You can help with the very website you're on: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/RevTK_Developers_Hub

Not really something you can do with PHP, but one thing I've always wanted to work on (Programming is a hobby of mine) is an advanced dictionary lookup for Japanese. I often find that I can sort-of kind-of remember a word I heard before and have a general sliver of the semantic meaning of it but can never seem to find it when I search in dictionaries.

The program I had started in Python (but stopped due to Study Abroad) some months ago was a program where you could do something like this:
Lets say you kind of remember a word a in Japanese that starts with ま or maybe it was み. You know its an adjective or possibly an adverbial, and you know it sort of means something like "awesome." So you enter in ま・み as a keyword and say check Adj's and Adv, and specify "awesome." Hit search, and get a lot of results, one which would hopefully be what you were looking for, みごと（見事）.
Another example might be you want all nouns that end in もの (which JWPCe's dictionary lookup can sort of do).

The semantic vicinity lookup feature by itself would be awesome, but it'd be more like a reverse dictionary lookup too, which in general suck. You'd need the right kind of database to attempt it and some nice AI programming skills probably.

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I'll say this though, if you decide to do the conjugation script, spice it up by adding in "ancient japanese" conjugation. My roommate (日本人） showed me the charts they used in high school to figure out what the conjugation for words they were reading in classic lit meant (think Tale of Genji in its original form). Slightly intimidating stuff but quite interesting.

What I need most at the moment is to remember the words from KO2001. Explaining them and using them in a text would be helpful. Apart from KO, just texts for lower intermediates with some translations at the side would be cool.

Hmm...The only thing I can think of is some kind of site for practicing Keigo.
I've technically learned it and can understand it, but using it is another story..
It might be an interactive quiz, or a sort of Choose your own adventure type game.
("You are a new employee at X Corp. Navigate the minefield of Keigo in everyday office life or perish!" )
It might be stupid but you said "no idea is too stupid"...
I think it's really nice of you to offer to do something like this for the Japanese learning community.

Last edited by Bokusenou (2010 January 26, 9:45 pm)

mezbup wrote:

An awesome idioms database would be great.

+1
A database of idioms, expressions and proverbs would be awesome. (and 四字熟語 too)

Last edited by Codexus (2010 January 27, 1:35 am)

Thora wrote:

Idioms            慣用句の参考書

This is awesome. Contains about 650 idioms, rikaichan seems to know about half of them. Definitions all in Japanese.

I really want to make an Anki deck out of this cos it would rock not having to be confused by these when they appear in the wild. I would start right away if Rikaichan could give me good English equivalents for them all. Maybe some don't have equivalents? It's easy enough to copy and paste the Japanese definitions (which would go in aswell of course!) but making the deck with everyone's needs/taste in mind I need English for them too!

Though I am seriously, seriously serious and if anyone else is interested we could put something together in no time at all.

Last edited by mezbup (2010 January 27, 3:50 am)

I tend to think it's better to just learn idioms as they come up. A dictionary is bound to have many you'll never come across. And you don't really want to be peppering your output with awkward idioms. :-) Though it is fun to read through them.

Thora wrote:

You might find some hidden in these links (more proverbs than idioms maybe). There are other resources for 四字熟語.

Sweet!  Got a new site bookmarked

So it seems every suggestion bar Bokusenou reply has been done, this is a shame as I still cant find a project that will be able to help learners, that doesnt already exist.