Archie Barnes taught classical Chinese at Durham University, and was hugely inspirational to us young sprogs as we tried to get to grips with Mencius, Wang Wei and the like. I'm not sure my dissertation on the use of 德 in the Analects of Confucius was quite up to the great man's standards (in fact, I didn't dare ask my tutors what they thought of it, for fear it was lamentable), but it was the sort of direction he steered us towards.

In his retirement, he wrote Chinese through Poetry: An Introduction to the Language and Imagery of Traditional Verse. This is now available to download at www.archiebarnes.com, thanks to Marie and Archie's family.

From a Japanese perspective, anyone struggling to reach an appreciation of kanji should give this a try. Without needing to 'learn' Chinese, you will see the richness of the tradition of which kanji are a part.

Needless to say, those with an interest in classical Chinese or Chinese poetry will find this invaluable.

FilemakerPro can store images in 'container fields', allowing you to store and display an image as part of a database record - for example, you can put a picture in a VOLATS record to illustrate the word in context.

Using Google Images, you can search for the Japanese word you want to illustrate. The result? A page (or several pages) of thumbnail images that have your word in the caption.

I searched for 鼻紙, and got this.

Choose the picture and caption that work best, use Grab or similar to copy them into an image file, then copy that into the container field in your database entry for that word.

A word I found earlier today, and would expect to have difficulty remembering - only having come across it once and not knowing whether it is commonly used - is 励む (はげむ) meaning to strive, to endeavour, to make an effort at something. Google Image gave me a great picture and caption, 'having a go at making pizza', which is now part of my VOLATS entry:-



Isn't that neat?

And if that's not proof enough, how about this?


(With thanks and congratulations to the proud parents, whoever they may be....)

Here's a fascinating article on learning words in pairs, by Rob Waring of Notre Dame Sheishin University. (Follow the links at the bottom of his article for more vocabulary resources).

The article begins with the shortcomings of 'list learning', then moves on to the advantages of 'pair learning' (learning words as a pair only - a foreign word and your mother tongue equivalent, or some other prompt such as a picture), and how to do that well. He describes a box system similar to the original VOLATS, whereby each word card moves back through the box as the learner becomes more familiar with it. A 'relearning schedule' illustrates the need for re-testing at increasing intervals.

So much in tune with the thinking behind VOLATS, Archie would have been delighted.

I particularly like his point that vocabulary learning works best when done in regular, small doses; and that the more you learn, the easier it becomes. Both very encouraging!

In a conversation with my daughter today, I remarked that you very seldom see people studying in public. I do it all the time, as I always have a Volats test with me if I go out walking or use public transport, such that it no longer feels like an odd thing to do. I was at Gatwick airport the other evening, to meet her and her friends who'd been skiing in la Clusaz, and it seemed noteworthy that I was the only person who seemed to be using that spare half hour in the arrivals area. There are hundreds of students living near us in New Cross, attending Goldsmiths College, but you still don't often see people studying in public. I don't know whether it's my imagination or my memory playing tricks with me, but I have this vision of young people walking around with bags full of books, or sitting on steps and benches reading Moliere or some such. Did that ever happen?

Anyway, I was wondering whether anyone promotes studying in public as a good thing to do. Is there a www.study-in-public.com? In a way, I suppose those of us who contribute to sites like this are probably doing that in our own fields...

So there I was, googling 'study in public', when I came across the following online resource, which I might not subscribe to:

learning-at-home.co.uk has a Japanese language module, 30 quid for a 10-12 hour CD-rom course. These screen shots are from the on-line preview:-






And -



Oh boy.

In their defence, each of these example words has an audio clip giving the pronunciation. Even so... Way to teach Japanese!

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.

To drill home once again the different verb forms and review all verbs I've learnt to date, I've printed out a set of tables, each having one group of verbs, to review one group per day.

Note that these are 'my' verbs, so don't expect the lists to be extensive.

五段 (Group 1) verbs come first:-

Day 1 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -au (10 verbs in this list)
Examples - あう／会う to meet; ならう／習う to learn
Formed in the pattern -au, -aimasu, -atte, -awanai
godan_au_verbs

Day 2 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -aru (16 verbs in this list)
Examples - ある to be, to have; おわる／終わる to finish
Formed in the pattern -aru, -arimasu, -atte, -aranai
godan_aru_verbs

Day 3 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -u (5 verbs in this list)
Examples - いう／言う to say; おもう／思う to think
Formed in the pattern -u, -imasu, -tte, -wanai
godan_u_verbs

Day 4 - 五段 verbs ending in -ku and -gu (20 verbs in this list)
Examples - かく／書く to write; およぐ／泳ぐ to swim
Formed in the pattern -ku, -kimasu, -ite, -kanai
Or, for -gu verbs: -gu, -gimasu, -ide, -ganai

Note the irregular いく／行く and the derived とまりにいく
godan_ku_gu_verbs

Day 5 - 五段 verbs ending in -su (8 verbs in this list)
Examples - はなす／話す to speak; けす／消す to turn off
Formed in the pattern -su, -shimasu, -shite, -sanai
godan_su_verbs

Day 6 - 五段 verbs ending in -tsu (3 verbs in this list)
Examples - まつ／待つ to wait; たつ／立つ to stand
Formed in the pattern -tsu, -chimasu, -tte, -tanai
godan_tsu_verbs

Day 7 - 五段 verbs ending in -bu (4 verbs in this list)
Examples - よぶ／呼ぶ to call; あそぶ／遊ぶ to play
Formed in the pattern -bu, -bimasu, -nde, -banai
godan_bu_verbs

Day 8 - 五段 verbs ending in -mu (8 verbs in this list)
Examples - よむ／読む to read; やすむ／休む to rest
Formed in the pattern -mu, -mimasu, -nde, -manai
godan_mu_verbs

Day 9 - 五段 verbs ending in -ru (19 verbs in this list)
Examples - かえる／帰る to return; はしる／走る to run
Formed in the pattern -ru, -rimasu, -tte, -ranai
godan_ru_verbs

Day 10 - By way of light relief, 一段 (Group 2) verbs (35 verbs in this list)
Take off the -ru, and add -masu, -te, and -nai. Why can't all verbs be this easy?
ichidan_verbs