This week's review is for Takoboto. I would recommend it for all levels of learners. The website covers most areas of the Vocabulary, Grammar and Lists made by the community. This is mostly a grammatical database more or less.
What
Takoboto is a Dictionary and Grammar Database built on the contributions of earlier Jgram.org contributors. Searchbar is the place to start, with a nice 'find kanji by radicals' options which is were you stick lots of signs together (the English-Japanese learning community refer to as radicals) to create a Kanji (a pictograph, because languages).
You have the Dictionary, Lists, Grammar and Apps tabs. Dictionary is how it sounds. Once you type in the word to the search bar, you are presented with a breakdown of potential outcomes for the word you have chosen. In the sidebar, these are alternatives to your word, with your word headed by Kanji, Hiragana and meaning and example sentences below. To the right is a breakdown of your word of its Kanji, 'Reading' (Pitch Accent), 'English' section detailing grammatical functions, 'Your personal translations', 'Kanjis' of pictograph, On/Kunyomi, Stroke, Grade for JLPT/SKIP/FC, stroke order and then a 'Phrases' section which has examples sentences which breakdown the grammatical functions of the example.
Lists is a section of vocabulary lists made by community users of Takoboto. Au for example is the first in 'ready-made', and 'contributed' has the same webpage design. Sidebar goes Kanji/Hiragana, Verb type, Linguistical grammar functions and then examples of singular and multiple usages. Right hand side gives pictographs, pitch accent. English is the verb info again and example sentences, then 'Conjugated forms' in the tenses and other contextual forms such as what we call continuative apparently. I am still learning how to grammar. Kanji and Phrases is the same as in the dictionary tab.
Grammar is seperated into JLPT levels of difficulty, but seems to be based on the 2010 versions of N4-N1 difficulty. Sidebar being the Hiragana reading, then meaning/semantical function. Linguistics. Muy bien. Often a marker of some sort because Nihongo, Genki desu ne. Right hand side has a Hiragana and grade rank first with a note from Amatuka. This is the person who originally posted the information to Jgram, Takobotos predecessor. Round of thanks for them all. Then 'meaning', 'Formation' which for Ga in a sentence may be 'Sentence+Ga+Sentence', the 'See Also' section becuase Unhinged-go, and 'Phrases' which uses example sentences again with the particle Ga being highlighted in Green. 'Discussion and Comments' shockingly (sarcasm) has comments and discussion there where a bunch of nerds argue about grammatical functions willingly.
Where
Available at https://takoboto.jp/ .
Who
The Takoboto site is the successor it seems to Jgram.org. The creators and commenters of these works are all licensed to Jgram under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Other respective content belongs to:
- Jgram.org belongs to David Collier (Kinda boo for AI ethics stuff), Adam Rotmil, Jeff Blum with contribtuions by Amatuka, Bamboo4 and Miki O. Content operated under a creative commons license.
- Tanaka Corpus, JMDict, JMnedict and KanjiDIC2 belongs to EDRDG project, with contributions from Jim Breen at the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group.
- Tatoeba content is licensed under Creative Commons 2.0, and belongs to Trang Ho.
- Kradfile2 & kradfile-u belongs to Micheal Raine, contributions by Breen and Jim Rose.
These all have many, many people involved in these projects whom I would love to highlight if they wish to be.
When
Available 24/7, also has an app which is free, might require subscription though for some features.
Why
I would recommend Takoboto because it is a nice grammar study guide tool for supplementing the JLPT papers. And just trust me, grammar is a nightmare thing.
A word on the creative commons license matter. Having knowledge be free should arguably be a human right to an extent. Intellectual property is a tricky subject, but the creation and promulgation of a societally created adhocratic knowledge base is something which remains deeply important to me as someone learning a language and who has seen the difference between knowing another language and not knowing one. It opens doors financially, socially, culturally, morally, artistically and gives me a window into billions more peoples comprehensive understandings and personal histories than as a monolingual speaker I could ever have. And I do believe in monetization of language, but I also believe there should really be a free version or alternative, and that businesses must find ways of offering services which serve people and not the other way around. Since the 2010s, this seems to be opposite case and would mean things like Wikipedia, the Internet and Social Media would not exist because of human greed.
With all that said, long live Creative Commons!
Socials
Email : learnjapanese43@gmail.com
Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LearnJapanese43
Discord : @learnjapaneseforfree
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Youtube: @learnjapaneseforfree /LJ43?
This review is part of the Learn Japanese for free project. I have, do not and never will derive any profit from this project. Please send any requests, questions or further information about free tools for learning Japanese to learnjapanese43@gmail.com which is checked every 2 weeks.
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