The Kanshudo Blog - older posts
Welcome to the Kanshudo blog! Here you can find older blog posts; the most recent ones are
here.
Posted: 2021-10-22,
Tags:
usefulness
jlpt
Since we introduced the usefulness ranking for Japanese vocabulary four years ago, the most comprehensive analysis of Japanese usage available, we have made many improvements. We now use close to 30 ranking factors to determine how useful words are for Japanese learners in relation to each other, and which form of each word is most useful.
Words with a usefulness level of 9 or better are amongst the most useful 50,000 words in Japanese, and have a colored badge in search results, eg: .
Many useful words have multiple forms, and less common forms have a badge that looks like this: .
Of course, as we have added more data and analysis, the usefulness ratings of many words has changed somewhat. The badges update automatically, but our usefulness collections are a 'snapshot' of the list, and we have now updated the collections to reflect the latest data. You can still access the original collections if you need to. You can also search for words by usefulness level with the special ufn: keyword, for example: ufn:2.
The details of our methodology are set out in depth in our comprehensive how-to guide, How to prioritize Japanese words to study.
Finally, we have added a new 'shadow' JLPT badge. A standard JLPT badge indicates that a word appears in the Wikipedia JLPT vocab list, which in turn was based on the Tanos list. Standard badges look like this: .
However, in many cases, the word in the Wikipedia / Tanos list is not the most useful form of the word. We generally recommend that you learn the most useful form of a word first (and that form is most likely to be tested in the JLPT), so we have now added a lighter colored JLPT badge to the other forms of each word that appears in the JLPT list, which looks like this: .
See for example the entry for . The kana form is the one you will encounter most commonly, and the one we recommend you learn first. However, the kanji form 駄目 appears in the list for JLPT N3, even though the kanji 駄 is not one you would be expected to know until you reach JLPT N1 (the highest level).
Chopsticks are among the most useful and important implements in daily life in Japan - you literally need them to eat! Learn about the history of chopsticks, as well as the Japanese words and kanji used for them, in our new Point of Interest, はし, 箸 and chopsticks. Also learn how to make sure you are not accidentally talking about something entirely different when you use the spoken word!
The crane plays an outsized role in Japanese culture, and we are delighted to present a number of new resources to help you become acquainted with this central theme of Japanese art and literature!
Learn more about cranes and what they symbolize in our new Point of interest,
つる
鶴
cranes in Japanese culture. Then, work through the delightful fairy tale つる
鶴
のふえ
笛
(The Crane's Flute), our latest addition to the Reading Corner, with a new translation by our partner J.D. Wisgo. Finally, to really cement your knowledge of the kanji 鶴, read the Joy o' Kanji essay on 鶴.
Drawing a kanji by hand is one of the best ways to truly cement it in your memory. We are delighted to announce that Kanji Draw is now available as a standalone game, so you can test yourself and practice drawing kanji as often as you like!
Our new standalone Kanji Draw game has a study mode (with infinite lives) as well as a high score mode so you can compete with yourself. You can draw on kanji with a specific usefulness level, or you can choose kanji from a specific study set. You can also optionally restrict the game by your own mastery, so you can focus on learning kanji you don't know well, or testing yourself on kanji you do.
As with all Kanshudo games, you will earn study points for every round you play, and every kanji you draw correctly will improve your kanji mastery score.
You can find Kanji Draw from the PLAY menu at the top of every page, as well as in the KANJI & KANA menu at the bottom of every page. You can also find it in the Play index page and the site index, or you could just do a Quick Search for 'draw' or 'kanji games' from any page.
Kanji Draw will also appear as a study task on your Dashboard, along with all of Kanshudo's games and learning tools. Let Kanshudo drive you on the road to Japanese mastery!
We're delighted to announce a special June promotion with our partner Joy o' Kanji! Just post something nice about both Kanshudo and Joy o' Kanji on your preferred social network, and let us know. You will be entered into a prize draw, and one lucky winner will receive a whole year of Pro access to Kanshudo including Joy o' Kanji's kanji essays (see here for more details on our joint subscriptions).
This is open to existing subscribers, as well as those of you who have been looking for a good opportunity to subscribe, so don't delay! More details in the attached image.
Posted: 2021-05-27,
Tags:
read
literature
We're very excited to announce a new partnership with Japanese literature expert Bunsuke. Every few days we will be bringing you a short extract from a noted Japanese literary work, with translations and commentary by Bunsuke. The excerpts live in a new section of the Reading Corner which you can access from the front page. You can also access the Bunsuke section using the Quick Search function on the top right of any page - just search for , or , or etc. (This is often the quickest way to find any function on Kanshudo if you're not sure where it is in the menus.)
To start, we have extracts that will give you a flavor of the work of two of Japan's most famous authors - Haruki Murakami, and Natsume Soseki. We'll be adding a couple of new extracts per week. You can also subscribe to Bunsuke's email newsletter ⇗ for even more content - Bunsuke releases new extracts daily, and delivers them right to your inbox!
Here's a direct link to the new Bunsuke section of the Reading Corner so you can get started right away!
Learning to count in Japanese can be tricky, and we've added some new tools to make it as easy as 1-2-3!
Japanese uses a system of 'counters' - suffixes designated for counting specific objects. We've collected the most common counters in counters for objects and other things, and you can read more about the general approach in Japanese numbers and counting.
Knowing a counter is only half the story - you have to know how to read the combination of a number and counter. We've added a new special keyword "counter:" to enable you to search for all uses of a counter so you can quickly find out how the reading changes as it is combined with numbers. Try this search to see it in action: counter:本.
Dates and time are actually just special examples of the counter system. For details, see our overview articles, Japanese dates and telling the time in Japanese.
If you'd like to investigate counters even more thoroughly, you can use the following search to find all counters in Japanese: search for all counters.
If you're curious about the image attached to this blog post, you can read more in our Point of interest, counting with a そろばん (Japanese abacus).
Posted: 2021-05-11,
Tags:
pitch
pronunciation
We're very excited to announce a major new addition to Kanshudo: support for pitch accents, a core component of Japanese pronunciation.
We've created a brand new how-to guide, the Kanshudo definitive guide to Japanese pitch accents. The guide provides a comprehensive overview of pitch accents. It will introduce you to the way accents work in Japanese compared to other languages, help you understand how to determine the correct accents of words and sentences, show you some commonly confused word groups, and show you how to look up accents in Kanshudo and Japanese dictionaries. The new guide also includes a wealth of fantastically clear native speaker audio samples recorded for us by a professional Japanese radio announcer.
Additionally, we've added pitch accent data and diagrams to over 150,000 words in the word dictionary - for example, try this search: .
The guide contains common examples of words with the same reading but different accents, and in addition, we've also added a new collection of all ~600 or so words within the most useful words in Japanese which have multiple accent forms. Click here to view the full collection.
We've also extended and improved our basic guide to Japanese pronunciation, and added native speaker audio samples to that too.
You now have everything you need to learn how to sound like a true native Japanese speaker!
We've been busy over the last few months! We've been working on many different areas of the system, so even regular users will probably find some surprises in this roundup. Here's a quick summary of the new content and features on Kanshudo.
New icons!
We've updated several icons, including the trusty favorites star , usefulness , JLPT , mastery , flashcard edit , details view , and more.
Favorites
We've made a major improvement to the favorites system: you can now designate a flashcard set as your storage location for favorites. This means that as soon you click the favorites star , you immediately have a flashcard in your preferred set!
You can change the location at any time, so if you switch to another flashcard set, any search result that has a flashcard in that set will show up with a shaded favorite star.
New Joy o' Kanji essays
We've added 11 great new in-depth kanji essays from our partner Joy o' Kanji:
16 new grammar points and points of interest
Remember you can always access automatically-updated lists of recently-added and recently-updated grammar articles from the grammar library home page.
Flashcards
We've made a lot of improvements to the flashcard system, and we're still working on a couple more, so rather than summarize those here we'll put them all together in another blog post soon.
Intermediate lessons
The beta of the new intermediate lesson series is progressing very well - one tester even went so far as to say "I think the new intermediate lessons are the best thing to happen to this platform". The functionality is now nearly complete, and we are doing our third or fourth pass through the new lesson content! If you would like to try out the new intermediate lessons yourself, please let us know.
More miscellaneous improvements
- You can now hide kanji and word 'quick views' after you've clicked on the kanji or word to show them
- The Joy o' Kanji popup which shows when you click a JOK badge now contains helpful links to your previously downloaded essays and your available credits
- You can now restrict example search by sentence difficulty
- We've added a new kanji keyword search to help you identify key components by how frequently they are used: (this identifies all components that are used 1-100 times in Joyo kanji).
- A new download button lets you download examples directly from quick view.
- You now have the ability to ignore study tasks.
- You can now override the system recommended kanji study set. The system will check whether you've done this before giving you the same recommendation again.
- You can now see your mastery level for words, kanji, and grammar points directly in word search / kanji search / grammar search - you will see a mastery badge such as next to each result.
- You can manually edit your mastery for kanji, words and grammar points wherever you see the mastery badge - just click it to pull up an edit view.
- Search history now loads much more quickly, and uses an 'infinitely expanding' list rather than pages.
Posted: 2021-01-29,
Tags:
games
vocabulary
We are excited to introduce our latest standalone game: Answer Type!
Answer Type is a great way to practice and test your Japanese vocabulary: simply type the readings of as many words as you can. Choose words based on your target usefulness level, and try to beat your high score! Click here to try it out.
Answer Type is one of several Kanshudo games designed to build your Japanese vocabulary in a fun and entertaining way - you can also try Word Match and Word Quiz as standalone games, and others Kana Search and Term Find which appear in Boost.
Answer Type will also appear from time to time as a study task when you work on your daily study session!
Posted: 2021-01-10,
Tags:
flashcards
If you have a lot of flashcards or a lot of flashcard sets (or both!), you may have noticed that the counts of cards to learn or review have gone up or down. Don't worry - this is not a bug! We just completed a major update to the way flashcards work, and it affects the counts.
Previously, when you added a flashcard for a word / kanji / grammar point / example to a set, a new card would be created, with new study data. Over time, this could lead to many copies of a card - in some cases 15+ for some of our most active users - each at a different stage. This was not efficient in various ways - for example, it could interfere with review cycles, or mean that you were doing more reviews than you needed to. Any notes you added to the back of cards were only visible on the card you added them to, not the copies.
We've now updated the system such that whenever you add a flashcard for an item to a set, you actually create a reference to an existing card if there is one - and the study data is shared. So if the card is ready for review, it will appear in the 'review' count for both sets. If it is unlearned, it will appear in the 'learn' count for both sets.
Another benefit of this change is that you no longer need to worry about managing duplicate cards yourself - duplicates within a set are automatically prevented, and duplicates between sets are not actually duplicates, just references to the same card. Any notes you added to your cards have been consolidated and will be visible whichever set you see the card in. (Note that cards created for Beginner Lessons often use the notes field to display different inflections of a word - those have now been consolidated as well.) You can use the new 'shared cards' function for any flashcard set to see and manage cards which are also used in other sets.
This improvement is part of several major updates to the flashcard system that are currently in progress - we are working on a new improved UI, and several great new features.
Save 50% on a Kanshudo Pro subscription!
As this tumultuous year comes to an end, let's look forward to a fresh start and new challenges in 2021. How could better Japanese enrich your life next year?
The satisfaction of an impressive personal accomplishment ...
A magical trip (real or virtual) to the Olympics ...
An exciting new career opportunity ...
Greater access to Japanese people and culture ...
A magical trip (real or virtual) to the Olympics ...
An exciting new career opportunity ...
Greater access to Japanese people and culture ...
Kanshudo can help you realize your Japanese dreams! Kanshudo is the fastest and most enjoyable way to learn written Japanese. Master kanji, hiragana and katakana, along with Japanese grammar and vocabulary. Kanshudo is effective, fast and fun.
Act now to set yourself up for success in 2021: Kanshudo's holiday sale gives you 50% off Pro membership for an entire year! Only $30 - less than 10 cents per day - brings you full access to our AI tutor and personalized study sessions, the most comprehensive Japanese dictionaries online, unlimited flashcards, a wealth of learning games and exercises, and many more great features. Include access to in-depth kanji essays from our partner Joy o' Kanji, also for 50% off!
Take advantage of this very special holiday offer now: Give me 50% off!
Posted: 2020-12-11,
Tags:
flashcards
favorites
'Favorites' are one of Kanshudo's most useful features - just click the icon next to any kanji, word, grammar point or even example sentence to store it in your 'favorites bucket'.
We've made it even easier to work with favorites:
You can now use any flashcard set to store your favorites, instead of the default favorites bucket.
Add (and remove) favorites in the same way, but now whenever you create a new favorite, it is immediately available in the flashcard set you choose.
You can change your storage location quickly and easily whenever you want. This provides a really useful way to switch between study sets, and makes it much easier to manage your flashcards. For example, you could designate one flashcard set for the novel you're reading, and another for your current lesson. When you change your flashcard storage location, the items in the set you choose will have a icon in search results, so you can easily identify what you already have in there.
To change your favorites storage location, use the link in your account page, or the link from your favorites home in the main menu. Here is a direct link.
We are delighted to announce our most advanced learning tool yet: Kanshudo Boost.
Boost is a fantastic learning aid as well as testing tool. It combines multiple learning modes using a wide variety of different games and exercises, and integrates your knowledge of kanji, words, and grammar. Boost is Kanshudo's most powerful tool for building and testing your knowledge of Japanese.
Boost is also incredibly flexible. You can take a Boost to help you learn almost anything in the Kanshudo system - individual kanji, words, grammar points, even example sentences. You can use Boost to test yourself on all content with a specific usefulness, and lesson content in our upcoming Series 2 Intermediate Lessons. You can also use Boost as a way to learn or test yourself on your own flashcard sets!
Most Boost types can be generated from the Boost home page, which is accessible from the main STUDY menu. You can also generate Boosts anywhere in the system wherever you see the icon. You will also start to see Boosts appear as study tasks on your Dashboard.
Try a Kanshudo Boost today and supercharge your Japanese studies!
Posted: 2020-11-21,
Tags:
whatsnew
Recently we've added several new grammar points, including negative + ようにする try not to do, verb stem + ましょ short polite volitional form, and ます form + ように making a wish, as well as new 'points of interest' on 梅の花（うめのはな） ume blossoms and the somewhat less cheerful topic of dying in Japanese, bringing the reference library to 817 articles on Japanese grammar.
We've also added several new in-depth kanji essays from our partner Joy o' Kanji, including Joy o' Kanji essay on 梅, Joy o' Kanji essay on 凡, Joy o' Kanji essay on 勘 and Joy o' Kanji essay on 怨. There are now 392 essays available, each one providing unparalleled depth and background on a single Joyo kanji.
The interface for viewing your Kanji Challenge status has got a whole new look, with key features closer at hand, and we've also updated the study sets themselves to improve the sequencing.
We are very close to formally launching Kanshudo Boost, our most ambitious learning tool yet. Boost combines games and exercises of varying degrees of difficulty to test and train you on almost any material in Kanshudo, including kanji, words, grammar, and example sentences. You'll start to see Boosts appearing in your study recommendations soon, and we're starting to add links around the site. The beta is now public, and you can try it out here. Please let us know what you think!
One of our biggest projects currently is a major overhaul of the Intermediate Lessons, with new content, more games and exercises, and a completely new user interface. We're excited to announce that the new lessons are now in beta, so if you are working through the current Intermediate Lessons or just completing the Beginner Lessons, let us know if you would like to join the beta program.
One of the hardest aspects of Japanese for learners is that inflections can be combined to create complex forms. It is very common to see a word which combines two grammatical inflections, and not uncommon to see as many as three or four (for example, see the last search in the list below). Understanding how forms are combined can be a challenge.
For some time we have been including analysis of inflected forms in our example sentence library, and recently we introduced the inflection showcase to help you practice forming any inflection for any word. Today we are excited to announce another great new feature which will help you understand and use inflections:
Inflected forms are now included within search results
To see this in action, try the following quick search: . First, the search results show you the base form the word is derived from,
はな
話
す (the 'dictionary form'). Next, you'll see an analysis of exactly how the inflected search term is built from the dictionary form, along with links to the relevant articles in the grammar library: first we make the progressive form (話しています), and then we put it in the past tense (話していました).Here are a few more searches to try:
For more information on Kanshudo's tools for helping you learn and use inflections, see our 'how to' guide, Understanding inflections and conjugations.
For a visual summary of your personal progress with Japanese grammar, check our your personalized Grammar mastery wheel.
Our Grammar library is a searchable reference resource with about 800 articles on Japanese grammar, graded by usefulness / JLPT level, complete with many thousands of examples.
For practice, try our grammar games, including Grammar Match, Sentence Builder and Sentence Complete.
For study recommendations specific to your personal situation, check out your Dashboard.
Quick Study is one of Kanshudo's most powerful features: you can use it to quickly review material to identify what you need to work on, or to test yourself on material you already know.
What is Quick Study?
Quick Study is rather like 'disposable flashcards'. Quick Study presents material with all the same study options as Kanshudo's advanced spaced repetition flashcard system - you can view Japanese to English or the reverse, display furigana or not, and optionally type in your answers.
However, unlike flashcards, items in Quick Study disappear when you have learned them, and by default, won't affect your mastery scores. So if you like, you can use Quick Study without affecting anything in the system. However, you can customize Quick Study in various ways - for example, you can have it create flashcards for items you don't know, or update your mastery scores based on your answers.
What can I study?
Quick Study works across the entire system, so you can quickly study:
- Kanji, kana, words or grammar points
- Kanji components
- Your favorites
- Your flashcards - Kanshudo can identify cards you've recently forgotten, cards you are finding difficult to learn, or just create random study sets across all your flashcards
Settings and options
Quick Study is highly customizable. Some of the options you can modify include:
- Automatically create flashcards for items you get wrong
- Include a button to manually create a flashcard for any item
- Include YES / NO buttons of the front of cards so you can very quickly jump to the next
- Drop cards immediately or wait until you know them
- Update your mastery scores based on your answers
- Keep score of your correct and incorrect answers
Quick Study has two preset modes, Learn and Test, which automatically configure these options for you.
How to launch Quick Study
Quick Study is accessible from the main STUDY menu at the top of every page. You will also be prompted to do a Quick Test from time to time in your study recommendations. You'll also see Quick Study or Quick Test buttons around the system, easily identifiable by the icon. Here's a link to the Quick Study home page so you can check it out now.
Posted: 2020-10-19,
Tags:
reading
We are delighted to announce three new additions to the Kanshudo Reading Corner, which together comprise a delightful story by
おがわ
小川
みめい
未明
(Ogawa Mimei), a prolific writer of short stories known in Japan as the founder of modern children's literature.Ogawa's stories are excellent learning material for modern students of Japanese, as his use of language is varied but not overly complex, and he rarely uses constructions not used in modern Japanese. While billed as 'children's stories', the themes often deal with the passage of time and life, and provide appeal and interest for adult readers.
The story these three pieces are based on,
がっき
楽器
のせいめい
生命
, The Life of a Musical Instrument, describes the life and times of a magical musical instrument. We've classified it as Intermediate, but the grammar is not too complex, and students of all levels might want to give it a try.We are greatly indebted to J. D. Wisgo for allowing us to use his excellent translation of this story, and we hope to be able to bring you more material by Ogawa and J.D., so if you like this piece, please let us know! For more information on J.D.and his work, head over to the Reading Corner and look for the three new pieces - here's a direct link to the introduction of the first part.
If you are following Kanshudo's study program by working on the study tasks our Japanese teaching AI recommends for you on your Dashboard, you will automatically see suggestions to read these pieces.
Posted: 2020-09-22,
Tags:
games
We're pleased to announce that you can now play Kanshudo Sentence Builder for a specific grammar point, just as you can with Kanshudo Grammar Match! Currently you can play Sentence Builder with 103 grammar points at various levels of difficulty, and we are adding more daily.
Sentence Builder is a challenging game, because it tests your understanding of sentence structure as well as vocabulary. It's a fun way to solidify your understanding of grammar in context. Each sentence you build automatically affects your grammar mastery for all linked grammar points (not just the one you are playing for. You also earn study points for every sentence and every game you complete.
To play Sentence Builder for a specific grammar point, visit the grammar point in the grammar library, and then click the PLAY SENTENCE BUILDER link. For example, try it with the ので grammar point. To reset the setting, just choose another grammar point, or visit your Sentence Builder settings and click the RESET button.
Have you ever wanted to check how an irregular verb conjugates? Or quickly see how an inflection differs for two Japanese verbs? Or just wanted a quick refresher on the inflections of an adjective or verb?
Our new Inflection showcase makes it extremely easy to look up standard inflections. You can select a given part of speech such as a class of adjective or verb, and see either basic or advanced inflections with a single click. You can then jump to articles in our Grammar library on any of the inflections, or look up all words in Japanese tagged as the part of speech you've selected.
The Inflection showcase makes it super easy to learn and test your knowledge of both standard and advanced conjugations for verbs, adjectives and more.
Kanshudo's tools for helping you learn Japanese grammar
For a visual summary of your personal progress with Japanese grammar, check our your personalized Grammar mastery wheel.
For more information on Kanshudo's tools for helping you learn and use inflections, see our 'how to' guide, Understanding inflections and conjugations.
Our Grammar library is a searchable reference resource with about 800 articles on Japanese grammar, graded by usefulness / JLPT level, and complete with many thousands of examples.
For practice, try our grammar games, including Grammar Match, Sentence Builder and Sentence Complete.
For study recommendations specific to your personal situation, check out your Dashboard.
In the five years since Kanshudo was founded, we have become one of the leading Japanese language learning platforms. Tens of thousands of students study Japanese kanji, words and grammar with Kanshudo, and our platform provides the most sophisticated, comprehensive, and enjoyable approach to learning Japanese available online.
In all that time, we have not increased our prices once! However, our costs have risen dramatically as we have added functionality and users, and the time has come to bring our prices back in line.
Before we do, we are announcing a very special opportunity. We will not be increasing pricing for current Kanshudo Pros. So, if you are already Pro, or you go Pro any time before the end of July, you can 'grandfather' (lock in) our current pricing for as long as you maintain your Pro status!
Lock in current Kanshudo pricing of $30 per year or $3 per month! Go PRO
Our 'beta pricing', $30 for a year or $3 for a month, was set when we were focused exclusively on kanji, before we had a comprehensive grammar library, a custom AI for personalized study plans, a reading library, Challenges and most of our games, or any of the other great features we have introduced over the years. In the meantime, our costs have increased as the complexity of the system and the demand have grown. So, in the next month or two, we will be increasing our prices to bring them back in line with costs, which will be around double the current level.
Lock in current Kanshudo pricing of $30 per year or $3 per month! Go PRO
Our competitors have not held back on price increases - a recent survey showed us that many popular Japanese apps cost over $100 per year, and some cost several times that. Some claim to be free and then charge when you least expect it ... Kanshudo offers more value and functionality than any of them, including completely free access to most features of the site with usage limits, and study coupons that reduce costs greatly. A whole year costs less than a single textbook or classroom lesson could cost!
If you act now, you will maintain the incredible value our current pricing provides - indefinitely.
Note: if you would prefer to go Pro with PayPal, please let us know.
Posted: 2020-06-06,
Tags:
games
One of the best ways to practice your understanding of Japanese grammar is to actually build sentences yourself. As its name suggests, Kanshudo Sentence Builder lets you do just that!
Sentence Builder has been available as part of lessons and Challenges for a while, but now you can play it whenever you like directly from the PLAY menu.
You can choose the difficulty level of sentences to play with, so you can focus directly on your level. Each sentence you build will automatically affect your grammar mastery for any linked grammar points. You will earn study points for every sentence and every game you complete. Additionally, you can track your high scores!
The best way to learn Japanese kanji readings is to learn the most useful words that use them. In the same way, it is easier to learn words when you can tie your knowledge of the word to the kanji used to write it.
We're delighted to introduce several new vocabulary collections which address both of these issues at once, and are ideal for building both your kanji knowledge and vocabulary: the most useful word for every reading of every kanji.
See the new collections [here](/collections/vocab_kanji_useful)
There are 2136 Jōyō kanji, which in total have 4266 official readings (an average of 2 readings per kanji), so the collections present 4266 words. Learning these words is the best way to ensure you know all key readings of each of the 2136 Jōyō kanji, and a great way to learn 4266 of the most useful Japanese words.
Additionally, we include the subset of 3319 words which are 'level-appropriate' - i.e., the words most useful to learn when you first encounter the kanji. (Some readings of kanji are much less common, and not worth learning until you reach a higher level.)
Use these collections to create flashcards, add favorites, test yourself with Quick Test, or play study games!
Regular users of Kanshudo will know that clicking any kanji or word in search results will bring up a 'quick view' with key information, enabling you to answer most questions you might have without clicking through to the details view on its own page.
Now, example sentences have something similar: click any word in an example sentence's short form view, and a new section we call 'dynamic details' will load containing all information pertinent to that word: for example, any grammar points that touch on that word, inflections, word details, and details of any kanji it contains.
Additionally, we're delighted to announce a feature that has been requested many times: the ability to toggle furigana for example sentences! You can now click the icon to the left of any example to turn furigana on or off. You can modify your default preference in your Account page.
Let's look at an example (no pun intended!):
First, go ahead and click the furigana icon - notice how the furigana (kana characters that show you how to read/pronounce kanji words) appear / disappear.
Next, click on 言われる: you'll see the 'dynamic details' view appear with details of the inflection being used, the word 言う, and the kanji 言. There's a SEARCH link so you can search for 言われる in Quick Search, and if you want similar information for all words in the example at once, you can click the DETAILS link.
Posted: 2020-04-24,
Tags:
navigation
We know ... Kanshudo can be hard to navigate! It is a complex system, and there is a lot to find. We hear you, and we've made some improvements that should make it a little easier! Here's an overview of all the various ways to find things on Kanshudo. If you already know your way around, jump to the Index pages section to see the new guides. If you're just getting started, read on.
Dashboard
First, just a reminder that you can let Kanshudo do the navigating for you: visit your Dashboard any time by clicking the logo in the top left of the screen, and follow the study recommendations. The study recommendation AI is designed to introduce you to all Kanshudo's key functions, which will help you become familiar with the system.
Site search
If you know the name of the feature you're interested in, but you don't know where it is in the menus, you can search for it using Site search. Site search results are included in quick search results, so you can just click the quick search icon at the top right of any page.
Top menu
The top menu provides quick access to Kanshudo's main functions organized by activity:
- Your mastery data (including your mastery map, kanji, grammar and word wheels)
- Study functions (eg flashcards, favorites and beginner or intermediate lessons)
- Games (eg Kanji Challenge and Kanji Builder)
Index pages
NEW!
You can get a more comprehensive list of functions organized by activity from the four index pages. All four of these are in the INFORMATION & HELP menu at the bottom left of every page:
We've just reworked all four of these index pages - they are now much more comprehensive and easy to follow.
Bottom menu
In addition to the four key index pages, the bottom menu includes links to most of Kanshudo's key features organized by content area: kanji & kana, words, grammar, as well as more search options and admin functions.
How-to guides
Finally, Kanshudo includes several in-depth guides covering how to use the system, as well as how to learn Japanese generally:
- The most important starting point is How to use Kanshudo
- Then look through the how-to guide index
The Kanshudo Component Builder has been a key feature of Kanshudo since very early on in Kanshudo's history. Its core function is the ability to look up a kanji based on any combination of its components - the standard 'radical' used in traditional dictionaries, or any other component or combination of components. Since it is much easier to identify components than to find a kanji in a long list, this approach to looking up kanji is very efficient.
The original Component Builder introduced a key innovation which made the process even faster: the ability to identify a component just by typing its name. Once you know the names of standard components such as 'tree' (木) or 'sun' (日), you could simply type the name rather than searching for the component visually.
Today we are delighted to introduce another leap forward: the ability to look up any of the 400+ components used in Joyo kanji simply by drawing it. Just fire up the Component Builder, identify the components in your kanji, choose the easiest, and draw it in the drawing area! Drawing a component is much easier than drawing a complex kanji, and our system, which is built on a custom neural net designed by Kanshudo, will recognize any of the components used in Joyo kanji.
To get started, click here to open up the Component Builder in Quick Search.
For more details, read our detailed how-to guide to the Component Builder.
Posted: 2020-03-17,
Tags:
flashcards
favorites
As we write this, the whole world is struggling with the covid-19 pandemic. Cities (including our own San Francisco) and countries are locked down, and people everywhere are suffering from the virus itself or its after effects, including economic hardship. Our hearts go out to everyone particularly affected by this, and we wish everyone who reads this our very best as we all battle this common enemy. Stay safe!
We're writing this post to let you know about two small but valuable additions to Kanshudo: an item view for flashcards, and a list view for favorites. Read on to find out what these are and how useful they can be!
First, we've added a new view to complement the standard favorites view. In the (original) standard view, each of your favorites is presented in the same way it appears in Kanshudo search results, along with the ability to click each item and see more detail, view a kanji's components quickly and easily etc.
The new favorites list view provides a short form text summary of each of your favorites, and allows you to select each favorite with a checkbox. You can then selectively add your checked favorites to a flashcard set of your choosing, which gives you much finer-grained control.
The new item view for a flashcard set essentially gives you the opposite. Until now, the only view of your flashcards in any given set was a summary view which gave you your learning statistics and rough data. Now, we've added an item view for your set cards, which shows you each of the cards in standard Kanshudo format. To see the item view, visit your flashcards index and click VIEW for any set.
Note that any flashcards you have imported as plain text (ie, without using smart import) will not appear in the item view. If at all possible use smart import - Kanshudo flashcards are far more useful when you use them to study kanji / words / examples / grammar that the system recognizes, as Kanshudo uses that to measure your Japanese Mastery Level.
We're delighted to announce several improvements to the Drawing center.
Drawing kanji yourself is a great way to cement them in your mind, as it invokes multiple learning styles. For example, the physical act of moving your fingers to shape the strokes creates 'muscle memory'.
Plus, drawing kanji requires you to call to mind aspects of the character that you may not have focused on when you were trying to learn it visually. For example, you need to remember the correct stroke order, and you need to have a sense of what each stroke looks like individually.
Kanshudo's Drawing center is here to help! We've added several new features:
- Practice drawing the kanji in any of your flashcard sets. For any flashcard set that contains kanji, Kanshudo will automatically identify the kanji cards, and turn them into a list for you to draw.
- Practice drawing any of the components used in the Joyo kanji.
These great new features complement the original functionality:
- Practice drawing hiragana or katakana.
- Practice drawing the 50 most useful kanji components.
We're also working on a kanji drawing game and another exciting drawing-related feature. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know!
Flashcards are a great learning tool, and with the modern convenience of phones and computers, more accessible than ever. Kanshudo includes a powerful flashcard study and management system with built-in spaced repetition, and provides many ways to create flashcards - for example, lessons, collections and favorites.
But how do you use flashcards for kanji in particular? Read our new guide, Tips for using flashcards to learn kanji, which provides key tips for maximizing the effectiveness of flashcards for your kanji study.
Posted: 2020-01-04,
Tags:
pointsofinterest
names
Alert: as of the 1st January 2020, all Japanese names have changed!
More specifically, the English translations of Japanese names are now officially written in the same order as the Japanese, with the family name first. So, the official English translation of the name of Japan's prime minister at the time,
あべ
安倍
しんぞう
晋三
, is now Abe Shinzō . This is the opposite of the conventional order of Western names, so for many years the standard translation has followed the Western convention - Shinzō Abe.The primary motivation for this change is convenience for Japanese people - why should they be forced to say their names backwards when talking to non-Japanese? In practice, the key question will be how long it takes foreign media to adopt the new convention, since that is how most people develop a sense of the 'right' way to say a Japanese name.
This blog post is based on the Japanese name reversal point of interest. For more points of interest, see the point of interest library.
Kanshudo is your AI Japanese tutor, and your constant companion on the road to mastery of the Japanese language.
To get started learning Japanese, just follow the study recommendations on your Dashboard.
You can use Quick search (accessible using the icon at the top of every page) to look up any Japanese word, kanji or grammar point, as well as to find anything on Kanshudo quickly.
For an overview, take the tour.
