Kotoba is a very neat Mac application that displays vocabulary items in a desktop window - kanji, then kana, then English - in random order, from lists you import or set up yourself.



You can import ready-made vocab lists uploaded to the Kotoba website by other users, import your own lists from databases if you use them, and create or edit lists within Kotoba itself. You can keep separate lists if that suits you, or one that you bring all words into from various sources.

To test the application, I created a list of vocab from Japanese For Busy People Book 1, by exporting those particular items from my Volats database into a tab-delimited text file. (There are four fields available: kanji, kana, English and notes). Imported into Kotoba, it works brilliantly.

You set the time delay between the display of the three fields of one vocab item, and from one vocab item to the next. You can even have the Kotoba window sit in front of the active window on your desktop, appearing transparent so it doesn't get in your way.

Kotoba only 'tests' from Japanese to English, as the fields always appear in that order. In fact, it doesn't really test at all, but reminds you of the vocab. You don't enter your answer, there's no marking of correct answers, and there's no systematic ordering of the items as they appear from the list. The strength of it, though, is that it keeps the words ticking over, appearing in front of your eyes perhaps when you're doing something else.