For those interested, Characterizer for Chrome is available now:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detai...jbnnbkioig

It includes an RTK profile so you can practice even while you are using the web in English. Other more general profiles are also available.

A bit about Characterizer:
Characterizer replaces the first letter of an English word (or the entire word, based on your peference) with a kanji character.

Pros of Characterizer:
* Practice while you are doing something you'd be doing anyhow (using the web in English).
* Keep kanji alive in your mind even if your normal life doesn't allow for as much study time as you'd like.
* When you are ready to graduate from RTK, the more general profiles replace words based on the (multiple) possible kanji meanings rather than a single keyword, so you can get a sense of the varied meanings of a particular kanji.

Cons of Characterizer:
* It isn't the same thing as reading Japanese. It doesn't teach you the Japanese readings of kanji (although, if you want to see readings, you can use it with rikaichan/kun).
* Some people worry that specifically in the case of RTK, where Characterizer replaces a keyword with its kanji, it could result in the kanji being strongly associated with the English keyword.
* It doesn`t have any artificial intelligence in selecting word definitions. For example, it doesn't know how to tell the difference between all of the different forms of bow, like bow and arrow, bow on a present, bow of a ship, bow as in to your boss, etc., which would correspond to different characters. Thus, it is only accurate on a per word level without context, not a per sentence level.

Cool - I'll have a look into this when I find some free time. Looks like a great way to practice recognition in context (besides reading Japanese, obviously...).

I'd have to customise the RTK profile though, since I've changed quite a few keywords.

jaystarkey Wrote:Cons of Characterizer:
* It isn't the same thing as reading Japanese. It doesn't teach you the Japanese readings of kanji (although, if you want to see readings, you can use it with rikaichan).
* Some people worry that specifically in the case of RTK, where Characterizer replaces a keyword with its kanji, it could result in the kanji being strongly associated with the English keyword.

The biggest con is that the replacement is done purely based on the English word, even if the English word doesn't actually match the kanji's meaning. So you'll get "Let's 練ractice Japanese," but you'll also get "I have a friend in private 練ractice" and "It is common 練ractice to wear a suit to work" even though those two sentences have nothing to do with the meaning of 練.

This is one of my favorite learning methods. I've used a short Ruby script like Characterizer / Kanjilish to replace keywords with kanji in plain text books, and I have already read multiple books in that format. I think it even makes the reading experience better, because it forces you to pay more attention to processing text.

yudantaiteki Wrote:The biggest con is that the replacement is done purely based on the English word, even if the English word doesn't actually match the kanji's meaning.

I'm trying to learn the exact RTK keywords, and I already know the senses of most ambiguous keywords, so it doesn't really matter. Actually "errors" like "private 練" or "Chapter 吾" can be even be helpful.

Edit: Chrome crashes every time I try to install Characterizer (OS X 10.8.2 / 24.0.1312.57). Should I send you a crash report or something?

Edit 2: Never mind, installing any other extension crashes it as well. I should have tested that first.

lauri_ranta Wrote:Chrome crashes every time I try to install characterizer (OS X 10.8.2 / 24.0.1312.57). Should I send you a crash report or something?

Sorry you're having install difficulty. Extensively tested in 24.0.1312.57 (OS X 10.7.5) without any problems. Send me a message with more details and we can come up with a solution (when/how exactly it crashes, any messages chrome gives, what other extensions you have installed, etc.).

Just some feedback. I noticed it's only possible to edit the profiles character by character. I'd like to import my RTK keywords, but I'm not going to scroll through more than 2000 lines, checking each one. :-)

I noticed the profiles are XML files, so I guess I could write an import script, although the existence of the XML files were not documented anywhere - I just poked around the extension directory (for Firefox - have not had a look at Chrome yet). I'll probably write a script that takes the export provided by this site and converts it to a profile... unless somebody beats me to it.

[RawToast]

Thanks for the heads-up. Even though I don't use Chrome, this made me instantly go and find the Firefox plugin.

Yeah that's what I did. :-)

I used it for a bit now and decided it's not for me though, so I'm not going to spend any time on an import script after all.

This is awesome

Thankfully I am in the final stretches of RTK1...I could seeing this being a bother to selectively remove characters but thankfully I only have ~100 to go and can overlook those for now.

It is great to exercise this new part of my brain just reading casually, as I am still a ways off from diving into source material. This is a nice compromise