iTunes is a program from Apple to manage your media files. We can set its language to Japanese so it is a ripe entity for word and kanji dump.
I’ve done all the menu. Next will be the dialog boxes that pops from the menu items. Here are the 19 kanji:
認熟診換貼替択購削隠除断際張設製閉在複
And 102 words:
The previous word dump on this Wikipedia page is here. This time I’m armed with the knowledge of grade 4 kanji.
Previously I only gathered words with known kanji. However, now I also learn the kanji for words that I noticed appearing again and again.
I haven’t reached the end of the article so there will probably be a word dump on this article again soon.
Here are the 17 new kanji from this article:
炎領件統貿偶像再尚被映込彼災易亡突
And here are the 536 words gathered:
Usually I do kanjification after learning a bunch of new kanji. I traverse my word list from the beginning and try to find words for which can be written using the newly-expanded knowledge. Let’s call that “soft kanjification”
Now I’m doing “hard kanjification”. I traverse my word list from the beginning, and when I find a word with missing kanji, I will learn the kanji. I’ve gathered 28 new kanji:
鼓吐素芋違其兎鞄錬術師嘘狂麗奇鉛僧恥戴伯叔紅難処否樹貴鋼
And 147 new words:
Words and kanji from various random sources, totaling 14 kanji:
縛狗鶏常訳仏述柄絶戻頑鬼俺虹
And 167 words
With grade 4 and other new kanji, 139 words in my words list was able to be kanjified. I also did word list cleaning, which reduced my word count from 3575 to 3514.
The next activity is Wikipedia word hunt. Other than gathering new words, the reading process will test my newly-learned kanji knowledge on a real-world situation.
Here are the kanjified words:
In Japanese, people and place names are usually written in Kanji. Because most kanji have more than one reading, the issue of homophone and homograph comes into play. In general, even with practice we cannot be 100% certain how a person’s name should be written (given the sound) and read (given the kanji).
As an example of homophone, compare 加護亜依 (Kago Ai) with 高橋愛 (Takahashi Ai). Both person have "Ai" as their given name, but they are written differently (亜依 v.s. 愛).
As an example of homograph, compare 高橋愛 (Takahashi Ai, again) with 村上愛 (Murakami Megumi). Both person’s given name is written 愛 but read differently (Ai v.s. Megumi).
With all that trouble, it is not surprising that there is a dictionary of Japanese names called Enamdict. It is maintained by Jim Breen, the same person behind EDICT and KANJIDIC. The format is compatible with EDICT, so my EdictReader can directly load it:
I downloaded ENAMDICT to know the reading of 垢石, a name I encountered at Aozora Bunko (it is read "kouseki"). At first I thought it only contains list of family and given names. However the documentation states that there is also "full (family plus given) name of a particular person". Simple checking shows that "Koizumi Jun’ichirou" and "Oda Nobunaga" are in. What surprised me was that Hello! Project artists are in, from Morning Musume members like "Fujimoto Miki" to soloists like "Matsuura Aya". Professional go players are also there, from the legendary "Go Seigen" to "Umezawa Yukari". Very creepy!
It’s the first day of 2007 and PLN is kind enough to give power outage as a new-year present. Well, let us passionately welcome another year full of power outage!
(Considering all the power outage in 2006 and the lack of UPS, it’s actually a wonder that my computer is still alive. Could it survive 2007?)