I know it's a few months early, but I'm going to get one of my New Year's resolutions out into the open now:
Never promise to have an update later in the week ever again.
Seems like every time I promise to update this later in the week or within the next week, it ends up being months. A strange, twisted amendment to Murphy's Law? Who knows. Perhaps if I stop promising, I'll actually end up posting regularly. We can only hope.
Today I'll be reviewing a site that has been sitting in my e-mail inbox for a few weeks now, theJapaneseTutor.com. The main author of the site e-mailed me requesting a review, so here we go!
Note: Supposedly you need Microsoft Silverlight to be able to access several functions of the site (I'm guessing the flashcards and quizzes). I believe Silverlight is already pre-loaded into both Windows Vista and Windows 7. I did not need to install it on my RC version of Win7 even with using Firefox to view the site.
Double note: I'm not sure if the site is completely up and running yet. It seems they are still in the works with getting everything up and running, so there may be areas that aren't as filled in as they could be.
Right off the bat, I love the front page. It's simple, centered, no scrolling required to see everything. There's a random phrase of the day-like thing with English, romaji, kana and kanji, plus a sound bite and a link to another random phrase. Very good way to get learners intrigued into what else the site has to offer. There's also a brief introduction to the site with links to get starting learning the language or the culture, as well as a brief highlight of a part of the site. Currently it's katakana on my screen, but on click of the "Home" link on the top navbar and it changes the background picture, random phrase and the highlight to another part of the site.
Speaking of the navbar, I like it's set up a lot. It's divided into "Home", "Language", "Culture", "Community" and "About" with all but "Home" and "Community" having drop-down menus that let the user pick the sub-section they want right from the start.
Let's start with the "Language" section, shall we?
Clicking on the navbar takes you to a start page for each section. This start page lists the same sub-sections as the drop-down menus on the navbar does, but also offers brief introductions to what each section is. My favorite part on the "Language" start page? Getting Started section! Every site needs a easy-to-find getting started section. Every site that doesn't, or makes it impossible to find, loses major points in my book.
The main thing I love about this site is how clean it is. There are ads, but they're well placed and don't intrude on the site. There's never too much going on for one page, so there's never any sensory overload while browsing. Subsections are further divided up into smaller sections, with a link menu carefully places on the left-hand side. theJapaneseTutor.com uses their "Getting Started" page as a way to further introduce what their site is all about. There's a nice overview about Japanese and suggestions for what to do on the site depending on what type of learner you are (casual, passionate, one-stop resource).
My only complaint about this section, is that none of the suggestions for the different learners offer direct links to suggested areas of the site. I would suggest adding at least one in-text link for at least one suggested area of the site for each type of learner listed. For the Casual Learner, I'd make a link to definitely the cultural articles, and maybe one to the vocabulary page. Passionate Learner, maybe link to the grammar section. The One-Stop Resource Learner would love a link directly to the kanji section!
One further note on the Getting Started page, the greeting on the top of the page is misspelled. It should be いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) not いらしゃませ (irashaimase). Also, ようこそ (youkoso) would be a better translation for "welcome". Irasshaimase is used mainly in stores as a way of saying "Welcome! How may I help you?" to customers. It is common to mix the usage of these up as if you look either up in a dictionary they both come up with "welcome" as their English translation.
Moving on to the hiragana and katakana pages, things are looking good.
There's a top menu on both with "Introduction", "List", Flashcards", "Quiz" and "Resource" links. Katakana also has a "Special Notes" page link. Both pages have the same subsections: an overview, basic chart, extended chart, usage and conclusion. The overview gives a bit on the history/usage of each script, which is a good start for the page. It lets the learner know what's going on before they even start. The basic chart for both appear directly under this introductory overview, making it very easy to get into the swing of learning. You don't have to go to a separate page just to get started; it's right there in front of you. You can even click on the individual characters and hear the pronunciation! Now if only it showed you the stroke order, the page would be perfect!
Under both charts there are several key points to writing both charts, things like small つ (tsu), particles, and special characters used in katakana but not hiragana. While this is really useful, there is one mistake on the katakana page. "Taxi" is written on the page as タクシイー (takushiii) when in actually it should be タクシー (takushii). Using the extender bar, ちょうおんふ (chouonfu), means you don't need the extra イ that the author put after the シ.
At the bottom of each page is a link to the next subsection, the extended sets. Both extended sets feature the characters that have diacritical marks as well as combined sounds. The hiragana extended chart is listed (and once again clickable), the katakana chart is not. I feel a katakana extended chart should be available on the page, especially to help learners comprehend the special combinations (wi, we, wu, wo, fa, fi, fe, fo, va, vi, vu, ve, vo, etc) a bit more than the written explanation on the "Special Notes" page offers. Instead, you have to access the extended chart by clicking the "List" menu option on the horizontal menu at the top of the page.
Also, both the hiragana and katakana extended set pages say that combined characters follow an easy pronunciation pattern with the exception of those made with し "shi" and じ "ji". I personally think those made with ち "chi" should be included as "exceptions" if you're going to say there are pronunciation exceptions.
The "Usage" page for both offer some good notes on how to use each set of characters, as well as a small foray into grammar (i.e. introduction particles and sentence structure a bit). These are very, very simple explanation, but I believe good for a novice learner just trying to get a start. Hopefully the grammar sections offer more in depth explanations.
One problem with the example sentence on the katakana usage page: the verb used (つぶす "tsubusu") means "to crush" or "to squash", not "to break". The correct verb should be こわれる "kowareru", the intransitive verb "break". Because of this, the sentence should read タイヘンだ！メリーのミルクのガラスがこわれました！(Taihen da! Merii no miruku no garasu ga kowaremashita!). Since こわれる is an intransitive verb, the particle が "ga", not は "wa", is more common. However, は "wa" is also usable depending on the context.
The katakana also gives more hints as to usage with foreign words and names, mainly how to form f-sounds, w-sounds and v-sounds. This is a pretty useful page, but having a chart of all the extra combinations would be nice. Also, there are slight mistakes with the katakana for "Wii" and "wink". Nintendo's official pronunciation for "Wii" is ウィー not ウィイ. The page also has "wink" as ウインク (uinku) even though the explanation directly above it says the イ should be small. This is most likely a typing error, and should actually be ウィンク.
Now the awesome part of both the hiragana and katakana pages are the Silverlight-based flashcards and quizzes. These are GREAT study resources. Both offer several options to customize the flashcards and quizzes to what suits your level of learning. For both the flashcards and the quizzes, you can choose what you want on each side of the card (usually audio, romaji or kana), if you want just hiragana, katakana or both, and if you want to include the extended sets. Both the ease of use and the customization possible makes both of these great ways to study if you have some extra free time on the net.
Moving on to the Kanji page, there's a lot more information to take in. The top menu is the same as that for katakana, and there is a side menu for each of the different subsections. One main difference between this and the kana pages is that all the information is on one page. All the explanations about On readings and the Kun readings, as well the difference between the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and "daily use" kanji lists, are on the same page, one after the other. While this may seem daunting, do not worry. The side menu takes you to each section of explanation separately so you don't have to scroll through the whole page if you don't want to. The "Special Notes" page gives more in depth explanation for the different readings, which I find to be a very good set of explanations. It's still a bit basic, but it's better than just saying "On is the Chinese pronunciation and Kun is the Japanese" like many resources tend to do.
The "List" page has lists of not only the "daily use" kanji separated by grade level, but also lists for all four levels of the JLPT. Once again, another great resource! Both sets of lists have the kanji, stroke count, English meaning, On reading and Kun readings. The readings are written in both kana and in romaji for easy learning. All the lists are pretty long, but it's a good set up to start with. Only thing I would probably find to be a neat addition would be if they allowed the learning to organize the kanji list by stroke order if they so wanted, though that would probably be pretty difficult to code into the site.
Flashcards and quizzes work much like the ones for kana, giving you options of what you want on both sides of the card (or on the quiz) and what lists you want to use. I approve!
The resource section for the kana and kanji pages list suggested books, which for some reason fail to show up on Firefox, but show up on IE just fine. They also all list some suggested websites for more information if you're still craving for more.
Once you get through briefing yourself on kana and kanji, you can move on to the vocabularly lists provided on the drop-down menu. There are nine lists of nouns ranging from animals to food, to time and weather. There is also a list of simple verbs and another of adjectives. All the lists are set up similarly: English, Romaji, Kana, Kanji, sound clip. Several words list the rarely-used kanji, which is nice because it's hard to pick them up as they aren't seen in writing as much anymore. Good way to impress people in Japan is to use kanji that no one uses anymore! For the most part, the vocabulary is very useful and contains many words that are used on a daily basis. There are a few where there's only one English meaning listed, but there are other uses for the same word/kanji, so be careful. If you go into this site knowing that one particular word can be used in several different contexts to mean several different things, you're fine. Usually the different meanings are similar, so you should be able to figure it out on your own later as your studying progresses. The one good thing about only having one meaning listed is it makes the flashcard and quiz functions less confusing. You don't have to guess which meaning the card or quiz wants as the answer.
Last subsection of the Language menu is Grammar. These currently are mainly in romaji, and are super-simplified in their explanations. They also commonly mistakenly list particles (like は wa, が ga, and を wo) as prepositions. Prepositions are things like above, under, next to. Don't get confused! Overall, the grammar offers good explanations, though simple. For true beginners, this may be a good way to start, but possibly slightly confusing. The sentence structure section is one of those that kind of makes sense, but kind of doesn't. There's too much in one section, and I would suggest possibly shortening it into smaller subsections to further explain how subjects and objects are used in Japanese grammar.
Overall, the grammar sections seem to be very well done. There are a few mistakes or things left out (like I saw 3000 written as sansen and 688 as roku-hyaku hachi-juu hachi. The bolded areas are wrong. 3000 should be sanzen and 688 should be roppyaku hachi-juu hachi and the explanation for why several numbers change sounds was mainly left out). The pages on particles give pretty easy to understand explanations, and there is pretty fair amount of detailed explanation for the particle に ni. There are also fairly good brief introductions to basic counters and the types of verbs in Japanese. Even the verb conjugation sections are well-thought out, putting each type of verb on it's own page. Currently the verb conjugation only has polite present and past tenses, but I'm sure it will fill out to include all verb conjugation in the future. The adjective section splits the adjectives into common -i and -na adjectives, which is common for most textbooks. They even point out that the colors that don't end as -i take の no instead of な na to become adjectives.
The section about "treating adjectives as verbs" maybe be a bit confusing, however. In Japanese, adjectives are often conjugated into past or negative tenses, and not the final です desu. This site refers to this as "treating adjectives as verbs" when many textbooks will refer to it as "adjective conjugation". Either way, same process. They use this section to teach not only how to conjugate -i adjectives, but also how to conjugation the copula, です desu, for use with -na adjectives. Picking up how to conjugate the copula here is nice, but I kind of wish I had seen the explanation for the copula on it's own as well.
Right now the grammar section seems a bit sparse, but if once there are more in depth explanations, I'm sure it'll be a decent resource to check your understand of how Japanese grammar works. I just hope that eventually there will be sections for intermediate and advanced grammar as well!
If you need a break from language learning, the site also offers information on several cultural topics. These are broken into categories of food, places, activities and customs. Within each of these are introductions to several well-known areas of Japanese culture. Give these a read-through if you have the chance. You may find out something you didn't know! I totally recommend the one about geisha. If we're lucky, this section will expand to hold information about areas of Japanese culture that aren't as well known to the Western world, as well as expanding on areas that are prone to misconceptions around the world.
While the site is still just starting, it's looking promising. Clicking on the Community menu will take you to the start page of their forums, which seem to not have opened for public use yet. It looks like once the forums are up and running, they will be quite useful resources as they are carefully planned out and organized to be used in conjunction with each section of the website.
Overall, I like where this site is headed. I like the ease which one can use the quizzes and flashcards, and I like how simply designed the site is. It's not cluttered with too much information on one page, and there aren't advertisements everywhere. It's a nice, simple resource that shows a lot of promise. Hopefully once the site is fully up and has more to offer, I'll be able to review it again to see how it's progress has come along!
Never promise to have an update later in the week ever again.
Seems like every time I promise to update this later in the week or within the next week, it ends up being months. A strange, twisted amendment to Murphy's Law? Who knows. Perhaps if I stop promising, I'll actually end up posting regularly. We can only hope.
Today I'll be reviewing a site that has been sitting in my e-mail inbox for a few weeks now, theJapaneseTutor.com. The main author of the site e-mailed me requesting a review, so here we go!
Note: Supposedly you need Microsoft Silverlight to be able to access several functions of the site (I'm guessing the flashcards and quizzes). I believe Silverlight is already pre-loaded into both Windows Vista and Windows 7. I did not need to install it on my RC version of Win7 even with using Firefox to view the site.
Double note: I'm not sure if the site is completely up and running yet. It seems they are still in the works with getting everything up and running, so there may be areas that aren't as filled in as they could be.
Right off the bat, I love the front page. It's simple, centered, no scrolling required to see everything. There's a random phrase of the day-like thing with English, romaji, kana and kanji, plus a sound bite and a link to another random phrase. Very good way to get learners intrigued into what else the site has to offer. There's also a brief introduction to the site with links to get starting learning the language or the culture, as well as a brief highlight of a part of the site. Currently it's katakana on my screen, but on click of the "Home" link on the top navbar and it changes the background picture, random phrase and the highlight to another part of the site.
Speaking of the navbar, I like it's set up a lot. It's divided into "Home", "Language", "Culture", "Community" and "About" with all but "Home" and "Community" having drop-down menus that let the user pick the sub-section they want right from the start.
Let's start with the "Language" section, shall we?
Clicking on the navbar takes you to a start page for each section. This start page lists the same sub-sections as the drop-down menus on the navbar does, but also offers brief introductions to what each section is. My favorite part on the "Language" start page? Getting Started section! Every site needs a easy-to-find getting started section. Every site that doesn't, or makes it impossible to find, loses major points in my book.
The main thing I love about this site is how clean it is. There are ads, but they're well placed and don't intrude on the site. There's never too much going on for one page, so there's never any sensory overload while browsing. Subsections are further divided up into smaller sections, with a link menu carefully places on the left-hand side. theJapaneseTutor.com uses their "Getting Started" page as a way to further introduce what their site is all about. There's a nice overview about Japanese and suggestions for what to do on the site depending on what type of learner you are (casual, passionate, one-stop resource).
My only complaint about this section, is that none of the suggestions for the different learners offer direct links to suggested areas of the site. I would suggest adding at least one in-text link for at least one suggested area of the site for each type of learner listed. For the Casual Learner, I'd make a link to definitely the cultural articles, and maybe one to the vocabulary page. Passionate Learner, maybe link to the grammar section. The One-Stop Resource Learner would love a link directly to the kanji section!
One further note on the Getting Started page, the greeting on the top of the page is misspelled. It should be いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) not いらしゃませ (irashaimase). Also, ようこそ (youkoso) would be a better translation for "welcome". Irasshaimase is used mainly in stores as a way of saying "Welcome! How may I help you?" to customers. It is common to mix the usage of these up as if you look either up in a dictionary they both come up with "welcome" as their English translation.
Moving on to the hiragana and katakana pages, things are looking good.
There's a top menu on both with "Introduction", "List", Flashcards", "Quiz" and "Resource" links. Katakana also has a "Special Notes" page link. Both pages have the same subsections: an overview, basic chart, extended chart, usage and conclusion. The overview gives a bit on the history/usage of each script, which is a good start for the page. It lets the learner know what's going on before they even start. The basic chart for both appear directly under this introductory overview, making it very easy to get into the swing of learning. You don't have to go to a separate page just to get started; it's right there in front of you. You can even click on the individual characters and hear the pronunciation! Now if only it showed you the stroke order, the page would be perfect!
Under both charts there are several key points to writing both charts, things like small つ (tsu), particles, and special characters used in katakana but not hiragana. While this is really useful, there is one mistake on the katakana page. "Taxi" is written on the page as タクシイー (takushiii) when in actually it should be タクシー (takushii). Using the extender bar, ちょうおんふ (chouonfu), means you don't need the extra イ that the author put after the シ.
At the bottom of each page is a link to the next subsection, the extended sets. Both extended sets feature the characters that have diacritical marks as well as combined sounds. The hiragana extended chart is listed (and once again clickable), the katakana chart is not. I feel a katakana extended chart should be available on the page, especially to help learners comprehend the special combinations (wi, we, wu, wo, fa, fi, fe, fo, va, vi, vu, ve, vo, etc) a bit more than the written explanation on the "Special Notes" page offers. Instead, you have to access the extended chart by clicking the "List" menu option on the horizontal menu at the top of the page.
Also, both the hiragana and katakana extended set pages say that combined characters follow an easy pronunciation pattern with the exception of those made with し "shi" and じ "ji". I personally think those made with ち "chi" should be included as "exceptions" if you're going to say there are pronunciation exceptions.
The "Usage" page for both offer some good notes on how to use each set of characters, as well as a small foray into grammar (i.e. introduction particles and sentence structure a bit). These are very, very simple explanation, but I believe good for a novice learner just trying to get a start. Hopefully the grammar sections offer more in depth explanations.
One problem with the example sentence on the katakana usage page: the verb used (つぶす "tsubusu") means "to crush" or "to squash", not "to break". The correct verb should be こわれる "kowareru", the intransitive verb "break". Because of this, the sentence should read タイヘンだ！メリーのミルクのガラスがこわれました！(Taihen da! Merii no miruku no garasu ga kowaremashita!). Since こわれる is an intransitive verb, the particle が "ga", not は "wa", is more common. However, は "wa" is also usable depending on the context.
The katakana also gives more hints as to usage with foreign words and names, mainly how to form f-sounds, w-sounds and v-sounds. This is a pretty useful page, but having a chart of all the extra combinations would be nice. Also, there are slight mistakes with the katakana for "Wii" and "wink". Nintendo's official pronunciation for "Wii" is ウィー not ウィイ. The page also has "wink" as ウインク (uinku) even though the explanation directly above it says the イ should be small. This is most likely a typing error, and should actually be ウィンク.
Now the awesome part of both the hiragana and katakana pages are the Silverlight-based flashcards and quizzes. These are GREAT study resources. Both offer several options to customize the flashcards and quizzes to what suits your level of learning. For both the flashcards and the quizzes, you can choose what you want on each side of the card (usually audio, romaji or kana), if you want just hiragana, katakana or both, and if you want to include the extended sets. Both the ease of use and the customization possible makes both of these great ways to study if you have some extra free time on the net.
Moving on to the Kanji page, there's a lot more information to take in. The top menu is the same as that for katakana, and there is a side menu for each of the different subsections. One main difference between this and the kana pages is that all the information is on one page. All the explanations about On readings and the Kun readings, as well the difference between the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and "daily use" kanji lists, are on the same page, one after the other. While this may seem daunting, do not worry. The side menu takes you to each section of explanation separately so you don't have to scroll through the whole page if you don't want to. The "Special Notes" page gives more in depth explanation for the different readings, which I find to be a very good set of explanations. It's still a bit basic, but it's better than just saying "On is the Chinese pronunciation and Kun is the Japanese" like many resources tend to do.
The "List" page has lists of not only the "daily use" kanji separated by grade level, but also lists for all four levels of the JLPT. Once again, another great resource! Both sets of lists have the kanji, stroke count, English meaning, On reading and Kun readings. The readings are written in both kana and in romaji for easy learning. All the lists are pretty long, but it's a good set up to start with. Only thing I would probably find to be a neat addition would be if they allowed the learning to organize the kanji list by stroke order if they so wanted, though that would probably be pretty difficult to code into the site.
Flashcards and quizzes work much like the ones for kana, giving you options of what you want on both sides of the card (or on the quiz) and what lists you want to use. I approve!
The resource section for the kana and kanji pages list suggested books, which for some reason fail to show up on Firefox, but show up on IE just fine. They also all list some suggested websites for more information if you're still craving for more.
Once you get through briefing yourself on kana and kanji, you can move on to the vocabularly lists provided on the drop-down menu. There are nine lists of nouns ranging from animals to food, to time and weather. There is also a list of simple verbs and another of adjectives. All the lists are set up similarly: English, Romaji, Kana, Kanji, sound clip. Several words list the rarely-used kanji, which is nice because it's hard to pick them up as they aren't seen in writing as much anymore. Good way to impress people in Japan is to use kanji that no one uses anymore! For the most part, the vocabulary is very useful and contains many words that are used on a daily basis. There are a few where there's only one English meaning listed, but there are other uses for the same word/kanji, so be careful. If you go into this site knowing that one particular word can be used in several different contexts to mean several different things, you're fine. Usually the different meanings are similar, so you should be able to figure it out on your own later as your studying progresses. The one good thing about only having one meaning listed is it makes the flashcard and quiz functions less confusing. You don't have to guess which meaning the card or quiz wants as the answer.
Last subsection of the Language menu is Grammar. These currently are mainly in romaji, and are super-simplified in their explanations. They also commonly mistakenly list particles (like は wa, が ga, and を wo) as prepositions. Prepositions are things like above, under, next to. Don't get confused! Overall, the grammar offers good explanations, though simple. For true beginners, this may be a good way to start, but possibly slightly confusing. The sentence structure section is one of those that kind of makes sense, but kind of doesn't. There's too much in one section, and I would suggest possibly shortening it into smaller subsections to further explain how subjects and objects are used in Japanese grammar.
Overall, the grammar sections seem to be very well done. There are a few mistakes or things left out (like I saw 3000 written as sansen and 688 as roku-hyaku hachi-juu hachi. The bolded areas are wrong. 3000 should be sanzen and 688 should be roppyaku hachi-juu hachi and the explanation for why several numbers change sounds was mainly left out). The pages on particles give pretty easy to understand explanations, and there is pretty fair amount of detailed explanation for the particle に ni. There are also fairly good brief introductions to basic counters and the types of verbs in Japanese. Even the verb conjugation sections are well-thought out, putting each type of verb on it's own page. Currently the verb conjugation only has polite present and past tenses, but I'm sure it will fill out to include all verb conjugation in the future. The adjective section splits the adjectives into common -i and -na adjectives, which is common for most textbooks. They even point out that the colors that don't end as -i take の no instead of な na to become adjectives.
The section about "treating adjectives as verbs" maybe be a bit confusing, however. In Japanese, adjectives are often conjugated into past or negative tenses, and not the final です desu. This site refers to this as "treating adjectives as verbs" when many textbooks will refer to it as "adjective conjugation". Either way, same process. They use this section to teach not only how to conjugate -i adjectives, but also how to conjugation the copula, です desu, for use with -na adjectives. Picking up how to conjugate the copula here is nice, but I kind of wish I had seen the explanation for the copula on it's own as well.
Right now the grammar section seems a bit sparse, but if once there are more in depth explanations, I'm sure it'll be a decent resource to check your understand of how Japanese grammar works. I just hope that eventually there will be sections for intermediate and advanced grammar as well!
If you need a break from language learning, the site also offers information on several cultural topics. These are broken into categories of food, places, activities and customs. Within each of these are introductions to several well-known areas of Japanese culture. Give these a read-through if you have the chance. You may find out something you didn't know! I totally recommend the one about geisha. If we're lucky, this section will expand to hold information about areas of Japanese culture that aren't as well known to the Western world, as well as expanding on areas that are prone to misconceptions around the world.
While the site is still just starting, it's looking promising. Clicking on the Community menu will take you to the start page of their forums, which seem to not have opened for public use yet. It looks like once the forums are up and running, they will be quite useful resources as they are carefully planned out and organized to be used in conjunction with each section of the website.
Overall, I like where this site is headed. I like the ease which one can use the quizzes and flashcards, and I like how simply designed the site is. It's not cluttered with too much information on one page, and there aren't advertisements everywhere. It's a nice, simple resource that shows a lot of promise. Hopefully once the site is fully up and has more to offer, I'll be able to review it again to see how it's progress has come along!
