Edit: Japanese is a dictionary for the iPhone.

Obviously prelearning vocabulary is a tried and tested method. I mean you see it in a lot of those books that encourage people to read Japanese, right? Well, I realized that I have been looking up a select few words again and again when I reread the text I read earlier. Why do this? This seems rather inefficient. This is where Japanese has become my best friend.

As you know by now, I like to tag stuff using Japanese's tag function. I find it really handy as I can email myself word lists from my Phone and add it to Anki. This ensures that the words I use and learn from natives in my corrections on Lang-8 don't go forgotten and stuff I see in text is retained. What I didn't think about was: Why not do a once over of the text (say 20 pages at a time) just adding things to the word list function in Japanese without really checking what the words mean in any depth and then make a cram deck out of it. After that I can read the 20 pages again with less look ups and each week I can sort the lists and filter our anything that I would consider "generally usable in real conversation".

I have some pictures I took from my phone that I have included below.





Obviously there is the problem of the words having many meanings. I would probably need to review the text as I edited the Anki deck. Also, probably not useful for those that are at a high state of reading or only read once.

This is relatively new to me, so I'll let you know how it goes (and maybe share some decks, if it's ok with the mods).

でも、ソフトバンクだけIphoneを売りますね。I know what you mean though. I haven't really had any problems with reception that I can speak of. Also, at times, since I upgraded to OS4, my internet connection speed has been ridiculous!

Cranks Wrote:As you know by now, I like to tag stuff using Japanese's tag function. I find it really handy as I can email myself word lists from my Phone and add it to Anki.

I didn't even know you could do that, thanks!

Your welcome. It honestly has changed the way I study. Words are coming from real life now rather than word lists - I love it!

I've been thinking about something similar to this for a while now. I dream of a program that can go through a text and create a list of every word it contains, then compare this list to another list, such as an anki deck, and delete any repeated words. This would leave you with a list of the words you'll need to know to read the text. I think I might try doing it manually like you.

Is there any way to do this on Kotoba for the i-phone?

@aargh57 -- Make a list. Find words, hit the star button in the corner, and add it to the list you want to. Go to the list, and hit the "Send" button up in the corner, next to the star. Send it to your computer, and work with it like a normal spreadsheet -> import into anki, etc...

One downside to Kotoba! is that I can't see any way to study the lists right there, like you can in "Japanese"

Splatted Wrote:I've been thinking about something similar to this for a while now. I dream of a program that can go through a text and create a list of every word it contains, then compare this list to another list, such as an anki deck, and delete any repeated words. This would leave you with a list of the words you'll need to know to read the text. I think I might try doing it manually like you.

I started writing something like this using mecab so I could see what vocab from my Fate/Stay Night subs2srs deck wasn't already in core6k (and thus I'd need to add as supplemental vocab). It's actually quite easy to do this once you solve the issue of interfacing with mecab (which uses euc instead of unicode).

I have some unpolished code available on github here. There's a Haskell library for interfacing with mecab as well as some python code with an anki plugin.

The plugin (extractMorphemes.py) lets you select some cards in the browser and extract all the vocab in the Expression fields to a file (hardcoded to anki.morphdb) which is basically a compressed python dictionary mapping morphemes to their number of occurrences. The morphemes.py, when used as a standalone app and given 2 file paths will find morphemes in the first and save the db to the 2nd. There's also a few functions for comparing DBs (like a set difference and symmetric difference).

I'll try to get around to cleaning this up and releasing it properly at some point, but I welcome anyone to use/read/get inspiration from the code and beat me to it.

tokyostyle Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I dream of a program that can go through a text and create a list of every word it contains, then compare this list to another list, such as an anki deck, and delete any repeated words. This would leave you with a list of the words you'll need to know to read the text.

Are there any libraries that can already split up Japanese sentences? That seems by far the hardest part and yet intriguing at the same time.

Yes, this is what MeCab: Yet Another Part-of-Speech and Morphological Analyzer does.

That's what the Japanese plugin uses to generate readings and what my code mentioned above uses to compile a mapping of words to number of occurrences in a deck or text file.

The documentation is all in Japanese, but that's not a big deal thanks to google translate, rikaichan, looking at examples of invoking it in other people's code, etc.

Ok, so it's day 2 of using this method and I am quite happy with the results. What's the method?

1) Skim through book up to a preset point (say page 63), recording any unknown words in Anki, or in my case using the Japanese dictionary application for iPhone.
2) Create a cram deck using these words.
3) Cram these words everyday, twice a day for 1 week.
4) Read the book up to your preset point after your 1 week is up.

How this has worked in practice:
#It takes about 2 hours to do it the first time.
#I am doing 63 pages of Bleach vol.1 at this point (2nd read through at this point with this method).
#I am rereading the same 63 pages everyday for a week (I have a high tolerance for repetition, which at the beginning you just need to live with), as I am interested in the grammar.
#After my first time, it takes me 15 minutes to skim through the 200 items in my deck.
#In the 14 pages I read today, after 2 days SRS, I looked up 5-6 words (which weren't in my deck). This is compared to maybe 30 or more on an earlier read without cramming.
#14 pages took less than 10 minutes compared to 30 or so with dictionary and Kanji look ups. Net time saved: 5 minutes.
#I've ripped the audio from Bleach episode 1 and 2 to an MP3, which covers up to about page 80 or so of the manga. The anime is a little different at times from the manga. I listen to it on repeat as I read.

Bleach page 1-63 text file (words only - not sentences):
http://rapidshare.com/files/446126915/Bleach_1-63.txt
*I know words you don't, so you'll probably have your own to add. It's probably about 60% of the text and contains no grammar words.
*Yes, it's a .txt file, as I figure you want to add them in a way that suits you to Anki.

Example:
辺（へん）
あた・り, ほと・り, 〜べ
ヘン
environs, boundary, border, vicinity

蹴倒す（けたおす）
to kick over, to kick down

特技（とくぎ）
special skill

やられる
to suffer damage, to be deceived

理不尽（りふじん）
unreasonable, irrational

*Obviously, you should go through the book as you add them into Anki and remove meanings that don't fit. (For instance, in my opinion, やられる "to suffer damage" is more correct, in this case.)

They are in the order they occur in the book. Also, I really have started to understand the audio really well thanks to this method, but if anyone knows where I can get Japanese subtitles or a script for the bleach anime let me know. I would like to get the extra stuff they have shortened down or changed too.

#Note: If you have high enough skills then you could do the whole manga in one go and read it through a few times.

overture2112 Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I've been thinking about something similar to this for a while now. I dream of a program that can go through a text and create a list of every word it contains, then compare this list to another list, such as an anki deck, and delete any repeated words. This would leave you with a list of the words you'll need to know to read the text. I think I might try doing it manually like you.

I started writing something like this using mecab so I could see what vocab from my Fate/Stay Night subs2srs deck wasn't already in core6k (and thus I'd need to add as supplemental vocab). It's actually quite easy to do this once you solve the issue of interfacing with mecab (which uses euc instead of unicode).

I have some unpolished code available on github here. There's a Haskell library for interfacing with mecab as well as some python code with an anki plugin.

The plugin (extractMorphemes.py) lets you select some cards in the browser and extract all the vocab in the Expression fields to a file (hardcoded to anki.morphdb) which is basically a compressed python dictionary mapping morphemes to their number of occurrences. The morphemes.py, when used as a standalone app and given 2 file paths will find morphemes in the first and save the db to the 2nd. There's also a few functions for comparing DBs (like a set difference and symmetric difference).

I'll try to get around to cleaning this up and releasing it properly at some point, but I welcome anyone to use/read/get inspiration from the code and beat me to it.

Waiting with bated breath. ^_^

For me it all goes back to the unsuspending thing I bugged bombpersons and cangy about (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5631). (And while I'm at it a maturity-reminder plugin I bugged Blahah about, Blahah now being too busy passing the bar and becoming a surgeon and taking care of their pregnant girlfriend: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6664.)

"As you know by now, I like to tag stuff using Japanese's tag function. I find it really handy as I can email myself word lists from my Phone and add it to Anki."

I need an ipod. XD

overture2112 Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I　have a dream........

I started writing something like this etc...

I'll try to get around to cleaning this up and releasing it properly at some point, but I welcome anyone to use/read/get inspiration from the code and beat me to it.

Thanks overture2112, I have no idea how to use the code you linked to, but if you ever do get round to releasing a proper version that would be great. If you suddenly discover your too lazy I won't blame you though.

Here is a very, very rough Python script I wrote last year to extract vocabulary from a .txt file. You name your text file "nihongo.txt" and run the script from the same directory, and it prints the word list to "nihongovocab.txt".

The problem with it is that it requires the MeCab Python bindings. I was able to install them on Ubuntu without much trouble, but I get this error on Windows:

Code:

>python setup.py build
'mecab-config' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 13, in <module>
    version = cmd1("mecab-config --version"),
  File "setup.py", line 7, in cmd1
    return os.popen(str).readlines()[0][:-1]
IndexError: list index out of range

Anyone with any idea how to fix this?

Snarp Wrote:Here is a very, very rough Python script I wrote last year to extract vocabulary from a .txt file. You name your text file "nihongo.txt" and run the script from the same directory, and it prints the word list to "nihongovocab.txt".

The problem with it is that it requires the MeCab Python bindings. I was able to install them on Ubuntu without much trouble, but I get this error on Windows:

Code:

>python setup.py build
'mecab-config' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 13, in <module>
    version = cmd1("mecab-config --version"),
  File "setup.py", line 7, in cmd1
    return os.popen(str).readlines()[0][:-1]
IndexError: list index out of range

Anyone with any idea how to fix this?

No. But maybe this will help...

cb4960 wrote: Here is the utility that I mentioned in the previous post. I call it cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator.

Download cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator v1.0 via MediaFire

Download cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator v1.0 Source Code via MediaFire

http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/Japanese...n_v1.0.png

Cranks Wrote:As you know by now, I like to tag stuff using Japanese's tag function. I find it really handy as I can email myself word lists from my Phone and add it to Anki. This ensures that the words I use and learn from natives in my corrections on Lang-8 don't go forgotten and stuff I see in text is retained. What I didn't think about was: Why not do a once over of the text (say 20 pages at a time) just adding things to the word list function in Japanese without really checking what the words mean in any depth and then make a cram deck out of it. After that I can read the 20 pages again with less look ups and each week I can sort the lists and filter our anything that I would consider "generally usable in real conversation".

Just out of curiosity are you reading Japanese texts on your iPhone or are you using hard copy?

Hard copy. iPhone is just a pain to use for manga. The iPad would be awesome.

Cranks, is http://codefromtokyo.com/japanese what you mean by the Japanese app?

@cranks have you figured out how to add Japanese to your auto lookup list in anki? i cant get it to work

ps. are you still able to cram in anki? i thought the ability to mess around with the intervals was removed in the newer versions.

@Red... yes.

@Dusmar84: It's impossible according to Damien due to the way the author has designed the software. I just create a second deck with very small intervals and redownload it from Ankiweb. It's just like a regular deck in design, basically, but about the same as a cram in usage.