The secret recipe for success is making a fun game out of it, like building up stories out of kanji parts. I'm considering to write up the kunyomi along the keyword, so that I can get used to it and make that process less boring. Maybe it would work better as a greasemonkey script, though.

Whoa!! When is Trinity going to come on line!? Just read your description of it, Fabrice: sounds remarkable!

Stupid question: how is Trinity expected to fit into reviewing RTK1?

The screenshots look amazing, I can't imagine how much work it must be taking. A sentence section too? awesome.

*infity

I really like the look of the vocab page, I love that the box stack chart has been kept to show progress with vocabulary, now maybe I can finally finish JLPT3 and move onto JLPT2. I've been dabling around with moving onto 2kyuu but I'm not sure I've mastered the 3kyuu vocab list, this site will make it perfectly clear when its time to move on (when all JLPT3 grammar is in 4th stack).

A million thanks to fuaburisu, the guy is a genius.

Ah, the blue box. How I've missed it so.

I find myself trembling with glee, anticipating the prospect of using this to learn vocab and readings. Yomiuri Shimbun, your days of unreadable mystery are numbered.....

I find myself trembling with dread, anticipating the prospect of 5-10 hours of weekly work learning vocab and readings. Yomiuri Shimbun? Oh man, look at all those unreadable kanji....

Last edited by ziggr (2007 December 29, 9:08 pm)

Will the inclusion of trinity effect the name of the site at all?

Hopefully it will still be revtk even after the site expands into vocab and sentences.

First, I would like to say that I'm really excited about this and hope to have RTK1 finished by the time this comes online.

ファブリス wrote:

Thank you
So the site is going to address a larger audience, but I will also have to completely revamp the homepage to expose the new system. I will do this over time. RevTK as it is now will be one half of the site, and no longer the primary focus.

So are you going to change the subdomain from kanji to something more appropriate then? Kind of like Apple outgrowing their "Apple Computer" name and changing it to "Apple Inc."

Another "wow, gosh and I'm impressed response".

I have been studying (badly) Japanese for more years than I care to remember and have been a programmer for even longer, although most of my work was long ago outsourced.

I am completely in awe at what Fabrice has already done with the site and humbled by his plans for making it better.  At first I didn't understand the same Trinity, but it makes perfect sense and looks like a perfect solution for the problem of how to continue post RTK1 with a Leitner type learning method.

Finally a Happy New Year to all RTK'ers.

Enjoy the break Fabrice, you have certainly earned it.

It was something like this...

The story begins with a man named JIM (ties in the reading ジ) who works as a "waiter" 侍 in a "temple" 寺 where he "holds" 持 a "newborn babe" 児, but he "resigned" 辞, after his "ears" 耳 couldn't take any more baby crying.

It was only a "matter" 事 of "time" 時, before he moved onto the "next" 次 "doubly mysterious" 滋慈磁 plot, thinking about "becoming" 似 a politician to "reign" 治 the world by "himself" 自 (oneself) ...

Last edited by vosmiura (2007 December 31, 2:43 am)

wrightak wrote:

Is it English translation -> Japanese or vice versa or both? Or will there be options for J->J?

I'm relinking the screenshot from the news page :



When you add the sentence, the "question" is a purely Japanese sentence.

There is then a "notes" area, for grammar notes and such.

The vocabulary related to the sentence is easily added, because it is looked up from the dictionary, there is no risk of sharing sentences with typos in the words or completely irrelevant word definitions for example.

Now using this system I've found I rarely need to enter a translation. If I use a source where an english translation was provided ,I'll put it in if I can't figure out the grammar yet. If the sentence is mainly to exemplify vocabulary, you will find often times there is no need for notes at all. Just the sentence, and vocabulary added in the context of the sentence.

When you review, you see the sentence without any readings. After flipping the card you can read your notes, and see the vocabulary items that were attached to it, each with their readings.

At no time there are furigana appearing in the sentence, as the readings can be found in the vocabulary attached, okurigana is already in the sentence. I think this encourages more active reading.

You can not enter your own definitions for Japanese words, only Notes for the sentence.

Vocabulary

I don't use vocabulary lists much, especially since I added the "Kanji Study" page from which you can add exemplary compounds. But I expect that it will be very useful for students in classes, or if you want to study from a textbook, or if you just want to collect together the vocab while reading a news article etc. The vocabulary items are then grouped by a thematic.

Reviews of vocabulary are based on EDICT. You see the compound, and have to guess for the correct reading and meaning. It's up to you to rate what is a correct answer. It should be both, for me the reading is more important, just as long as I get a close enough idea of the meaning.

Definitions come from EDICT and are in english. However since I am using the JMDICT file, ultimately, it should be easy to switch to German, French etc. But practically, I'm afraid JMDICT doesn't contain any Japanese definitions so far. I've been thinking of ways to contribute back to JMDICT if people entered data through this site, but there are issues of copyright etc. I don't want to forward to Jim Breen a bunch of definitions users entered that may be copy pasted from dictionaries as that wouldn't be very helpful, so as for getting original Japanese definitions free for redistribution, I don't think there is any available?

That said, for expressions and such, you can enter them as sentences. Sentences don't have to be complete sentences, they can be sentence-parts or even just grammatical constructs, with blanks in it. I haven't tried yet but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

My view on the EDICT definitions is that they are there simply to give an idea of the meaning of the word. They are not to be memorized of course. Like Heisig explains in RtK2, you can learn the words before you know how to use them. You study the readings and get one meaning, in fact if the definition from EDICT contains several "glosses", you pick whatever meaning you like it doesn't matter. If you want to start using this word, the best way to do it is to add a sentence with it. In fact as I review vocabulary if one word doesn't seem to stick, it's too abstract maybe, or the EDICT definition seems too vague, I can look it up, and add an exemplary sentence. This really helps remember the word, and also gives one practical example of how to use it. Then you get to review it not only as the vocab flashcard, but also as part of the sentence (each sentence gets its own flashcard too).

This is a great way to work with the system and in fact makes it a study system into its own, with the peculiarity that you start with words and end up looking up lots of grammar and expressions. Only you can push a lot of vocab if you're not in the mood to lookup grammar, and sometimes you might stop adding vocab and while reviewing, add more sentences for the words. This is easy to do because when reviewing, there is a link that takes you to the "source" for the compound, which can be a vocab list, or a sentence, or the kanji study page from which the exemplary compound was added.

So when you review vocabulary, from each flashcard you can find the related sentence or vocab list if there was any, you might then want to remove the word. Or if it was not linked, add a sentence.

if you review vocab and you forgot the reading for one kanji in the compound, likewise, you can click any character and go to the kanji study page. YOu might find there is only one exemple word, and so if you add another example word, it will be easier to remember the reading.

Kanji bits?

Well I had a onyomi review at first (one character at a time), but while I dont have the same reservations about studying readings separated from words; I think it is more efficient to review them as part of the compounds. So you already get to review them through the exemplary compound flashcards. Every kanji in your kanji chains should get an exemplary compound, but if you feel that one is not useful enough you dont have to add the exemplary word.

Recently I realised there is more work on the onyomi lists (surprise >_< ), where I can limit the kanji in each "chain" to ones that have at least one "frequent" exemple compound (any that has (P) in EDICT). That may filter out quite a few which only have rare compounds for matches in the dictionary, and reduce the number of chains to work on. Then the system needs a way to allow adding more characters to the kanji chains, including duplicating one character into other chains, in case you really want to study more than one reading in the system.

Just saw the new news item on the front page, I like that we will have a clear goal to reach. Excitement rising, really hope I finish by the time this comes online.

Thanks for keeping us updated ファブリス