Sunday, 22 June 2025

Signpost #2 | Kanji and where to start for free, any level | Learn Japanese For Free

 This signpost is for all the Kanji sites that I have found so far because I cant be arsed to do hings properly, or my attention span is shot with the hot who knows really. Maybe the sky person? People? Man (Anglo-saxon English joke)? This webpage is a free resource for people who want to learn about kanji. If you want other Japanese things, look elsewhere, Like the rest of the webpages. Or the sitem@p. Or the links in the sitem@p. Or the reviews. Or the internet. Or a library. Signposting in the pedagogy semantical sense. Otherwise, not the right questions dear reader. I would recommend it for all linguistic levels of learners. This is a resource for people who want to learn about how/what/where/why/when and the socio-linguistical-geographic-economical and historical considerations of Kanji. The signpost series is for mostly linguistical students, so dont worry if its a bit of a mess. The whole blog is anyway /3<3/~*****.

Ox bone Shang Oracle Bone (2025/2009/c. 1400-1100 BC, CC0.0) Gary Lee Todd, Anonymous

What 

This is a giant compilation of data produced by myself with the assistance of search engines and catalogues and outdated blogs available on the Japanese language from the internet. If I can do it, you can too lmao.  

Some examples of data include: websites.

And loan-words, Diachronic studies, compound verbs, vocabulary in Romance languages, audio data, Corpora, spoken language processing, natural language processing, phonetics, psychology, sociology, Japanese education, dictionary compilation., dialects, collocation and hentaigana. (hahahahahaha blog rules grammar police!!!)

Where

Online at 

1) https://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore

2)https://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/joyokanjihyo_20101130.pdf             a list of all the joyo kanji from the government

3) https://www.kanshudo.com/collections/joyo_kanji    internet version of that

4) had a duplicate lmao

5) https://github.com/matt-m-o/YomiNinja/releases (free OCR overlay)

6) https://naruhodo.weebly.com/links.html     (dead blogs)

7) https://kanjialive.com/214-traditional-kanji-radicals/  (review #31)

8) https://kanjiportraits.wordpress.com/bushu-the-kanji-makers-video-clips/#:~:text=%E6%96%B9%E3%83%BB%E6%94%BE%E3%83%BB%E6%97%85%E3%83%BB%E6%97%8F,%E5%8C%BB%E3%83%BB%E7%9F%AD%20(4%20kanji) (bushu/kanji ideographs)

9) https://www.kanji-link.com/en/kanji/grade/ (joyo by grade)

10) https://thekanjicode.com/japanese-phonetic-components/ (guide to understanding keiseimoji)

11) https://japaneselearningonline.blogspot.com/2015/03/7-japanese-kanji-radicals.html (kanji radicals key to modern linguistically inclined terminology in the Japanese language)

12) https://kanjiquestblog.com/nezumi-kanji-radical/  (snother blog surprise surprise) 

13) had a duplicate lmao this shite is why my notes are a mess all the time :|

14) https://www.theworldinjapanese.com/if-you-want-to-learn-japanese-learning-kanji-is-essential/ (why learning kanji is a thing, and not just hiragana and katakana)

15) https://imabi.org/idioms-iv-yojijukugo/ (those 4 kanji things which are basically metaphysics)

16) https://nihongodera.com/tools/kana-converter (for when you give up and want something that isnt google translate or AI baloney)

17) https://www.kanji.org/ (old boffin recommendations)

18) https://kanjialive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/intro-to-kanji.pdf (review #31 yay reading)

19) https://kanjiwakaru.com/kanji/#JLPTkanji (kanji quiz site by grade)

20) https://kanjiquestblog.com/radical-list/ (see wikipedia on the sitem@p for this one as well)

21) https://app.kanjialive.com/search (kanji dictionary from people with a lot of time and money on their hands)

22) https://kanjialive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/214_traditional_radicals.pdf   (214 bushu)

23) https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1044119361  (a kanji themed anki deck)

24) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kanji_radicals_by_stroke_counter ( see 20 )

25) https://www.kanji-link.com/en/kanji/intro/      an introduction to the messy version of 3 (its messy lol try doing this with a full time job, hobbies, friends, travelling, project*S* and a life then dear reader)

26) https://www.thelearninglotus.com/characters/heart (this is Hanzi so dont @ me im not even really anywhere near that level of social media anyway rn)

27) https://kanjiportraits.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/the-kanji-%e6%a5%ad%e4%b9%97%e6%a5%bd%e8%96%ac%e6%9e%97%e6%a3%ae%e6%9d%a1%e6%9f%bb%e6%9f%93%e6%9c%ba%e6%a1%88%e6%a5%b5-%e6%9c%a8-tree-3/ (the history of the tree kanji)

28) https://naruhodo.weebly.com/blog/introduction-to-kuzushiji (what is this weird looking squiggly kanji?)

29) https://www.sketchengine.eu/corpora-and-languages/japanese-text-corpora/ (a corpora)

30) https://www.trussel.com/f_nih.htm  (jeffreys server)

31) https://oercommons.org/search?search_source=homepage&f.search=kanji&f.general_subject=&f.sublevel=&f.alignment_standard= (community college resources)

32) https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/ejfdk4/most_convenient_way_to_lookup_a_kanji_you_dont/ (reddits tuppence)

33) https://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore (this but maybe paid dunno really know but found again recently)

34) https://kanjivg.tagaini.net/ (graphic vectors or the thing jisho uses, as a copyleft scholar)

35) https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show_all_in/jpn/none (free resources by students who needed example sentences in university)

36) https://www.nihongoshark.com/post/kanji-by-sight (guide to recognising and learning to read kanji on sight, Niko seems nice, dunno about rn who runs it, but got me through a lot of mess in years gone by so recommended from me at least paywise if you wanna suport humans in the AI crisis age)

37) https://explore.transifex.com/search/?q=kanji (lol the tech bros can never, its too expensive apparently, see harvard news of late)

38) https://kanjiportraits.wordpress.com/2024/04/19/creating-a-crack-on-animal-bone-for-divination-in-ancient-china-%e7%94%b2%e9%aa%a8%e6%96%87%e5%ad%97/ (interesting read on original history stuff for Hanzi and oracle script bone writing)    as for the hue gradutation lol it felt more authentic and human than your chatgpt crap because i literally could never my life is too radical bare minimum to ethically do so


Who

X belongs to its creator X persons. 

These all have many, many people involved in these projects whom I would love to highlight if they wish to be.

When

Available if you have internet.

Why

Nerds will know why. Now go and parse out all the information on that in a readily digestible way, and you have practice blog posts for ... reading comprehension I guess lmao. Happy reading.


Socials

Email :        learnjapanese43@gmail.com

Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LearnJapanese43

Discord :     @learnjapaneseforfree

Tiktok :       @learnjapaneseforfree

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 totally sporadically becuase the originator is perezoso.

Saturday, 7 June 2025

Review #31 | KanjiAlive | Learn Japanese For Free

Kanji Alive is an online Kanji dictionary and blog from the University of Chicago. It is meant to give an overview for learners of many levels insights into Kanji history, readings and stroke order of the Joyo Kanji.

Kanji practice (2016, CC2.0) Miki Yoshihito

What

Kanji alive is an active dictionary service and older blog. Thats really it on a surface level gleaning.

Blog directory - Good for looking at cultural aspects of how Kanji and the dictionary came to be, includes some nice resources on the history of the sociolinguistics of Kanji as Ateji from mainland Asia.

Resources - Where you can find any of the sociolinguistic info and PDF's. Also addresses the origins of Radicals and Kanji seperately. 214 kanji radicals is pretty extensive in this sense and has a full list and yes it is available from Wikipedia too, but this is all in one place from researchers and might be easier to mine for Anki.

Dictionary - Dictionary itself has easy and advanced search and is Genki compatible. I dont recommend Genki, but many people have that textbook. You start with the Kanji itself, the English meaning/s, the sound and native japanese readings of On and Kun yomi, then the Radical along with Radical history and stories. You then get the number of strokes, grade, other popular textbooks, deadlinks to 'Luminous', you can just use https://tatoeba.org/en/ though to replace this function and even Hints, which function like Hiesigs RTK mnemonic system.

You can also click on "Info" to find the user guide.

Where

https://app.kanjialive.com/search

https://kanjialive.com/

Who

The creators of Kanji alive is:

Harumi Hibino Lory, Arno Bosse, Michael Erlewine, Russell Horton, Mika Ishino, Justin Jesty, Irene Kimbara, Aiko Kojima, Junko Nishimura, Shunsuke Nozawa, Justin Rounds, Robert Voyer, Keiko Yoshimura and with support from the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library Digital Library Development Center (DLDC), Information Technology Services (ITS), and the ARTFL Project.

Additionally; Jenny Adams, Fritz Anderson, Sarah Arehart, Cornelia Bailey, Charles Blair, Simrit Dhesi, Ted Foss, Eric Ginsburg, Kaylea Hascall, Don Harper, Guillaume Iacino, Tanya Gray Jones, Chad Kainz, Gus Lacy, the late Karen Landahl, Roberto Marques, Dale Mertes, Yasuyuki Nemoto, Mark Olsen, Matt Wilcoxson, and Eric Volpert for their generous assistance. The 2008 version was created with the assistance of Arthur Christoph, Matthieu Felt, Camelia Nakagawara and Peter Thorson. 

Coji Morishita (of M+ Fonts), Yasuyuki Nemoto (at Kenkyusha Co., Ltd.), and Makoto Watanabe (of http://mojimoji.de) and software developer, Joshua Day.

These all have many, many people involved in these projects whom I would love to highlight if they wish to be.

When

Available online only.

Why

Incredibly useful tool if you don't want to buy clunky dictionaries and want to learn using different resources.

A free resource in other words.

Also, useful in an increasingly phone app world to allow you to be on desktop and away from buggy phone apps.


Socials

Email :        learnjapanese43@gmail.com

Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LearnJapanese43

Discord :     @learnjapaneseforfree

Tiktok :       @learnjapaneseforfree

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 totally sporadically becuase the originator is perezoso.

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