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Hiragana and Katakana tables. These are a collection of tables showing the sets of Hiragana and Katakana characters in various formats. HiraganaTable1column1024 presents the basic and complete hiragana character sets as two tables in one file and sized to fit appropriately on a 1024x768 pixel display. The upper table lists only the 46 basic hiragana characters; the table below lists all the characters, with the dakuon and handakuon characters intermixed with the basic (so that the early nihongo student can see the easy relationship between them and the basic characters). HiraganaBlankTable1024 is the same table as hiragana1024, but without the characters - for use by students wishing to test themself and their ability to write the characters from memory. HiraganaBlankTable1280 is the same table, but sized for a 1280x1024 pixel screen. Katakanatable1024 and KatakanaTable1280 present the katakana characters, sized appropriately for 1024x768 and 1280x1024 pixel screens, respectively. |
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NihongoTime is somewhat like NihongoNumber, but is web based and not a stand-alone program like NihongoTime. Telling time in nihongo involves many special cases. NihongoTime is a web-based tutoring program intended to help the nihongo student learn the standard cases, and the special cases. The program selects a random time, presents it to the user, and in the next iteration, presents the romanji and hiragana for that time. The user on the NihongoTime options page may limit the selected times to A.M., P.M., or both; and if the untranslated time is presented before the translation, or concurrently. The font used used can be selected for handheld devices, up through oversized for projection use in a classroom. |
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NihongoCalendar generates a calendar page for a single month, for any month between January 1801 and December 2099, labeled either in hiragana or kanji. The user has control over colors used and font sizes. The primary use of these calendar pages is to learn the special set of numbers used in nihongo to number the days of the month, the days of the month, the month names and the years. NihongoCalendar is a php program, as such is usable on PC, Macs and handheld devices. If no month or year is selected then a calendar for the current month is generated. If no colors are selected, then default colors are used. |
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This was the first tool of this collection built for the nihongo student. It is an actual program (.exe) which needs to be downloaded, and will only run on Windows machines. NihongoNumbers allows the user to select the range of numbers to be presented, and then presents to the user, a number, and after the user hits "enter>, the romanji nihongo translation of that number. (another "enter" presents the student with another number, another "enter" another translation etc.) Since it is a program which runs on the user's PC no web connection is required after it has been downloaded. [of note: being an outside program, Windows will ask the user each time they run it if running it is acceptable - this is an acceptable way to run the program, but if the user wishes to bypass this confirmation each time, they can right-click on the program icon and set the permissions to allow it to run with being queried each time.] The program can be downloaded and left on the user machine and run from there; or can be run directly from the website. J1time is another desktop nihongo time tutoring tool. It is a Windows program, and as such will not run on Macs nor handheld devices. It also will not produce hiragana output, only romanji. But for those wanting such a program it is available - thought the NihongoTime tutoring tool above is a better resource. |
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Nakama 1 - Japanese Communication, Culture, Context (Houghton Mifflin 1998 1st ed) presents to the students with each chapter new vocabulary, key sentences and at the end of each chapter essential, passive and supplementary vocabulary. NakamaFC is a program which combined with the provided flashcard collections, allows the user to learn these items via flashcards. The user can see the vocabulary items in three modes: the japanese first, then the english translation; the english first and the japanese; and both at the same time. The user can view a single flashcard collection, or may combine them. The user may view the slected flashcards randomly or sequentially. For the later chapters, where the new vocabulary items are broken into A, B, C etc part, the provided flashcards have been broken up likewise. NakamaFC is a php program, thereby viable on PCs, Macs and handheld devices with web browsing capabilities. Flashcards have also been provided for the hiragana and katakana symbols; likewise special cases like the names of the months (in two forms, hiragana and kanji), and the names of the days of the month, both, hiragana and kanji. Of note: these flashcards have been only recently built and, with our apologies, maybe still contain bugs - if such are found, please forward any to gmushial@gmdr.com - we'll try to correct them as quickly as possible. And, our apologies if any are found. There are over 1000 flashcards total across all the collections. [Of note: NakamaFC can be used for learning other languages, though the user will need to generate the flashcard collections; and can be used for non-language learning appications, again, the flashcard collections will have to be generated.] |
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For those wishing to add hiragana, katakana characters, or the kanji from Nakama chapters 7-12, to web pages, they can laboriously add them by looking up the requisite Unicode four digit codes (from various resources on the web), and add them to their web pages; or they can use HKtypist to generate the required codes, and then copy and paste into their web pages. HKtypist presents the user with a mouse clickable "keyboard" containing all said characters, and an "edit box" from which the user can copy the codes. The user is given visual feedback of what they've typed as they type in a separate window. This is a html / javascript program and as such should be usable on both PCs and Macs |
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If one wishes to add kanji characters to web pages, then one needs to comeup with the unicode character number for the desired character(s). HKtypist makes this easy for those kanji covered in Nakama chapters 7-12 - they are simply a mouse click away. For those characters, where the unicode number is not known, and one needs to search the 21,000 (approx) kanji defined in unicode, KanjiUnicodePages, presents these characters 256 per page, page by page. Importantly, for each kanji presented, its hex unicode number is presented directly below it. Once the character is found, the unicode number can be used in the desired web pages. The front/options page allows the user to begin on any of the kanji pages; and once on a page, the user can go to the next page, the previous page, or any specific page. Searching for a particular kanji can brutal, but if there is no other resources, it can be done. (The author of HKtypist did this to build the kanji "keyboards" contained therein - brutal, but doable.) |