The 1,500th Volats entry went in today:-

読み上げる • よみあげる • to read aloud

You'd think that'd be something we'd come across in class, wouldn't you? But no: just browsing the dictionary, looking for something else that wasn't there.

When entering verbs, I always set up a verb sheet too, so I have the various forms to hand:-

yomiageru

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto was a real treat last night, and worked despite the apparent mis-match between Sakamoto's melodic piano and Noto's bass pulses and clicks. Somehow you're able to take the two in, accept each for what it is, and allow them to fuse into a surprisingly effective whole. Sakamoto kept the timing of the two parts deliberately separate, a chord falling just off-beat against Noto's dominant beats. The second encore was a slowly unfolding version of Forbidden Colours. Wonderful.

Took the Eurostar to Brussels and back today, taking 4 days'-worth of Volats test sheets with me. Walking through the crowded concourse of Waterloo this evening, Volats sheet in one hand, half the brain concentrating on not bumping into people, the other half fishing for the word なるほど..... The brain seems to work well this way, and it's a fine use of what would otherwise be lost time.

In response to a post in Japanese! Japanese! on sharing word lists, Pawel pointed me to the EDICT dictionary project. EDICT uses a standard format for dictionary entries, which would be one option to look at if we do go ahead.

To see how the format works in practice, I downloaded the Akane dictionary program (available from the Monash ftp site - scroll down to the Mac software).

Searching for ざっし, here's what I got:-



You can search by English word as well as Japanese.

If you search by a single kanji, it returns entries that include the same pronunciation as that kanji, whether or not they include the kanji itself. Search by a kanji compound, and it seems to work fine - perhaps depending on whether there are homophones of the compound.

Anyway, I like it. As you can see from the screen-shot, the related words would be useful as a way of expanding your vocabulary. 漫画雑誌 as a little bonus there.

Heather and I have been working on some materials that we could use in phone study sessions - us both being in need of practice, but not using the same course books. I've just posted draft versions of a couple of papers on my 'Files' page, one on describing people, the other on dates and days of the week. The idea is to make each paper fairly self-contained, so you can learn or refresh some vocabulary and so some exercises or play a game by way of practice.

Of course I've aimed them at my level - a beginner with a few months of study under his belt, but not above going back to basics.

These haven't been tested in battle yet, but Heather and I are both keen to do weekly skype sessions and will use them then.

All comments gratefully received.

What is it with me and databases? Probably a distraction to keep me away from actually learning Japanese....

Anyway, after musing on japanese!japanese! about the expanding spider's web of compounds, that grows with the addition of each new character, surprise surprise, off goes Barnes with his Lego-Meccano-StickleBricks database-making toy. Half an hour later, the wondrous kanji/compounds database. Probably a complete waste of time, but good for a laugh. And who knows...

You enter each character as a 'record' on one page. On a separate page, you enter compounds made from characters you've already entered.

Then, as if by magic, on the 'kanji' page there appear two lists that include the compounds that kanji features in - one where the kanji comes in the first position, one where it comes in the second.

One thing it's good for is making sense of the different pronunciations of the same character.

It remains to be seen whether the benefits outweigh the time needed to keep the thing updated.

Here's an example page:-




The number at the right of each compound (16 for each of those above) is the JLPT level of each of the two kanji multiplied together. So each of the compounds above comprises two 'level 4' kanji.

There's lots of thinking going on around how to share vocab lists, so that we could make lists available to other users of kenkyuukai.com (which is currently migrating to japanesejapanese.com), adding to or exchanging lists for particular activities or contexts.

We're exploring a couple of avenues:-

-- A common file format that people using different applications could both export to and import from (tab delineated files, for example - though we may need to agree the fields to use). I've put a test file on the 'Files' page for anyone to download and see if they can make use of. Please let me know by e-mail or comment whether you have any success.

-- An online database that we could all contribute to building. This could be a Filemaker file, hosted on a friendly server. The idea of people being able to upload or add to lists, for all to then use, is quite appealing. Technically, it's beyond me, but there are better brains than mine out there.

(15/10/05 - I've removed the 'word list' pages, convinced that HTML tables are not the way).