Category Archives: Dictionary

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JLR: Lang-8

Lang-8 is a website I learned about from Tofugu’s YouTube videos. It is a website to practice and connect  with people learning languages. The basic idea of the site is that you write journals in the language you are studying, wait for native speakers to correct your writing and correct others who are learning your language. I like to think of this website as Facebook for languages.

What I like:

  • It’s free! But you can support the website by getting a premium account.
  • You can connect with people through groups on the website
  • Built-in dictionary
  • Messaging (you can send messages back and forth with other members)
  • Writing journals
  • Friending (like Facebook)
  • You are able to read other journal entries (so that’s reading and comprehension practice)
  • Multi-language website (you can change your language settings, so the website will appear in Japanese)

What I dislike:

  • Nothing really.

Conclusion:

I like this website a lot because if you do not have access to natives of the language you are studying, you can meet them here. However, it is really easy to become addicted, or to just correct journal entries in your native language. So, 気をつけて！

Resources:

http://www.tofugu.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/tofugu

http://lang-8.com/

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JLR: My Japanese Coach

I have not played My Japanese Coach in a while, but it was one of the Japanese learning products I used before I could take classes. My Japanese Coach is a Nintendo DS game that starts teaching you Japanese through lessons and mini-games. The game is also available for iPod/iPhone users.

What I like:

  • Structured lessons at the beginning of the game
  • Cultural Facts
  • Builds vocabulary
  • Audio
  • Japanese writing practice
  • Mini-games that help you with listening, writing and reading practice
  • Dictionary and Phrasebook

What I dislike:

  • Structured lessons stop after a while, which means this game is only good for Elementary level grammar
  • This game is mostly for building vocabulary (I think it is suppose to teach about 1,000 words or so)

Conclusion:

It is okay when you are starting out learning Japanese, but should not be used as your primary language learning resource. I do really like the writing practice…somehow the interactive writing mini-games help me a lot with remembering characters and stroke order. However, this game becomes repetitive really fast, so you have to motivate yourself (especially when the structured lessons disappear and you are just given the ‘open lessons’ full of random vocabulary words).

Resources:

My memory (no joke)

My Japanese Coach (Nintendo DS version)

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JLR: Midori iPhone App

I used to have a paperback dictionary, then I got Midori. Midori is a Japanese-English (English-Japanese) electronic dictionary app. I have had this dictionary for a while, but I am still learning how to use it. Mostly because I usually only use it to look up words and there are occasionally updates to the application. Midori is a really cool dictionary app. It is not free, but you can wait for the price to be lowered usually during holidays on the App store/iTunes.

Some of the features that I like about the app:

  • Search by radicals, handwriting, English or Japanese
  • Look up/Search Japanese Names
  • JLPT kanji and word lists with pre-made flashcards and the flash cards feature that creates flash cards for the items in your bookmarked folders
  • Kana list
  • Kanji by grade
  • Kanji by frequency in newspapers
  • bookmark/folders for Japanese words/kanji
  • Stroke order shown on kanji pages
  • Conjugation, compounds, technical information (grade, frequency, JLPT level, kanji radical components) and example sentences are listed under each word/kanji (usually)
  • Videos that show kanji being draw (if you press the boxes that show stroke order, you can watch the kanji being drawn)

Things I dislike:

  • To search by handwriting kanji, you must have correct stroke order. This is hard when you are a beginner at learning Japanese or when you are unsure of how to write the kanji. One way to get around this is to search using radicals.
  • If a definition is long on a flashcard, there is no scrolling feature that will allow you to read all of the definition.

Conclusion:

I would recommend this app.

Resources:

iTunes/App Store: http://www.apple.com/itunes/

http://www.jitouch.com/midori/