mafried
Member
Registered: 2006-06-24
Posts: 766
Suggestion: Now that the study section of the site supports unicode characters in general, it would be great to include the hiragana and katakana blocks as well. It's common to get questions about the kana on the forum, and this would solve that problem.
Also, if it is easy to do you might want to consider adding hieroglyphics, cuneiform, and Yi syllables as well, or even just general unicode support for all characters. It may be overkill to use Heisig for, say, greek, cryllic, or arabic letters, but if the resource was there I for one would use it.
It doesn't need to be anything fancy. I assume from the structure of the site that you can just "turn on" certain Unicode ranges, like you did with the non-Heisig kanji, and let it be an undocumented feature.
ファブリス
Administrator
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-06-14
Posts: 4021
Website
Hi mafried. Just to let you know I did read your suggestion. I don't want to make any promises but I agree it is a logical step to add kana study/review, and one which I had considered long ago.
I've been working a little bit on it. For kana selection I'm thinking of displaying the traditional grid so clicking one character may link directly to the corresponding study page.
Now for stories, I would be interested in everyone's thoughts:
I'd rather stay away from Remembering the Kana and more copyright woes. Seeing as the kana can be learnt over a weekend with a bit of determination. And seeing as the characters are hard to breakdown contrary to the kanji I think purely "visual similarity" type of stories would be ok here and some members may share very helpful mnemonics. Posting Remembering the Kana stories would be disallowed.
For review I'm also tempted to let learners review the hiragana, katakana or both sets any time, without SRS status. I just think going SRS is overboard for the kana, seeing as there aren't that many, and it wouldn't allow one to learn the kana over a weekend, or even a week. On the other hand, the failed cards could go to the "relearn" pile which already exist for the kanji, and this would allow someone to whittle down the failed kana. The relearn pile is temporary status, which is efficient for the database, I think it currently is set to 48h. So that's plenty of time to work on failed kana. Even if you interrupted your learning and continued a week later, you'd just make a full katakana or hiragana set review, and can continue with the refreshed "relearn" pile.
Are there other scripts related to the Japanese language? Even if it is easy to add I think other unicode ranges will be outside of the scope of the website.
Nukemarine
Member
From: 神奈川
Registered: 2007-07-15
Posts: 2347
There is another option that's good for Kana practice: Romaji to Kana using words. Use the Romaji word as "Keyword" then the Kana word is the Answer.
For example: n, ii, in, iku, kun, kui, hen, hei, ihen, heno, nonno, kuno, kei, noke, ken'i, ano, aku, akeno, kono, kon, keiko. These are the sample words from RTKana that are chosen based on what you've learned up to that point. From both books, there would be about 300 words.
So, it's progressive and adds a bit more benefit than just isolated kana. In addition, it allows people starting out in Japanese to learn kana first, and keep reviewing while moving onto Kanji. Think Heisig would be cool giving permission to use the sample words?
ファブリス
Administrator
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-06-14
Posts: 4021
Website
Nukemarine wrote:
For example: n, ii, in, iku, kun, kui, hen, hei, ihen, heno, nonno, kuno, kei, noke, ken'i, ano, aku, akeno, kono, kon, keiko. These are the sample words from RTKana that are chosen based on what you've learned up to that point. From both books, there would be about 300 words.
That is based on an order right?
I thought about using words, but a word that directly corresponds to the "vowel". I don't know if there is such a word for each kana character? That could also be useful as support for the mnemonics, but without restriction on the order.
I suppose the site could use order, but I don't want to ask permissions this time. I'd like the kana study to be also available to guest visitors, and to a larger public that's not using the "Remembering the Kana" books.
If and when I have something, I'm sure our resident experts will easily put together such a list of "keywords" 
The romaji > kana flashcard review is a great idea, noted down.
