Thanks go to K for giving me this link.

JGram is a Japanese Grammar Database. It’s a site dedicated to helping people learn Japanese by helping others to learn Japanese. Entries are submitted and edited by users. There’s a few things of note.

* You can study grammar by JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level and also quiz yourself on it.

* There’s a Grammar-A-Day mailing list you can subscribe to, which does basically what its title implies.

* There’s a sentence construction quiz. Given the English translation and some Japanese segments, can you select the right segments in the right order to construct the sentence?

* Also, there’s a Kanji Picture Dictionary that was throwing Flash errors up at me and not working properly.

This site is a bit hit or miss. It’s a good idea and parts of it work. The sentence construction is interesting in particular. Unfortunately, it suffers from what many wikis suffer from, which is haphazard database entries. The grammar quiz gave me a blank without any sentence around it and expected me to choose the right answer from four options, one of which was blank itself. Another question was asked in romaji and only one of the answers was in romaji, so it was a no-brainer.

So you can give this one a try, and if you’re motivated, contribute to helping it improve. Or, you may find it painful and move on to a site with fewer database and code issues. I think it’s probably worth checking back with now and again to see if it’s improved.

I’ve pointed out this blog before, and its podcasts. I’d like to highlight the kanji videos though.

See the kanji written, see the pronunciation in romaji and kana, hear it spoken, and see the translation. They’re fun, short little videos. You may learn something!

Rikai.com has a number of things on their site, but I want to point out their tool for reading Japanese pages.

Enter the URL or paste the text directly into the box and click Go.

When the page comes up, you’ll be able to hold your cursor over an unfamiliar word and get the reading and definition. What could be simpler? And more useful?

More kanji today with CosCom’s Japanese Kanji.

On this page you can find an overview of Japanese kanji, an essay on “Effective Kanji Learning”, lists, lessons, reading practice, quizzes, and writing practice sheets. Audio is often provided. There’s a lot here to keep you busy studying kanji for awhile.

Something a little different today. This is The Japanese Slang Jisho. A short dictionary of Japanese slang words and what they mean. The slang is only presented in romaji. I hazard a guess that many or most of them would be written in katakana or hiragana anyway. Still, it would be nice if the original Japanese had been included.

Maybe this link will make up for a couple of days with no posts.

MIT’s Japanese program makes use of web resources for its instruction, and they have lessons and study materials online, available for anyone to use.

MIT Japanese Language Program

You can click on the semester that best approximates where you are in the language. In particular, check out the kanji study. See a movie (or animated gif) of a kanji being drawn, so you can learn the stroke order. It also lists the various readings, the meaning, gives some examples of words and phrases where it’s used, and sometimes even a mnemonic.

There’s also readings with audio files, and plenty of quizzes.

So get a free MIT education!

Interested in learning Japanese so you can play all those original Japanese video games? Check out this blog, Learn Japanese for Video Games. You’ll probably want to click on the archives, 2006, so you can start with the Introduction and proceed to lesson 1.

I’d say this is for beginners to intermediate. You do need to know the kana, since no romaji is used.

Japanese Vocabularyis a Barron book by Carol Akiyama.

It’s pretty much what it says: a book on Japanese vocabulary. The words are organized by category instead of alphabetically like a dictionary might list them. The main entries only have them in romaji. I would classify this as a beginner’s book.

I only gave this three stars when I initially reviewed it. I wouldn’t particularly recommend it, but if the description of it appeals to you and how you’re studying the Japanese language, then give it a go.

This review was originally posted on Epinions:

I’ve been trying to think what type of person might want to use this book and I have to tell you, I’m really not sure. Carol and Nobuo Akiyama claim that Japanese Vocabulary “is not just another dictionary!” Emphasis theirs.

Well, and it certainly isn’t. A dictionary allows you to look up words alphabetically and a good language dictionary lets you look the words up in both directions: Japanese->English and English->Japanese. This book does not do that.

The book organizes useful (and not-so-useful, truthfully) words into categories. So, for example, there is a large list of names of animals. Useful, I suppose, if you’re going to the zoo. Which is pretty much the case throughout. Useful if you’re going to be studying or engaged in an area with a specific vocabulary where it might be helpful to know how to say the various things in Japanese.

(Read on …)

Genki! Japan’s Katakana and Hiragana Games are one more way to study your kana.

They’re Flash games and are card matching memory games. The good part of these is that you can hear the sound spoken when you flip a card over. There are several games. I believe each one contains a different section of kana. When you’re done with the katakana games, there’s the hiragana versions to play.

One problem I do have with them is if you accidentally click on the www.GenkiJapan.net text in the game, it takes you out of the game and loads up the main page. And I did accidentally hit it pretty early on. It’s a little too close to the bottom line of cards.

These Japanese Language Lessons are presented as a story. Frank, an alien from outer space, is new to Earth and to Japan.

There are dialogues presented in hiragana that you can read and listen to. A translation is provided and some notes on vocabulary and grammar. At the end, you can take a vocabulary quiz.

Unfortunately, the lessons stop at Chapter 5, with some kanji just being introduced. It’s very definitely for beginners, though intermediate learners can check it out and perhaps get something from it.