Kanjilish

[RebelDogg]

I just stumbled across this neat little firefox addon... anyone else else use it? Seems like a pretty killer idea.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7208

What it does is replace the first letter in some words with the kanji for that word. It's not intended to teach kanji, but lets you see the kanji as you read english. Just installed it. Seems to work well in conjunction with Rikaichan. 便利！

What are y'alls thoughts?

Also: If anyone can help. I'm searching for a way to add something to a context menu in Firefox. I want to ass JWPce to my menu when I select text (kanji) I find myself using it a lot to get info on kanji and it would be cool to have it in the menu. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty modifying if anyone knows how. Or if there is a prog I can get, that'd be awesome.

[TrueNappa]

Looks like a neat resource but I'd be wary of English hononyms and how reliably the add-on can interpret them. For example:

"I hit the man with a bat."

Would it tell you the kanji of a baseball bat, or the animal bat. Or both? Seems like an interesting idea but I'd personally be too worried about it making mistakes to trust it, and I wouldn't want to take the time to double-check that it's right.

Instead, just hunker down with some flashcards and learn those kanji! Then post, or write in a journal, or e-mail a J-friend and use it!

[RebelDogg]

I'm sure it's not perfect. Honestly I haven't used it as much as I thought I would... kinda forgot about it.

I haven't really tested it thoroughly, however on a quick test I don't think your concern it too much of an issue. My kanji skills aren't so great, but using Rikaichan confirms Kanjilish (and I'd recommend using them both.) It doesn't put a kanji on EVERY word. In your example, there was no kanji on either "bat." Just words like "Friend" or "Man." It puts "吾" in place of "I" which is correct, although I'm not sure if "私" would be more proper.

In short it's NO use for really learning kanji. No replacement for my other various methods. However it still seems pretty good for an almost subliminal reinforcement of the kanji, where you are reading the word "friend" and see "友riend." Even though the kanji for "tomodachi" is actually the compound "友達." It still reinforces the meaning of that first character.

How useful is it really? Dunno. Was something that seemed like a really cool idea when I downloaded it... then I kinda forgot about it. But now I remember! So I'll try not to forget about...

um...

What where we talking about again? Manga... anime... tokyo gore police... dumplings... bleh...

[Sp3ctre18]

Actually I thought we were talking about something more along the lines of chives, and fixing a leaky faucet...but I could be wrong.

However it still seems pretty good for an almost subliminal reinforcement of the kanji, where you are reading the word "friend" and see "友riend."

I think you're right on this point, that's probably the only real use.

Well, I'll be noting down those two extension, for when I load up Firefox again.