Hi there,

Quite a few years back when i was into programming i setup a forum/blog as a bit of a project to go along side my studies and it really helped motivate me and others.

My idea is a twist on that idea for my new hobby that is learning Japanese.

Would you be interested in a site, which will basically be a blog+forum type thing, that will be for Japanese students written in Japanese but of a low level and easy to understand. It would serve as a platform for Japanese students to get reading/writing in Japanese before jumping into a "real" japanese website which may be more daunting and contain distractions detrimental to study.

An example of its use could be that instead of going to an English speaking forum and asking for recommendations for TV programs/manga etc, you would write it in Japanese and the whole community would be Japanese students and therefore more understanding to mistakes in grammer; correcting your question if you made any mistakes.

What do you think?

EDIT: Another feature I have thought of would be an option to turn on mouseover furigana. I could make this myself quite easily if there aren't any existing solutions.

Could be interesting, but students correcting other students' mistakes could be problematic, re: opinion over reality.

you could always write an easy to understand English blog and find a nice Japanese person to translate... but actually there are blogs similar to this: http://www.hiraganatimes.com/hiragana_blog/ for example... it'd be nice if they added kanji to it though

I assume from the fact that you are asking for input rather than just doing it that it's something you think is a good idea, but not something that you're really committed to. You should consider that before spending time on it.

Also, how will your site be better than the already existing sites like lang-8 and this forum that already do the same thing?

I think most people would not be able to communicate their thoughts properly, or they would spend 2 hours trying to write a forum post expressing what they want to say--and even then it might not make sense.

In any case, this might work fine for simple questions such as, "Could you recommend some dramas?", but it would be problematic for detailed grammar questions.

mirina Wrote:I think most people would not be able to communicate their thoughts properly, or they would spend 2 hours trying to write a forum post expressing what they want to say--and even then it might not make sense.

To be fair, this describes pretty much every forum I've ever visited.

emesto Wrote:An example of its use could be that instead of going to an English speaking forum and asking for recommendations for TV programs/manga etc, you would write it in Japanese and the whole community would be Japanese students and therefore more understanding to mistakes in grammer; correcting your question if you made any mistakes.

Lang-8.com pretty much does that (except you get corrections by native speakers, which is much cooler). ^_^ Check it out, it's really cool.

Quote:Another feature I have thought of would be an option to turn on mouseover furigana.

Lang-8 does this, but there's also Rikaichan for Firefox, which is much better anyway.

Happy New Year!