Vocab in context is something I seek out. Often times, I'll be studying for the JLPT in particular and grab some lists off the Internet. Those lists are really only good for determining what Japanese words might appear on the tests, but they lack context and are usually pretty bad when it comes to translations too (sometimes entirely wrong). I spend most with those lists sentence mining to find out how they're actually used. To have all in one place would be nice.

I would think that focusing on the JLPT would probably be the most profitable approach here, and there several aspects related to the JLPT that you could focus on in addition to just vocab. Just because other websites already do something doesn't mean you should include aspects of things in yours. Tae Kim already does grammar, but that doesn't mean no one else should. And yeah, there's already a lot of JLPT websites out there, but they aren't very good.

A grammar database with a twist. There are many books/dictionaries/sites that already explain grammar, but grammar is still difficult to look up. Real Japanese is never encountered as tidy and trimmed as the example sentences presented in these sources. I would like to see a collection of real world Japanese from a variety of sources that indicates what the grammar points are and references (incidentally this is how you'd make money I presume) published books/dictionaries (e.g., DoGJ, All About Particles, A Comprehensive Grammar, etc.) or websites like jgram.com for the actual explanations.

This could potentially work like most community driven sites and I wouldn't mind at all paying for this service.

Like this, I could read real Japanese and quickly look up the grammar I can't figure out. A built-in dictionary would be helpful too, but the most useful feature would be pointing out the grammar.

Last edited by delta (2012 November 21, 8:18 am)

JapaneseRuleOf7 wrote:

I've always thought it would be useful to create a study tool that presented kanji in three stages.

1. Standalone kanji with their (roughly) equivalent English meanings, a la RTK.

2. The kanji used in a word, preferably within a sentence.

3. A photo of that word (or sentence) as it actually appears in real life, like a picture of a sign. 

I'd imagine that in creating this, you would work backward from common signs in real life.

I think this would be extremely useful, since it's one thing to be able to recall kanji when studying, and quite another to be walking down the street and see 募集広告, and having to put that together and understand it.  That's one of the big jumps between learning Japanese and actually being able to apply it.

Make that, and you'll have a highly marketable product, I think.  (And if you do, don't forget to thank me!)

Thanks for the reply. That makes complete sense to me. I've found that when you learn, visuals work the best(especially in the beginning to intermediate stages), providing context and then eventually breaking it down to their individual means/readings(common ones).

What works with this is, it can work so well[You have a picture for example saying 入口　and then you have context for it 
いり‐ぐち【入（り）口】
《「いりくち」とも》

１ はいる所。はいりぐち。⇔出口(でぐち)。 
[You would have the dictionary look-up for J-J, provide real context and a reasonable translation ,if not prefect]

And lastly break it down to each individual section and kanji

入 [List common reading and meanings for each kanji that needs to be identified)
口　





I already got a few ideas thanks to this reply.

delta wrote:

A grammar database with a twist. There are many books/dictionaries/sites that already explain grammar, but grammar is still difficult to look up. Real Japanese is never encountered as tidy and trimmed as the example sentences presented in these sources. I would like to see a collection of real world Japanese from a variety of sources that indicates what the grammar points are and references (incidentally this is how you'd make money I presume) published books/dictionaries (e.g., DoGJ, All About Particles, A Comprehensive Grammar, etc.) or websites like jgram.com for the actual explanations.

This could potentially work like most community driven sites and I wouldn't mind at all paying for this service.

Like this, I could read real Japanese and quickly look up the grammar I can't figure out. A built-in dictionary would be helpful too, but the most useful feature would be pointing out the grammar.

Man, I'd love an actual searchable database for grammar. I've always found it quite a pain to look up new grammar I find in the wild.

The database thing is not about searching grammar points (which I guess you could do too anyway) but about reading: websites, (magazine, newspaper) articles, excerpts from books, ads, subtitles, etc., and being able to correctly lookup the used grammar.

Last edited by delta (2012 November 22, 10:13 pm)

A user or group of users proficient in Japanese would select the material from a variety of sources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, internet, stories, novels, manga, articles, the back of a DVD, the instructions on a napkin provided at a しゃぶしゃぶ restaurant explaining how the system works, anything more or less native), read it and correctly indicate/mark all the grammar points (you shouldn't be able to your own grammar points, just choose from a list) and the system automatically cross-references them to the appropriate sources.

For example, the user highlights a word/sentence and clicks <link to grammar>, <append note>, etc., selects the grammar points and that's it.

Other users should be able to access this posts and hide/filter the grammar by level, browse by point, by reference (book/dictionary), by kind of source (newspaper, magazine, manga), and so on.

Last edited by delta (2012 November 23, 8:20 am)

This is the idea for an SRS/website that I've had.  Actually I hope Anki eventually turns into this.

1) I want my SRS to have all the functionality of git.  I want the history off all my edits (not reviews) to all my cards to be saved.  I want something like gitk or git-log where I can see everything that has happened.  I want branching, merging, and rebasing. 

This will basically make it easy to have a website like github where people can collectively edit decks, send patches to decks, etc.  All the cool things that git/github gives you will also be available in the SRS/website. 

2) The history of reviews could also be saved separately.  I don't think this history would be as interesting, but some people might still like to look at it.

I guess this isn't particularly an idea related to Japanese, but would help anyone who uses an SRS.