Hey all,

I launched a website this week called http://www.kougoninja.com
As a learner of Japanese I have always been looking for resources about colloquial expressions, but most resources I found were aimed towards JLPT. In the end I decided to make a website myself and launched it a few days ago. I hope you can take a look, but note that the website is nowhere near perfect yet. Therefore, all your suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

KougoNinja Wrote:Hey all,

I launched a website this week called http://www.kougoninja.com
As a learner of Japanese I have always been looking for resources about colloquial expressions, but most resources I found were aimed towards JLPT. In the end I decided to make a website myself and launched it a few days ago. I hope you can take a look, but note that the website is nowhere near perfect yet. Therefore, all your suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Hi there, I took a look at your website, and it looks like something I'd like to explore further.

My one suggestion: is it possible to have romaji transcriptions of all the Japanese writing? That would help those that haven't mastered the kanji yet. Thanks.

I really like the idea, the methodology (asking a native speaker if an expression is "real"), and the amount of effort you've put in so far! I'm sure you'll have to go down from one article a day but this is definitely a useful and important service you're providing. Reminds me of occasional posts that show up on Language Log (which, unlike your site, suffers from a lack of anime/manga references) deconstructing unusual Chinese or Japanese signs/phrases (e.g., today's, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13608)

What a great idea. I really like the format - it looks like a lot of work though, I hope you'll find the motivation to keep it up

John555: I thought about it before I launched the website, but i decided not to add this. As i can't expect everybody to know all Joyo-Kanji, which I myself don't know as well, I added a link to RikaiKun and Rikaichan on the right side of the website.

Thanks for your positive reactions. This definitely motivates me to work hard on my website. It is true that an article isn't made in five minutes, but for this reason I learn a lot myself while making the articles, so I don't mind.

I am moving to Japan for a year in September with a MEXT scholarship. I am thinking about making Jvlog video's and articles about Japan, and not just the language.

I really like the idea! There used to be a similar site which used clips from anime which I used to use a lot when I was a beginner but it's long since gone dead. I'm sure lots of people will get something out of this if you keep it going Soz I couldn't help myself posting a correction on one of the articles xD

I've just finished my year at keio on MEXT myself (I'm literally going back to the UK on the 31st T_T). I hope you have a great time like I did

Ah, that was you! No need to be sorry, thanks a lot!

I just came back from 3 month stay in Nagasaki, so am looking forward to going back for a whole year this time.

EDIT: Not sure if you guys tried to watch the きりがない video in the corresponding article, but it works again. Well, at least for now.

KougoNinja Wrote:As i can't expect everybody to know all Joyo-Kanji, which I myself don't know as well, I added a link to RikaiKun and Rikaichan on the right side of the website.

It's still a lot of trouble to keep clicking on other links when you don't know the kanji.

john555 Wrote:It's still a lot of trouble to keep clicking on other links when you don't know the kanji.

No, you just mouse over the words. Or with the furiganizer extension for your browser of choice (Furigana Inserter for Firefox, IPA Furigana for Chrome, http://www.hiragana.jp/ for any browser), not even that.

john555 Wrote:

KougoNinja Wrote:As i can't expect everybody to know all Joyo-Kanji, which I myself don't know as well, I added a link to RikaiKun and Rikaichan on the right side of the website.

It's still a lot of trouble to keep clicking on other links when you don't know the kanji.

But if you know the kana you just need to mouse over the words with rikaikun or rikaichan. Do this enough and you'll probably get used to kanji anyway.

New one:
http://www.kougoninja.com/expressions/sonhanai.html

Vempele Wrote:

john555 Wrote:It's still a lot of trouble to keep clicking on other links when you don't know the kanji.

No, you just mouse over the words. Or with the furiganizer extension for your browser of choice (Furigana Inserter for Firefox, IPA Furigana for Chrome, http://www.hiragana.jp/ for any browser), not even that.

You just need to mouseover. I prefer sites not having furigana by default - it gives me a chance to practice (if furigana is there, I can't help it, I read it). Besides... people who don't know even the joyou kanji probably aren't studying more advanced and miscellaneous slang, right?


The site looks good! I read one article - I enjoyed how you slipped counting manga volumes in there. Well done.

jessem Wrote:

Vempele Wrote:

john555 Wrote:It's still a lot of trouble to keep clicking on other links when you don't know the kanji.

No, you just mouse over the words. Or with the furiganizer extension for your browser of choice (Furigana Inserter for Firefox, IPA Furigana for Chrome, http://www.hiragana.jp/ for any browser), not even that.

You just need to mouseover. I prefer sites not having furigana by default - it gives me a chance to practice (if furigana is there, I can't help it, I read it). Besides... people who don't know even the joyou kanji probably aren't studying more advanced and miscellaneous slang, right?

The thing is that john555 specifically wants a solution that would provide romaji, not furigana. Normally using rikaichan or any spinoff thereof would be a perfect solution when the difficulty of not knowing how to read kanji is concerned, but here it is not.

Even though it is absurd to me that someone keeps pushing for using romaji, thanks to a quick google search if people really want a tool to convert into romaji then check out http://nihongo.j-talk.com . I found it with a brief google search, and you can input a website for it to parse and process. It will probably provide more utility than persistently requesting resource authors add romaji transcriptions, which at least on this site of all Japanese language sites is more helpful for only a small minority. Or maybe I am just out of my mind at there is actually a silent majority. Anyway there's the best solution I think, given the OP does not intend to provide his own romaji transcriptions.

jessem Wrote:.... Besides... people who don't know even the joyou kanji probably aren't studying more advanced and miscellaneous slang, right?


The site looks good! I read one article - I enjoyed how you slipped counting manga volumes in there. Well done.

Thanks for your positive feedback. I believe that learning things in context is the best way. This is also why I strongly believe that anyone should make their own Anki decks (beginners maybe not). This way you personally know where and in what situation you heard or read a word. By using some Japanese instead of English in the proper context, I hope I can provide new vocabulary in context, without being a 100% in Japanese.

I do want to clarify one thing. It might be because I am not as familiar as i thought with the word "Slang", but the Expressions on the site are not slang. They are natural expressions which aren't limited by "youngster use". I wish I knew all Joyo-Kanji. No offence by the way =)

I have a question on the side, did you guys notice the Facebook section on the right of the website? Primarily thanks to this topic I had about a 1000 pageviews yesterday, but not even one like on the Facebook page. I am hoping to build a small community around the website to discuss Japanese etc.

Flamerokz Wrote:The thing is that john555 specifically wants a solution that would provide romaji, not furigana.

And both of the browser extension furiganizers I mentioned have an option for romaji.

Flamerokz Wrote:Even though it is absurd to me that someone keeps pushing for using romaji, thanks to a quick google search if people really want a tool to convert into romaji then check out http://nihongo.j-talk.com . I found it with a brief google search, and you can input a website for it to parse and process. It will probably provide more utility than persistently requesting resource authors add romaji transcriptions, which at least on this site of all Japanese language sites is more helpful for only a small minority. Or maybe I am just out of my mind at there is actually a silent majority. Anyway there's the best solution I think, given the OP does not intend to provide his own romaji transcriptions.

Thanks Flamerokz for the link. Eventually I will be focusing on reading kanji/kana but RIGHT NOW as I study grammatical structures and vocabulary I prefer to use romaji because it "sticks" better that way and it's a lot faster for me to process.

For some reason I thought the OP was a "she", not a "he".

100% He, right here haha

KougoNinja Wrote:100% He, right here haha

Sorry!

Quote:I do want to clarify one thing. It might be because I am not as familiar as i thought with the word "Slang", but the Expressions on the site are not slang. They are natural expressions which aren't limited by "youngster use". I wish I knew all Joyo-Kanji. No offence by the way

Ah, I guess in my head the words "colloquial" and "slang" are interchangeable, but really it's more of a sliding scale that goes formal/textbook language -> colloquial/actual everyday stuff -> slang. My mistake.

Anyway, good luck with the website!

EDIT: about your facebook thing...I just went to look for that. Two points. First, I have to scroll DOWN to see the facebook section on my screen, and there's no other reason I'd scroll down on that first page (I didn't even know anything was down there), so it's a pretty unnatural action. I'd move your facebook ad to the top of the page, right where people's eyes will go. Second, I did say "facebook ad" - the banner was actually blocked by my adblock, and so I only saw "like us on facebook!" with no link to that actual facebook. Not everyone uses adblock, but still, find a way to get around that or you'll lose a good chunk of your audience.

Vempele Wrote:

Flamerokz Wrote:The thing is that john555 specifically wants a solution that would provide romaji, not furigana.

And both of the browser extension furiganizers I mentioned have an option for romaji.

That was my mistake, sorry! I'm not familiar with either extension so I assumed functionality by the name.

Thanks for the feedback Jessem, I will look into it.

I am thinking about doing a series of playing, Pokemon Black/White 2 (because of the Kanji option) in Japanese, with commentary. Play about 10 to 15 minutes for each "episode" and then in a correspoding article further discuss some vocabulary, grammar, expressions seen in the " episode". How do you gys think about that? Any ideas?

I'm not a beginner anymore, nor am I fan of Pokemon, but that sounds like it would be really amazing. I tried reading some of the "Breaking into Japanese Literature" books or some such, but I found it too material too boring, so I ultimately gave up. I'm sure you would definitely have an audience somewhere who'd be interested.

I agree that this sounds like a really cool idea, and I'd be interested in watching such a series. Many people (such as myself) are playing Japanese video games in parallel to their studies, and it's impressive how little resources for learners you can find on those - so you'd definitely be filling a gap that needs to be filled.

I was hoping for this response! Any ideas regarding a format? My own level of Japanese isn't as high as the idea of having an own website about the language might suggest. Therefore, I think just playing by reading out loud in Japanese, translating to English and some regular commentary. I don't want it to be too serious. In the corresponding page on the website, I will post the video, vocab list of unfamiliar words/grammatical structures etc. I might throw in playing Live, so i can react to questions asked realtime.

It depends on the time you have to devote to doing the videos I guess, ideally, I think a properly edited video skipping the uninteresting parts would be ideal. However, this is a lot of work, and you might be more comfortable just doing live commentary, which is perfectly fine too. I guess it all boils down to how comfortable you feel about doing that kind of stuff. If it's complemented by an article, then editing becomes less of a worry.