Tobberoth Wrote:There's a lot of reasons not to make it into an assembly, varying in importance and impact.

Tobberoth Wrote:1. It's unnatural. You certainly didn't learn your native language like that.

Well, if that's the case, then RTK is "unnatural". Japanese people "certainly don't learn their native language like that". Heisig found a beautiful, unorthodox method to learn Japanese kanji that no one of his Japanese classmates had any faith in and I'm sure they'd often mock him. So I don't think learning the way native people learn is even necessary. If that's the case, we'd all be using rote memorization instead of Heisig's book to learn kanji.

Tobberoth Wrote:2. It takes away any chance you had of picking the words up through context.

I actually agree with this. Which is why I prefer to SRS all kanji that appear in a text (rather than SRSing words/phrases). I will learn the words in their context, while reaping the benefit on knowing that I am aware of all the kanji that will appear.

Tobberoth Wrote:3. It's ineffective. Your goal is to read the article, you might not need to know every single unknown word in there. By getting a list from it before hand, you have no idea how important the words in it are to the article or to Japanese in general.

Not necessarily. Let's say you SRS all the words on a page-by-page basis.
SRS all the words on a page. Study them. Read the page.
And then repeat the process for the next page. Over time, you'll
notice which words are more important than others. And there won't be any
surprises, since you've SRSed them before hand. So there is some benefit.

For me, I don't want to SRS words/phrases in fiction (manga,novels,etc)beforehand, because I think it would ruin the story I'm reading. I'd be able to figure out what is going to happen before I read it. But for non-fiction (like a cookbook, instruction manual,etc) it'd be really great.

Also, I don't know about you, but when I read news articles in English, I can
understand 95-99% of the words without any problem. So there's nothing wrong with wanting to learn every single word.

Tobberoth Wrote:4. A list of words is just a list of words. As you look it up in a dictionary, how will you know which sense of the word is important to the article? There are quite a few words which can be used in several very different ways, learning the wrong one would kind of suck.

Same as #2.

Tobberoth Wrote:5. You're actively fooling yourself. The act of reading something with unknowns in it is a skill like any other and needs training. By learning all the words beforehand, the difficulty of the text is greatly minimized. Eventually, you will need to read Japanese texts without the help of pre-learning vocabulary and it might shock you how much harder it suddenly became to read, while someone who is used to reading texts with unknown words will have a greater skill at understanding the text regardless. For people who wish to get a good score on JLPT1 reading comprehension, this is something worthy of focus.

I disagree. Minimizing the difficulty of text is exactly what some people want.

By SRSing things beforehand, we're taking advantage of the fact that the text is in digital form that can be copy/pasted. We can use our computers to pre-process the material in order to make it easier to understand. There are very few chances to learn Japanese like this in real life. So take advantage of it while you can.

Fantastic! I've been entering cards with stuff copied and pasted from Rikaichan one at a time, and this will definitely speed up my card generation.

Since I'm between JLPT3 and JLPT2 in vocabulary, I'm making recognition cards for words I am interested in from my readings, but I only do production and kana-kanji for JLPT2 words. Would it be possible to filter "Exclude words JLPT3 and below" and "Exclude words JLPT1 and above", for example?

By the way, I don't suppose you could make an offline version of this (or rather, one not tied to a single page)... ^_^

ThomasB Wrote:> Sebastian: That's a good idea but I don't want to make this little "tool" more complex than it should be. If I included features such as Personal Data / User Login it would not longer be a "tool"

Who said anything about "Personal Data" or "User Login"?

Just having a "Blacklist" field that you could fill manually would do it. People could keep list of their known words on their hard disks and then just copy/paste the content to your tool.

Without that option, just using Rikaichan and the option of saving words to a text file by pressing "s" works better (though slower) than the tool (unless you want to look up most of the words in the text, i. e. if you're a beginner).

Another interesting option would be to process sites by just entering the url, or to upload text files from your computer.

BTW, I found a detail, the button that should say "Word Lookup!" says "Sentence Lookup!".

Good job anyways, your tool works fast and simple and it looks promising.

nest0r Wrote:By the way, I don't suppose you could make an offline version of this (or rather, one not tied to a single page)... ^_^

Seconded.

I also found this in case you might find it useful or haven't seen: http://www.kynd.info/dev/2009/01/javascr...ecapi.html

The analyzer works offline, though ultimately it still refers back to the mecapi web-based thingy. I wish we had a completely standalone version. I... have a standalone complex. ;p

Its source code: http://mimitako.net/api/mecapi.cgi?mode=code

I updated the tool to include an option for filtering out words based on JLPT Level and Core Decks.

Sebastian Wrote:Just having a "Blacklist" field that you could fill manually would do it. People could keep list of their known words on their hard disks and then just copy/paste the content to your tool.

I see... Yeah I could do definitely do that.

Sebastian Wrote:Another interesting option would be to process sites by just entering the url, or to upload text files from your computer.

Also a good idea, will add it to my list

nest0r Wrote:By the way, I don't suppose you could make an offline version of this (or rather, one not tied to a single page)... ^_^

What do you mean tied to a single page? I think our definitions of offline are not the same. I don't see how the analyzer tool you posted above could work offline.

Deline Wrote:Would it be possible to filter "Exclude words JLPT3 and below" and "Exclude words JLPT1 and above", for example?

I will try to include that feature somehow. At least now you can filter words below JLPT3.

Great tool! Don't listen to people like Toberroth who are good at nothing but taking
things to extremes (as if his kanji avatar didn't say enough). Of course no one method is going to be a perfect way to master a language, but almost everyone uses a combination of methods, and this tool is a great one to add to that arsenal.
May I suggest a feature? I don't normally study words out of context, so if you could include a production field for each item with the sentence it came from, and the target item blanked out, that would make decks structured for production easy to whip up. Keep up the great work!

"or rather, one not tied to a single site" -- i.e. not having to go to your site to use the program. That other analyzer allows it--I downloaded the .html or whatever and can launch it from my HDD, but it does connect to the Mecab web api Mecapi. I'm pretty sure Mecab works offline, though I can't get it to install properly: Translation Aggregator allows you to do everything offline--it parses with JParser or Mecab as it's installed on HDD, and uses an offline EDICT dictionary (though personally I'm happy with Stardict and just want the parsing, i.e. I just want to be able, from anywhere, online or offline, to input Japanese text and generate a list of words).

Thanks mantixen.

mantixen Wrote:May I suggest a feature? I don't normally study words out of context, so if you could include a production field for each item with the sentence it came from, and the target item blanked out, that would make decks structured for production easy to whip up.!

Yes, I will definitely include the sentence it came from, I think that would be useful. I can include a production feature but I want to finish the other things on my list first

>nestor What is the main reason for wanting an offline program? Is it because you don't want to go to the webpage (but the program will still use online lookup) or is it that you want it to work without an internet connection?

As standalone as possible to me would be for it to work as an offline, local file (like Translation Aggregator or Balloonguy's interactive audio tool). But barring the offline aspect (i.e. requires online lookups), being able to run it as a local file--or rather a self-contained system, would be superb, that way it could be shared the way balloonguy's tool is or the above-mentioned Japanese Analyzer. For me, it's less about the latter sharing element (i.e. dropbox or whatever), and more about reducing reliance on specific servers/hosts.

@#$%#$^% Found another one: http://www.jdictionary.com/parser/ - Still requires you to be online, doesn't look like this works as a local file either. I give up. Perhaps I'm being too neurotic? Surely it's not so bad to use a remote, online-only tool for my personal self-study. Trust the cloud. The cloud is good. The cloud is necessary. Clouds are fluffy.

But the trouble comes about when you don't have access to the internet or the site(s) go down...

Asriel Wrote:But the trouble comes about when you don't have access to the internet or the site(s) go down...

I'm also worried about what'll happen if the Japanesepod people change their link format or URL or something for JDIC audio.

Edit: *tuneless whistle*