say it properly you can spell it properly (in kana). Japanese is a wonderful language in this respect. This is a helpful idea for learners of the language.

As yet I am in two minds. Do I just use the normal dictionary and retype when I can’t get the correct kanji because I misspelled? Or do I open the extra dictionaries when this probably overpopulates the menus and I have to edit the furigana out?

Related posts:

1. Mac OSX
2. MacOS X 10.5 Leopard すごい！
3. Japanese on an iPod Touch

Since MacOS X was first released the built-in support for Japanese has been excellent. Everything you need for Japanese is in the standard installation. It’s there when you want it. It just works; no searching around for install disks. I recently installed Windows XP using Parallels on my Mac. Boy it’s clunky. Mac is the way to go for Japanese. Doubly so because, if you want, with an Intel Mac you can get Windows too.

Japanese support was a big reason for me to go OS X several years ago. It was a deciding factor on Leopard as well.

I’m a bit wary of upgrading my system when everything is working because invariably something I like stops working and all the furniture is moved yet again. So while I have had Leopard since it was released I have only recently installed it, the new Japanese features were part of the decision.

First and foremost for Japanese support is the Kotoeri input system (known on other systems as the IME). On the Mac this is activated in the International System Preference. I choose romaji, hiragana and katakana; and I turn off the national keyboard to tidy up the input menu. I don’t like those flags really.

By choosing hiragana input when you type in Latin characters hiragana will appear. ha, hi, fu, he, ho becomes は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ. nihonngo becomes にほんご, and when you press the space bar this converts to kanji, 日本語. Simple. Just be careful the kanji you choose are the right ones. You may also be presented with a choice by the system in the form of a pop-up menu.

This is all as before. The huge, fantastic, change is that now Kotoeri is in English! Both the help files and the preferences. You are no longer guessing or laboriously translating in order to get the best from the input system. Finally I can understand how to add custom readings of words I use a lot like friends names so the system doesn’t mangle them.

Another way to input kanji is by using the character palette. This is organised like a traditional dictionary. If you don’t know a character’s reading and you can recognise its radical you can look it up by radical and stroke count using the character palette. It’s a bit laborious but might be useful if you need to look up a printed kanji. Once it’s a digital character it is then easy to do a dictionary search or reverse convert it to hiragana.

Lastly you could use a Japanese keyboard. Although it may be difficult to source one outside Japan. I bought a nice little Apple wireless keyboard the last time I was in Japan. However it’s not as easy as I thought. It’s very slow to relearn a keyboard layout, even when I just do two finger hunt and peck typing. The pluses are having hard wired keys to jump between romaji and kana input. I’ve also found it useful when using Maniackers kana fonts.

The next big item in Leopard is the inclusion of Japanese dictionaries. This is big. As far as I am aware there are no other foreign dictionaries included with OS X. Although “translate” is a very misleading term for Apple to use in relation to using a dictionary.

There are 3 dictionaries from Shogakukan. A Japanese dictionary, a Japanese to English dictionary and a Japanese synonyms dictionary. These are primarily for Japanese speakers but they are very useful for learners as well.
Once you are at the Intermediate stage it is a good idea to try to use an all Japanese dictionary if you can. It is better to understand a word in reference to its own language rather than to rely on English headwords.
However a word will be searched across all the dictionaries so you can quickly jump over to the Japanese – English dictionary to get an English meaning. To go from English to Japanese is a little harder. You can search an English word in this dictionary but the results will be all kanji. To get a reading you may need to click on a kanji word which will give you a reading for it in its own separate entry. The synonym dictionary has a similar function to a thesaurus.

Indexing means lookups are superfast. All dictionaries can be searched at once and everything is cross linked so it’s also fast to browse topics in the dictionaries.
I still need JEDict. JEDict’s searches are slow by comparison but the dictionary files in JEDict are much simpler. Maybe someday someone will compile Edict and the ALC dictionaries for Mac’s dictionaries. Even enabling Dictionary to send a search to Denshi Jisho and ALC‘s websites in the same way wikipedia can be searched from the Dictionary would be very useful. (as yet I can’t find a way to implement this functionality)

Lastly there is expanded character support for JIS2004 and Hyogaiji.
This all beyond me but must be a good thing. Hyogaiji are characters beyond the official sets taught in schools that are often used in newspapers. JIS2004 appears to be the standard for the glyph shapes of printed kanji. From what I can see 168 characters from the previous standard have been slightly changed. It’s interesting to see this evolution but they don’t seem to be common characters.

What’s missing?
Handwriting recognition. I’d really like to be able to use a tablet to input kanji. Windows can do it to a limited extent in the IME why not Mac? In fact Nintendo DS can do it. They licensed a really good handwriting recognition software from Decuma. (It also used to be included with Sony Clies) I wish Apple or a third party would license it for the Mac.

Voices. Again Windows wins out here. There are some supurb and inexpensive 16bit voices available for Windows. If only Mac could implement the SAPI5 standard, which seems to be where voice technology has gone leaving MacInTalk behind.

But regardless of these missing features, I find Leopard a really good place to work in Japanese.

Related posts:

1. Mac OSX
2. Japanese Spellcheck
3. Maniackers Design Fonts

Alex Chapin (MacGraw-Hill)

While waiting on a friend in a bookshop I wandered towards the languages section as usual. I found this reasonably priced little title from MacGraw-Hill. It effectively turns your iPod into a talking phrasebook. One less book to carry if you’re taking your iPod to Japan anyhow. (Although books don’t run out of power or break when you drop them).

The package consists of a CD with 1621 files on it, that’s 5.4 hours and 314.2MB of content, and a booklet of all the phrases and also some suggestions on using it. All the files are clearly recorded by a native speaker. They are broken down into sections using Artist and Album to make finding a phrase quite easy. The text of the phrase is in English and Romaji in it’s title and the Lyrics feature contains the entire section in English, romaji and kanji.

The way I tend to use a phrasebook is to check on something and refresh my memory before piling in to a language transaction like reserving tickets. I think this product would be as good as any print phrasebook for most uses.
For language learning I think it’ll help me expand my vocabulary a little and help give me phrases to instantly insert into my conversation attempts.

Well worth the £10 it costs.

Related posts:

1. Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary
2. Japanese on an iPod Touch
3. Basic Japanese Through Comics (parts 1 and 2)