If you're planning to learn Japanese, I have some Japanese-related bookmarks on del.icio.us that you might find useful. =) You might also want to check out what other people have bookmarked for japanese+language.

I particularly recommend this quick and dirty guide to Japanese, Jim Breen's WWWJDIC and the example sentence search. You can download the examples file from the FTP server for totally awesome local lookup. I wrote some code in Emacs to make this easier (and to insert random taglines into my blog posts =) ).

Good luck and have fun!

Did I give it to someone else, knowing that I wouldn't be able to take it to Canada during the first trip? Argh. Anyway, if I did, chances are that I gave it to one of my barkada. Anyone?

I definitely have to get it next time I fly home. It's a pretty hefty book, but I'll make space for it!

On Technorati: japanese

E-Mail from Jean-Christophe Helary

Random Japanese sentence: 問題は誰が猫に鈴をつけるかだ。 The question is who will bell the cat.

The first event was a language exchange session held last Saturday, at which I ran into no other than Baryon Posadas. Come to think of it, I shouldn't have been that surprised. Of course he'd be at a Japanese-language event.

Everyone was heading off to Starbucks to chat over coffee. I wanted to ask how he had been, but I needed to go to Clarkson Station to meet Tita Sol. We tried to work out some other time to meet, but he had promised to help someone move and he needed to find an apartment, and a lot of other things. Technically, I think I'm supposed to e-mail him if I want to meet him for coffee (or hot chocolate), but now that I think about it, I don't have much to chat with him about. Except perhaps for general settling-in questions, like where's a good place to open a bank account or get a credit card, and I already sorta know the answers to those questions.

Anyway, I went to the barbecue today because it meant a free lunch. I didn't get to practice my Japanese, though, as I didn't feel up to making small talk in a foreign language—not when there was a perfectly good conversation to have with Mark about research plans and what I should do while he's off in Japan. (Yes, we were talking about work. On a Sunday! During a long weekend!)

During a lull in the conversation, we wandered around in search for non-MSG chips. Baryon was there at the table with the unflavored chips, so I briefly introduced them to each other. Mark got drawn into a conversation with a bunch of Japanese girls, so I was left on my own. I asked them if I could sit there. I sat there for maybe a minutes, idly munching on chips. Got bored, found it difficult to break into a clique, eventually thought of a question to ask Mark and left the table without a word.

Anyway, the entire thing prompted a reflection on divergence. I'd borrowed a number of books from him before (speculative fiction, mainly), and that was our common interest. Now my reading tastes have changed (non-fiction and children's lit) and our worlds are really very different now.

Mark's a pretty good judge of character, and he picked up on the differences too. <laugh> In fact, he thought Baryon was strange. I shrugged and said, "He's from humanities." (Nothing against the humanities, of course. Hi Marcelle!)

I think that energy makes a big difference to me. Mark's a positive, high-energy kind of person, which is one of the reasons why I get along with him very well. Baryon and a number of other people I know don't show that kind of energy often. They're more reserved and detached.

If you take a look at the people I love hanging out with (Hiya, Just Geeks League! ;) ), they've all got positive energy. One of the things I like about chatting with Dominique is the way his smile comes through so well in his voice, and you know his face shows it too! Even Sean's deep and serious voice hides playfulness and wit. (You should watch his Hulk impression... It's hilarious!) Even though they have problems like everyone else, their upbeat personalities make the tough times easier to weather.

I don't know if Baryon's like that, and I somewhat remember that he laughs and joke about some things. Although it would be nice to pick his brains about stuff I need to know as an international student in Toronto, I think it would be a fair bit of work to get to the point where conversation's comfortable. I'll probably focus on developing new contacts instead, at least for now.

もうすぐみんなが自分のコンピュータを持つだろう。 Everyone will have his own computer before long.

On Technorati: japanese, reflections

Then we saw the bookshelves overflowing with manga.

Whoa.

We went in and stared at the manga collection for a moment. I amused myself by trying to translate the sign posted above the bookshelf. The English caption mentioned Japanese people who want to converse with Cebuanos. Being neither Japanese nor Cebuano, I wondered if they'd let me come and practice Japanese anyway. A look at the clientele—old Japanese businessmen, pretty Filipinas—and at the high prices posted, and Paolo and I looked at each other and laughed. It might be like one of those snack bars I saw in Shinjuku...

Hmm. Maybe we can have a cup of hot chocolate / coffee and read as much as we want. Maybe Wednesday. Hehehe...

私は妹に新しいコンピューターを使わせてやった。 I let my sister use my new computer.

On Technorati: cebu, japanese

I had fun chatting with him in Japanese. He said he must've been to all the Japanese restaurants in the area, and he proceeded to list them. They were just imitations, he said, but they were much cheaper than food in Japan so he wasn't unhappy. He had some problems figuring out the bento box system at Zen, so I tried to explain how it worked, and I also asked for the Japanese menu. (Good thing my mom and I peeked at the Japanese menu a week or two ago!)

We then chatted about life in a foreign country. I told him how I'd quickly made friends through free conversations with volunteers, technical conferences, and nomikais (informal get-togethers). He's been in the Philippines for over seven months but has been having problems making Filipino friends. Although he went to a few karaoke bars (you know the Japanese and their karaoke), he didn't really get to know people there. As he said, women there just hit on you because they want to marry a Japanese guy. I laughed and told him I have a wonderful boyfriend; he doesn't need to worry about me. He has a Filipina assistant who sometimes teaches him about Filipino culture (what to do and what not to do), but they can't hang out because they work together. All the other people he knows are Japanese, so they chat in Japanese. As a result, he doesn't really feel comfortable chatting in English.

Of course, I offered to switch to English so that he could practice. He declined, saying he was just so relieved to find a Filipino who can talk to him in Japanese. I told him a lot of people learn Japanese because of anime, and offered to help him look for friendship circles and other things like that.

We also chatted about cultural misadventures. Food was, as always, a source of great humor, from balut (which we both can't stand) to chicharon (which he found absolutely horrific—how can anyone eat that sort of stuff? I just grin). He told me about this morning's phone call. When he called up the house to confirm our lunch, of course he asked for "Chua-san"—I always used my last name in Japan, following convention. My dad answered the phone, and it took some back-and-forth and a bit of panicking on Nishida's end before my dad realized the call was for me. Heh. That's also why I tend to call guys by their first names instead of by their last names, even if that _is_ their nickname...

(You can ask Ernest about the very first time I called him up. See, his nickname was not only "Baello" (his last name), but he also had the same name as his father_, so I couldn't just ask for "Ernest"... To be safe, I specified his _full_ name instead. That made his mom laugh.)

Anyway. We'll take care of introducing Nishida to some other people and taking him out to see some places; it's the least I can do to repay my obligations to the volunteers who helped me so much in Japan. I wish Dominique was there. They'd probably have gotten along very well. My mom might have fun chatting with him, too; she'll know how to make him feel relaxed. Tita Raquel, definitely. I wonder who else among our friends can help the poor guy... =)

「それではおまえにねこを一匹とってきてあげよう」と、おじいさんはいいました。 "I will get you a cat, my dear," said the very old man.

On Technorati: japanese

On Technorati: japanese

Debian users can apt-get install kakasi kakasi-dic. There's an Emacs interface, a Perl module (Text::Kakasi), and a Ruby library.

On Technorati: japanese, emacs, linux, ruby

I told him to download Emacs and grab Jorgen Schaefer's flashcard.el from my ../emacs directory. I then grabbed the dictionary file that Kanji Gold couldn't recognized, replaced [ with : to get flashcard to recognize it without problems, then set up a deck for him. I tweaked the default faces a bit—they're horrible on light-colored displays. I copied the suggested feedback config and explained the pigeonhole method to him. I tweaked the checking function so that it checked for substrings and treated empty input as a definitely incorrect answer. He wanted the answers displayed all the time, so I coded that in as well.

The initial word list was too big, so I copied 9 words and put them into a file, then imported them into a deck. Later, when he finishes this deck, I'll show him how to create another colon file and import it. I'll also ask him if he wants to tweak the number of compartments.

He's asked me if I can get YM working in the text editor as well. I'm currently tunneled through Richi's host, but I think I can open a local tunnel for him as well, if he feels like using ERC. 'course, normal YM just might work, and chances are there's a YM-specific client somewhere in Emacs.

I've made no efforts to hide Emacs' complexity. I lean over and drop into Lisp code in front of him because I want him to have a working environment up and running as soon as possible. Who knows? Maybe he'll use Emacs even after the internship. =)

He looks like he's having fun, and certainly appreciates the fact that I can hack the editor to fit how he wants to do things. He wants to match the readings, too, which means I'll need to figure out how leim works under Windows. I'll do that on Monday.

On Technorati: emacs, opensource, japanese

(defun sacha/kanji/get-ordered-kanji-list ()
  "Return a list of characters in the buffer."
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (let (kanji-list)
    (while (not (eobp))
      (let ((c (char-after (point))))
        (when (>= c ?亜) (add-to-list 'kanji-list c)))
      (forward-char 1))
    kanji-list))

(defun sacha/kanji/to-flashcard-j2e (&optional list)
  "Return a Japanese-English flashcard set.
If LIST is non-nil, use that instead of the current buffer."
  (interactive (list (sacha/kanji/get-ordered-kanji-list)))
  (unless list (setq list (sacha/kanji/get-ordered-kanji-list)))
  (let ((result
         (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect "/usr/share/edict/kanjidic")
           (mapconcat
            (lambda (kanji)
              (goto-char (point-min))
              (when (re-search-forward (format "^%c.*?{\\(.*\\)}" kanji) nil t)
                (format "%c : %s\n"
                        kanji
                        (replace-regexp-in-string "}\\s-+{" "," (match-string 1)))))
            list
            ""))))
    (if (interactive-p) (kill-new result) result)))

(defun sacha/flashcard-method-leitner-check-answer (card answer)
  "Check answer for correctness. Allow multiple correct answers and provide feedback."
  (if (member answer (split-string (flashcard-card-answer card) ","))
      (progn
        (flashcard-insert "Correct! Answer is:\n"
                          (propertize (flashcard-card-answer card)
                                      'face 'flashcard-answer-face
                                      'rear-nonsticky t)
                          "\n"
                          "\n")
        t)
    (flashcard-insert "The correct answer is:\n"
                      (propertize (flashcard-card-answer card)
                                  'face 'flashcard-answer-face
                                  'rear-nonsticky t)
                      "\n"
                      "\n")
    (y-or-n-p "Was your answer correct? ")))

(setq flashcard-method-check-answer-function 'sacha/flashcard-method-leitner-check-answer)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.deck\\'" . flashcard-mode))
(add-hook 'flashcard-mode-hook 'flashcard-add-scroll-to-bottom)
(add-hook 'flashcard-positive-feedback-functions 'flashcard-feedback-highlight-answer)
(add-hook 'flashcard-positive-feedback-functions 'flashcard-feedback-congratulate)
(add-hook 'flashcard-positive-feedback-functions 'flashcard-method-leitner-positive-feedback)

On Technorati: emacs, japanese

(defun sacha/kanji/get-ordered-kanji-list ()
  (let (kanji-list)
    (while (not (eobp))
      (let ((c (char-after (point))))
        (cond
         ((= c ?\"))
         ((= c ?\n))
         ((= c ?:) (forward-line 1) (forward-char -1))
         (t (add-to-list 'kanji-list c))))
      (forward-char 1))
    kanji-list))

(defun sacha/kanji/ordered-usefile-to-kill ()
  (interactive)
  ;; Look up kanji in kanjidic
  (let ((list (sacha/kanji/get-ordered-kanji-list)))
    (kill-new
     (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect "/usr/share/edict/kanjidic")
       (mapconcat
        (lambda (kanji)
          (goto-char (point-min))
          (when (search-forward (char-to-string kanji) nil t)
            (skip-syntax-forward " ")
            (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (and (skip-syntax-forward "^ ") (point)))))
        list
        "\n")))))

On Technorati: emacs, japanese

This should probably be rewritten as a Perl script.

;; Generate the list of characters
;; Use add-all to add all the words to the list
;; call sacha/kanji/format-kanji-with-references

(defvar sacha/kanji/output-file "~/tmp/kanji")

(defun sacha/kanji/process-csv ()
  (interactive)
  (sacha/kanji/split-dictionary)
  (sacha/kanji/add-all)
  (sacha/kanji/format-kanji-with-references))

(defun sacha/kanji/split-dictionary ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffer (current-buffer)))
    (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect sacha/kanji/output-file)
      (erase-buffer)
      (insert-buffer-substring buffer)
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward "^\"\\([^\"]+\\)\":" nil t)
        (delete-region (match-end 1) (line-end-position))
        (goto-char (line-beginning-position))
        (delete-char 1)
        (while (not (eolp))
          (forward-char 1)
          (unless (bolp)
            (insert "\n"))))
      (goto-char (line-beginning-position))
      (delete-matching-lines "^\\s-*$")
      (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "sort | uniq"  nil t))))

(defun sacha/kanji/add-all ()
  (interactive)
  (while (not (eobp))
    (sacha/add-word)
    (forward-line 1)))

(defun sacha/kanji/format-kanji-with-references ()
  "Add character meaning and table markup."
  (interactive)
  (find-file sacha/kanji/output-file)
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (while (not (eobp))
    (goto-char (line-beginning-position))
    (unless (= (char-after (point)) ?<)
      (forward-char 1)
      (let* ((kanji (buffer-substring (line-beginning-position) (point)))
             (definition (sacha/kanji/find-definition kanji)))
        (when definition
          (save-excursion
            (forward-char -1)
            (insert ""))
          (insert "")
          (insert definition)
          (goto-char (line-end-position))
          (insert ""))))
    (forward-line)))

(defun sacha/kanji/find-definition (kanji)
  "Look up kanji definition."
  (with-current-buffer
      (find-file-noselect "/usr/share/edict/kanjidic")
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (when (and (search-forward kanji)
               (re-search-forward "\\({[^}]+}\\( {[^}]+}\\)+\\)"))
      (match-string 0))))  ;; kanji definitions

(defun sacha/kanji/lookup-word (key)
  "Return the definition of the current word. Ensure edict is loaded before running this."
  (with-current-buffer edict-buffer
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (when (re-search-forward (concat "^" key " \\[\\([^]]+\\)\\] /\\(.*\\)") nil t)
      (list (match-string 1) (match-string 2)))))

(defun sacha/add-word ()
  "Look up this word's definition and add the word to individual character entries."
  (interactive)
  (when (looking-at "^\"\\([^\"]+\\)\".*?:\\([0-9]+\\)")
    (let ((word (match-string 1))
          (slide (match-string 2))
          definition
          chars)
      (setq definition (sacha/kanji/lookup-word word))
      (setq chars (split-string word "" t))
      (while chars
        (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect sacha/kanji/output-file)
          (goto-char (point-min))
          (when (re-search-forward (concat "^" (car chars)) nil t)
            (goto-char (line-end-position))
            (insert "
S:" slide " " word "")
            (if definition
                (insert " " (elt definition 0) ""
                        " " (elt definition 1) "")
              (insert "???"))))
        (delete (car chars) chars)
        (setq chars (cdr chars))))))

On Technorati: emacs, japanese