New design for JapanDict.com
After long time working on it, we are proud to announce the new design for JapanDict.com. We believe it improves the experience using the dictionary, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed working on it.
We have added some new features we expect they will improve the user experience while we maintain the simple interface we’re so proud of.
Please, feel free to take a look around the new website and let us know what you think. You can contact us the following ways:
- Via twitter to @learnkanji
- Via Facebook in https://www.facebook.com/japandict
- Via private email in our contact form
- Or just leave a reply in this post
New conjugations for verbs and adjectives
In JapanDict we’ve been aware there were some incorrect verb and adjective conjugations in the dictionary for quite a long time, but finally we fixed them creating a completely new way to generate them.
Also, we’ve also increased the number of conjugations adding some which were not available before.
I hope you enjoy the new changes!
Some examples:
Japanese kanji of 2011: 絆
This year, Japanese people chose the kanji 絆 (きずな – kizuna) to represent them. It means “bonds” and it’s been selected because of the collaboration of the Japanese people after the earthquake and tsunami to recover the affected areas.
After being chosen, the kanji is written by an expert calligrapher in the Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto.
The second and third selected kanji were:
As you can see the selection of those kanji were so influenced by the disaster happened 9 months ago.
What do you think about those kanji?
New features in JapanDict
We have implemented few new features in JapanDict and we hope you will enjoy them as much as we enjoyed doing them:
- Lists of words: Ever wanted to learn new words from an specific area? Now you can! We’ve implemented various lists of words. Some examples:
- Mobile version: Probably one of the most requested missing features. Now you can browse and query the dictionary using your mobile device.
- Speed improvements: We’ve implemented caching and reduced the downloaded data in all the site, so all the site will be much faster than before. Try it!
- Minor aesthetic improvements. Mainly small fixes that will make the site more beautiful than before.
Japan 2011 earthquake and tsunami relief
The 11th of March of 2011 Japan had one of the biggest earthquakes in it’s history, creating a huge tsunami which destroyed many areas along the Pacific coastline of Japan northern islands. Many people was dead, injured or missing.
Right now the country is trying to restore the damaged areas and help all the people affected by the disaster. Many international organizations are trying to help with the recovery.
In JapanDict we’ve created a new page with many links to provide help in different ways:
Official kanji list increased to 2136
Jōyō kanji, the official list maintained by the Japanese ministry of education which contains all the characters who every Japanese student should know, has been increased to 2136. This means an addition of 196 new characters and the suppression of 5.
This decision was made because nowadays, thanks to new technologies, it’s much easier to write some kanji considered so difficult before. Most people use computers or the mobile phone to write Japanese characters, so they don’t need to remember the exact way to draw it. They just need to remember the pronunciation and how they look.
This list has not been stable over the years. For instance, during the second world war, when the Japanese nationalistic fervor was so high, the number of kanji was increased to 2528!
However this is a big change for Japanese students and educators, as this makes even more difficult to study what it was one of the most difficult and time consuming things from the Japanese language.
This is the full list of the new included kanji:
媛 怨 鬱 唄 淫 咽 茨 彙 椅 萎 畏 嵐 宛 顎 曖 挨 韓 鎌 葛 骸 蓋 崖 諧 潰 瓦 牙 苛 俺 臆 岡 旺 艶 稽 憬 詣 熊 窟 串 惧 錦 僅 巾 嗅 臼 畿 亀 伎 玩 挫 沙 痕 頃 駒 傲 乞 喉 梗 虎 股 舷 鍵 拳 桁 隙 呪 腫 嫉 叱 鹿 餌 摯 恣 斬 拶 刹 柵 埼 塞 采 戚 脊 醒 凄 裾 須 腎 芯 尻 拭 憧 蹴 羞 袖 汰 遜 捉 踪 ## 曾 爽 遡 狙 膳 箋 詮 腺 煎 羨 鶴 爪 椎 捗 嘲 貼 酎 緻 綻 旦 誰 戴 堆 唾 鍋 謎 梨 奈 那 丼 貪 頓 栃 瞳 藤 賭 妬 填 溺 諦 阜 訃 肘 膝 眉 斑 阪 汎 氾 箸 剥 罵 捻 虹 匂 喩 闇 弥 冶 麺 冥 蜜 枕 ## 勃 頬 貌 蜂 蔑 璧 餅 蔽 脇 麓 籠 弄 呂 瑠 瞭 侶 慄 璃 藍 辣 拉 沃 瘍 妖 湧 柿 哺 楷 睦 釜 錮 賂 毀 勾
