EDUCATION

I’m constantly being amazed at some of the clever and awesome stuff people come up with and contribute. Philipp Kerling recently sent me an awesome perl script that converts the grammar guide to PDF. This is a lot better than the old version which is simply the html file printed to pdf. This version also [...] Related posts:Grammar Guide iPhone app Ronald has done what appears to be a tremendous job... Guide featured on NIHONGO eな Totally forgot about this as it was sitting in my... 2010 and audio still sucks I finally got around to adding sounds to the Hiragana... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Totally forgot about this as it was sitting in my inbox since early April, but the guide has been featured on NIHONGO eな, a (kinda) new portal site for learning Japanese! It’s a brief introduction (with a Japanese version as well) so it may be old hat to regular visitors. However, the site overall looks [...] Related posts:Grammar Guide iPhone app Ronald has done what appears to be a tremendous job... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ronald has done what appears to be a tremendous job on getting the grammar guide to the iPhone. I only say “appears” because I don’t have an iPhone to try it out. But if you do, try it out and add a review! Grammar Guide iPhone app and app homepage. Thanks Ronald! No related posts. [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve been following the mobile tech news including the new android and iPhone with interest. It certainly seems like a lot of exciting stuff is happening and many areas could offer innovations in learning languages. In particular, voice recognition could potentially allow a program to check your pronunciation and text-to-speech could read out any Japanese [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I started learning Japanese as an adult (college sophomore) and became proficient in about 5 years (full story here). So I’d like to think I know the various phases you go through when learning a foreign language. There are different things to watch out for in each phase so let’s look at the long journey [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Does anybody else find there’s no good male word for “I”? 「私」 is too formal except for work (which I no longer do in Japanese). I was comfortable with 「俺」 for a while but now I’m too old and Mr. Rogers-ish. And I never liked 「僕」 as it feels a bit too much boy scout-ish. [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I finally got around to adding sounds to the Hiragana chart. Check it out. More needs to be done but it was hell getting it all working. I didn’t feel like using flash (not supported by iPhone and iPad) and instead opted for the html 5 audio tag. Only problem is that there is no [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

After decades of innovation, we now have pocket-size computers that are more powerful than ones that used to take up whole rooms. But despite all the hardware advances we’ve made and the decades of research in computer natural language processing, Google translater still gives me this translation. 何しているの？ – What are you? Hmm… nice try. [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I got the following email the other day. I thought it was interesting for a number of reasons and instead of replying, decided to share here instead. Hi, You make a good grammar guide, but sadly few people will ever use it. It is foolish not to put the guide in romaji and have it [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I know there’s still many of you out there that still feels uncomfortable about the difference between the 「は」 and 「が」 particle. You might have even read my first post which covered this very topic. Maybe my explanation didn’t “vibe” with you (translation: something’s wrong with you), so let me give you a more concrete [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.