JFC is a basic Japanese flash card program designed to aid students learning Japanese. Much of JFC is designed to basically mimic what one would normally do with paper flash cards, except on a computer. There are a number of potential advantages to using a computer flash card program over a normal paper system:
1. One does not need a big stack of paper … [ Read more ]
Source: “Glenn Rosenthal” | Subject: Software / Tools
This is a free Japanese word processor (and more) program that was originally based on the JWP free program (though note that JWPce is a different program from JWP and has a different feature set).
Source: “Glenn Rosenthal” | Subject: Software / Tools
Well, this is the Kanji a Day and Grammar a Day email service from yours truly – just adding a link to it here to be thorough…
Source: “Yookoso.com” | Subjects: Grammar, Kanji
I haven’t always been impressed with About.com, but the guide for the Japanese Language pages is really good and the newsletter is the best way to keep up on new content posted (and it is usually good content)
Source: “About.com / Namiko Abe” | Subject: Miscellaneous | Other
Japanese school children first learn hiragana and katakana, then 1006 kanji characters (Education Kanji) through grade one to six. With “Kanji Land” lessons, you will learn all of the 1006 kanji characters.
A new kanji character is introduced every day. First you will learn 80 kanji characters which are taught in grade one at Japanese school, then 160 for grade two, and it goes … [ Read more ]
Source: “About.com / Namiko Abe” | Subject: Kanji
This site uses the the Kougouyaku Translation (Colloquial Translation) of the Bible to study Japanese. Basically, you can view each book chapter (currently only the Gospel of John) in three columns – an English translation, Japanese with furigana and Japanese without furigana. You can even hide the English column for enhanced study effort.
The site also features a weekly grammar example taken from the reading … [ Read more ]
Source: “Bible Japanese Page” | Subject: Miscellaneous | Other
This is one section of the Bible Japanese Page in which you will find a weekly grammar lesson that draws from readings of the Bible (currently the Gospel of John). Useful even if you’re not Christian…
Source: “Bible Japanese Page” | Subject: Grammar
This is a great site! Enter the address of a webpage which has Japanese encoding into the URL box. In the Dictionary next to that, choose the type of translation you want to perform and hit GO. Now the new page will show pop-ups in English of the meanings of the words as you pass your mouse over them. Similar to Rikai.com – but maybe … [ Read more ]
Source: “POPjisyo” | Subject: Translate
Present day Japanese has evolved very differently from European languages. One relatively unique aspect of Japanese is the diversity of its gender specific constructs and their usage. In the current state of Japanese and its many dialects, speaker gender plays an important role in word choice, sentence structure, tone of voice and more generally the ways in which a person can present him/herself with the … [ Read more ]
Source: “Alexander Schonfeld” | Subject: Articles
This is a Tetris-like matching game (ie. things move and you can’t stop them) to make studying Japanese Kanji and the Chinese Hanzi characters fun. Basically, you have to match:
“kanji character”+”phonetic reading”+”English meaning”
to score points.
Current word lists follow the Basic Kanji Book series:
Basic Kanji Book vol. 1-2
Chieko Kano, Yuri Shimizu, Hiroko … [ Read more ]
Source: “Coolest.com” | Subject: Software / Tools
The verb “suru (to do)” has many extended uses that occur quite often.
Source: “About.com / Namiko Abe” | Subject: Grammar
This is a collection of easy Japanese phrases. Speaking Japanese shouldn’t be too complicated even for beginners. Try these simple phrases whenever you have a chance. The more you practice, the better you get! The Japanese writings for each phrase are included for your reading and writing practice. New phrases will be added every week.
Editor’s Note: one nice aspect of this feature is that … [ Read more ]
Source: “About.com / Namiko Abe” | Subject: Vocabulary / Phrases
According to several of my Japanese friends, this is the best online dictionary available. That said, it is far more useful to native speakers than non-native speakers. Still, this is a great “secondary” source to help when your primary source (e.g. WWWJDIC) leaves you unsure. Another strength is its sample sentences which really help figure out if a word is appropriate for your intended use. … [ Read more ]
Source: “SPACE ALC” | Subject: Translate
The Java Kanji Flashcard 500 project is designed to help students of written Japanese learn the 500 most commonly occuring Chinese characters, or kanji. This Java applet displays Japanese in any browser that supports Java 1.0. You do not need a Japanese browser or operating system to study these kanji.
Each kanji character is displayed on a “card” containing a large kanji character, its on … [ Read more ]
Source: “Stephen Ryner Jr.” | Subject: Kanji
This site lets you study Japanese, and especially kanji, while singing along to your favorite songs and practicing for your next karaoke!
The targeted audience being very specific, it’s not likely that this site will appeal to many people. Actually I made it for myself only, but hopefully it may also be helpful or interesting to others. 🙂
If :
– you are learning Japanese
– … [ Read more ]
Source: “Patrick Benny” | Subjects: Music – General, Video / Audio
This 8 page .pdf document is one of the free sample documents from Lawrence Howell’s Kanji Master Program. It lists and categorizes the 214 Kanji radicals.
Source: “Lawrence J. Howell” | Subject: Kanji
Find lots of useful background information on Kanji on this page.
– Section I A Brief History of the Characters
– Section II The Four Types of Characters
– Section III Points of Note Regarding the Characters
– Section IV ON and KUN Readings of the Characters in Japan
Source: “Lawrence J. Howell” | Subject: Kanji
Lawrence Howell, creator of the Kanji Master Program, has put together this interesting and informative Kanji FAQ.
Source: “Lawrence J. Howell” | Subject: Kanji
A bookmarklet is a tool you add to your browser nav bar to do some task. In this case, there are two bookmarklets, which are easy to install and will add two small buttons on your links toolbar. Both allow you to do dictionary lookups directly from the page you are on instead of having to open a separate online dictionary page (you do the … [ Read more ]
Source: “Patrick Benny” | Subjects: Language Study, Translate
Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) offers this short but informative explanation of what kanji are and where they come from – good for beginners.
Source: “Wikipedia” | Subject: Kanji