5 posts tagged with "Japanese"

Overview​

This NuGet package provides a C# interface to easily query and fetch kanji data from the Kanji Alive public API. This package is designed to simplify development of Japanese learning desktop and web applications on the C#/.NET platform.

Usage​

All of the API endpoints are accessible using the KanjiAliveClient. To use the client, simply instantiate while passing your Mashape API key as the sole constructor parameter. You can obtain an API key here.

KanjiAliveClient client = new KanjiAliveClient("MY_API_KEY");

Nested inside of the main client are three subclients that mirror the structure of the API endpoints: AdvancedSearchClient, BasicSearchClient, and KanjiDetailsClient. The endpoints are exposed as asynchronous instance methods, so be sure to await them.

<List<KanjiSimpleResponse>> apiResponse = await client.AdvancedSearchClient.SearchByKanjiStrokeNumber(5);

Contributing​

In order to obfuscate your API key for integration tests, add your API key to the Windows Registry as a string value with the key set to MASHAPE_API_KEY. This allows you to discreetly fetch your key at runtime instead of exposing it in the source code.

KanjiAliveClient client = new KanjiAliveClient(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("MASHAPE_API_KEY"));

Please ensure that any code additions follow the styling laid out in the .DotSettings file and that all unit and integration tests pass before submitting a pull request. For break fixes, please add tests. For any questions, issues, or enhancements, please use the issue tracker for this repository.

Build Status​

Thanks​

Special thanks to the Kanji Alive team for not only providing their kanji data in a clean, consumable format, but also for hosting a RESTful API to expose it too. Note that if you would like to include this kanji data locally in your project, you can download the language data and media directly from this repo.

I finished the first thousand kanji recently, and I can honestly say that in addition to learning a slew of new characters, I learned a lot about my study habits as well. I wanted to share some of the knowledge I obtained along the way:

• Goals are good, deadlines are bad: When approaching the Heisig method, it's a great idea to have goals or at least a general idea of how many kanji per day you want to learn and how long it's going to take you to get through all 2200 kanji for common use. I decided that I wanted to finish the first 1000 characters by the first of January, and I made the mistake of turning a goal into a deadline. During finals time, I shirked my kanji studies in order to study for my classes, which was obviously the smart choice. However, after finals were over, I attempted to compensate for time lost, which did not go as well as planned. On one particular day, I added 100 characters, a mistake that I'm still paying for. I'm convinced that there's a magic number of kanji per day for everyone that works. It's good in theory to make up for lost ground, but if you have to spend a great deal of time afterwards reviewing and relearning what you've already covered, then you're really not saving any time.
• Always review before adding new kanji: There are going to be some days where you are too busy or simply need a break from learning kanji. I often found myself choosing between adding new characters or reviewing old ones in time crunches. I would say that for the most part, it is absolutely better to review than add during these times. When you're just starting out, reviewing all of the kanji that you've learned is easy, and it seems easy enough to remember them all. When you start having a lot of kanji to review, constantly refreshing your memory is crucial and equally time-consuming.
• If you are not in a studious mood, do not bother studying: I often found myself trying to force myself to study new kanji at 2am after a long night of homework. This is a horrible idea, and those are the characters that you're not going to remember. For me, there is an optimal time to study kanji, which is a couple of hours after I wake up. I want to make sure I'm (for lack of a better word) "in the zone" before I get started. Give it a shot, and you may find that there is a time that works best for you to study. If you're dead tired or simply not in the mood to deal with it, then don't. It's that simple.
• Go easy on yourself: Recently, I found myself getting really frustrated when I mixed up or forgot some kanji characters. It's highly unlikely by the time you finish the Heisig method that you'll remember every character perfectly. Remember that what you're attempting to learn is what Japanese people spend years learning in school. You will forget some, and that's absolutely fine. At the same time, it is important to hone in on these characters that you miss the most, and eventually, you will get them down.
• Keep it fun: This is always a difficult one for me. As a busy college student, I know that your free time is precious. I encourage you to make the most of it. Japanese is not all kanji, but it is crucial. Make sure that you're enjoying what you're doing, and reward yourself for trudging through the kanji for common use.

頑張って！

There is a wealth of tools, applications, and media available to facilitate the study of Japanese. It is truly amazing people managed to learn without them. The following is a list of these tools and brief description of how I integrate them into my personal studies.

Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (Volumes I and II)​

James Heisig's timeless method is a structured approach to learning kanji, the Chinese characters that are pervasive in written Japanese. Volume I guides students through a mapping process of Chinese characters to English meanings (for example 人 to person) using anecdotes to help students remember radicals, components of kanji, and stroke order. It is very important to note that this alone is not a perfect method of learning Japanese. There are many words that are comprised of kanji whose corresponding Heisig meanings make no sense whatsoever when combined. Not to mention that you can memorize all 2042 characters in the Heisig kanji for common use list and still be completely illiterate. This is where Volume II comes in. After (or simultaneously if you're particularly daring) a grueling trek through Volume I, Volume II revisits the same kanji, but this time gives the readings and example vocabulary along with them. While traversing this long process, your vocabulary and reading will become exponentially better. Upon completing this, you have not achieved fluency, rather a new beginning in your ability to learn new vocabulary at an accelerated pace.

Actually staying with the process is a challenge of its own. If you are fortunate enough to own an iOS device, there is an app available for around 10 USD, which is even less than the physical copy of Heisig's book. The app is nearly perfect, incorporating both volumes into a unified application that allows you to switch between them with the push of a button. Also included is a well-developed flashcard system that allows you to create study lists and promotes repeated practice. The pseudo-random order of the flashcards seems to be an algorithm that aims to review specific kanji at optimal times, usually based on common radicals or groupings. I can honestly say that if it weren't for this application, I likely would have dropped out of Heisig yet again.

If you don't have an iOS device, all is not lost. There is a free piece of software called Anki that offers flashcard review for Heisig. The beauty of Anki is its ability to easily find and download decks, which are crafted by its extremely dedicated community. There is also an Android (and iOS) version of Anki that allows you to sync your desktop flashcards to your mobile device. If the Anki flashcards are not enough to get you started, you can also purchase physical copies of Heisig's books via Amazon and other online retailers.

No matter how you do it, memorizing the kanji for common use simply cannot be avoided.

Feeds: Twitter Versus the News​

While trudging through Heisig, it is important to actually apply the kanji that you are memorizing. The best way to do this is to have constant and varied reading material. Any Japanese student knows that the Japanese we are taught in the classroom is extremely different than colloquial Japanese. When compiling a list of reading material, remember to have a rich mixture of formal language and vernacular.

The best news site that I've come across for Japanese reading and listening practice is the Fuji News Network. The format of the news is absolutely perfect. I cannot stress this enough. Find an article that sounds interesting and there is usually a video embedded on the page that has an anchor reading nearly the exact text below. Personally, I like to watch the video just to see what I can understand first. After that I translate the article, select key vocabulary, and watch the video again once or twice more to get down exactly what they're saying. This is amazing practice, because it offers excellent listening and reading practice simultaneously. Best of all, if you have no idea what they're saying, you can read the passage below and try again. This integrated reinforcement of listening and reading is a large part of my daily regiment. It's so simple, yet so powerful.

On the other hand, if you look at my Twitter feed, it's all young and famous Japanese people who barrage their followers with colloquialisms about the trials and tribulations of their day to day lives. While maybe not phrases or vernacular that I can use often, it offers a refreshing contrast to the seriousness of the news and helps me to be well-rounded in my reading.

The idea that I'm trying to convey here is that it's important to have a spectrum of reading material in order to expose yourself to a variety of vocabulary and grammar structures (whether they are appropriate or not).

Movies, Books, and Music​

...are hard to come by. Especially if you go about the legal channels. I found out early on in my studies that iTunes, Amazon, etc. require a Japanese credit card in order to purchase Japanese goods from their sites. While this is incredibly frustrating, there are many legal ways to enjoy Japanese media.

Grooveshark and J-Lyric​

While somewhat inconvenient if you're away from Wi-Fi or decent cellular coverage, Grooveshark offers an excellent selection of Japanese music to grace your ears with. The suggested artists are usually very helpful, and I have expanded my Japanese music library significantly because of this site. Spotify's and Pandora's Japanese music selection seems somewhat dated, but both are still a viable source of audio media.

J-Lyric.net is a pretty cool site simply because it provides the functionality that you would expect from any other Japanese site: the ability to interact with the text on the page. So far, it's the only lyric site that I've been able to use Rikaikun/Rikaichan (browser extensions that I will discuss later on) with.

Netflix and YouTube​

As it grows in popularity with its absurdly low prices, Netflix's selection keeps on improving, including its selection of Japanese films. While most of them are J-Horror movies that offer extremely gender-specific dialogue, it is a fun way to spend a couple hours and learn some new phrases.

You can find pretty much anything on YouTube, and dorama and PVs are no exception.

Japan the Beautiful and Myself​

In my humble opinion, Japanese literature is the most advanced and refined in the world. There is a world of quality Japanese literature, classic and contemporary, that is simply unmatched. After taking a Japanese literature class, I've developed quite a fascination with it, and I can tell you first hand that coming by literature in its original Japanese is often difficult or pricey. A lot of older short stories and poetry are sometimes available for free, but for the most part, it seems like you have to shell out the cash if you want the real thing. Short stories are a great place to start in terms of reading and translation, rather than delving into a full-fledged novel. My only caveat is that often the text is not copyable, which can make translating difficult without the proper tools.

Dictionary Tools​

Rikaikun and Rikaichan are two browser extensions for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox respectively. Rather than wasting time copying and pasting text into an online dictionary, these two tools allow you to hover over text to provide meanings and readings for kanji compounds and other diction. You can also view single kanji, their meaning, and even their place in Heisig. The sheer amount of time that these tools save in translating is staggering, however, make sure that you don't use them as a crutch. As for which tool to choose, it should be noted that Rikaichan, the Firefox version, allows you to download a dictionary of names as well. Sadly, the Chrome version does not offer the same functionality. While I personally prefer Google Chrome as a browser, I often find my self using Firefox solely because of the names dictionary.

大辞林 (Daijirin) is a real Japanese dictionary app for Japanese people available for iOS. While the application is expensive, it provides extremely useful functionality for reading printed materials: the ability to draw a kanji rather than using radical-building tools, which can be slow and often difficult to use. This is definitely a tool for more advanced Japanese students, because the definitions are in Japanese as well.

Without the neatly defined classroom aspect the first couple of years of Japanese study, it may be unclear what you should be doing or even where to start. So, let me define a formal outline of how (in my humble opinion) one should approach Japanese literacy.

• Learn the kana (hiragana and katakana)
• Learn basic vocabulary and grammar structures
• Become adept at reading hiragana and katakana compounds
• Introduce yourself to very basic kanji
• Traverse through Heisig's Remembering the Kanji vol. I while increasing reading difficulty and adding more vocabulary
• Traverse through Heisig's Remembering the Kanji vol. II while increasing reading difficulty and adding more vocabulary
• Continue expanding vocabulary and reading material
• Literacy

From what I've personally seen on the internet, there seems to be a great deal of resources for achieving steps 1-4, which can be completed in a few months. However, I feel that steps 5-8 are where students (including myself) tend to stagnate, and there simply are not as many resources. Heisig's method is impeccable, but it's a process in and of itself. There is somewhat of an art to perfectly blending all aspects of Japanese study into a unified method. As a student beginning in step 5, I'm documenting my journey from here until fluency, both for myself and in the hopes that someone who is stuck where I was can benefit from my experience.

In the next series of posts, I address:

• How to use Heisig's method
• Indispensable tools and applications
• Sources of reading material and other Japanese media
• Integration and building a daily routine

Around a month ago, I began my second attempt at learning the 2042 Kanji for Common Use (常用漢字) using Heisig's method. It's a grueling, daunting, and equally rewarding task that measures dedication, creativity, ingenuity, and sheer memorization skills. While one may be able to become skilled at conversation without learning these characters and their corresponding readings, it is simply impossible to advance beyond elementary school reading without rigorous study of kanji. Despite having taken traditional Japanese classes for three years, I only know how to read around 300 characters strictly from what I learned in my classes. That leaves the vast majority for independent study. While classes are often grammar and vocabulary intensive, they simply do not emphasize kanji, ultimately yielding largely illiterate students.

When I was a second-year Japanese student, I attempted for the first time Heisig's Remembering the Kanji method, which seems to be widely accepted as the standard of independent Japanese students like myself for memorizing the kanji for common use. The physical book is available through online retailers like Amazon for around 20 USD. While the method at its core is timeless, relying on a physical book for kanji practice is obsolete. Through this strategy, I was offered comical anecdotes that were intended to aid in the memorization of combinations of radicals. However, for the sake of reviewing, one has to make either their own physical or digital flashcards. While Anki, a commonly used community-based flashcard program, offers some great decks to begin with, it was unable to keep my interest, and I eventually called it quits around 400.

For a long time, I drifted. I would search up song lyrics from some of my favorite Japanese bands and expand my vocabulary, but my kanji writing skills simply stagnated. For a while, I felt as though just by learning new words I was improving my kanji skills. However, I soon realized that I was misidentifying kanji, because I would only remember certain radicals. While this may allow one to improve reading to a degree, I found that I was constantly mixing up characters, if I could even remember them at all. It was from this period I developed a central theory of my kanji study:

If you cannot write a kanji character, then you cannot properly read it.

So what brought me back to Heisig's method? A goal, several iOS applications, a Google Chrome extension, and a new outlook on the learning process. Stay tuned for how technology can be used to increase learning exponentially, as well as my own personal Japanese learning set up.

頑張れ！