RudisKanjiTrain

Legal stuff first: I wrote that program, do what you want with it, but don't claim it as your own and make money with it. Also don't build nuclear weapons with it. If something goes wrong because you used my program I am at no fault. In fact, perhaps I should just forbid everyone to use it and then just turn a blind eye and play stupid if people do it anyway. Ah, whatever, use it, learn japanese, send me a postcard :-).

The title "RudisKanjiTrain" already says a lot about its basic function. Yet why another Kanji Trainer? For me, the best way to learn the japanese kanji has always been the Heisig method. As the goal of that method is to learn all the 2000+ common use kanji before using them in real life (the idea, which I strongly support, being, that you can't use kanji in real life anyway before at least knowing all common use kanji), it is essential to constantly review kanjis previously learned, lest one forgets faster than learning new stuff.

For this, I couldn't find anything on the web which fitted my needs exactly, so I wrote what I needed myself. So, RudisKanjiTrain obviously has those basic features like being able to enter the made-up stories and being able to review the kanji from keyword to kanji and from kanji to keyword. Also, it remembers whether you got it right or wrong and you can configure your daily review lesson to use that information.

Later, having mastered (and I using that word with a somewhat relaxed meaning ;-) ) Heisig 1, the obvious next step is tackling the readings. Heisig 2 may be some help in that, but I didn't find it the all-out solution to my next learning-step that Heisig 1 was. Plus, I find that my ability to read real japanese was more handicapped by an constant lack of vocabulary than not knowing the readings. I confirmed this by trying to learn the readings by reading a lot of furigana-anointed Manga. So for me the next deficit to overcome was obviously having to learn more vocabulary. Also I found, that I could remember those readings best, where I knew the word, and the keywords for the kanji as given by heisig made good sense. For example many japanese learners learn the word じどうしゃ (自動車) rather early and know it quite well. After mastering Heisig 1, you know the kanji as "oneself move car". If you can remember that, you practically know three reading for free. Now learn or know 自転車 and you reviewed two readings and learned one more.

So, even if that sounds rather old-fashioned japanese-learning-wise, I found that learning vocabulary together with readings to be the most effective for me. Though without the Heisig keywords in my head, I doubt I could remember even a tiny part of what I can remember with them. As my model of the brain goes, it is like the web before search engines, without a lot of links you can't find anything and Heisig provides the links. Please note that I could have used the words "synapses" and "neural net" here, but then don't really know enough about synapses and didn't want to brag with my CS master by using the second ;-).

For vocabulary learning I found the free program "PenPen" great at first. Particulary because someone entered a (german) kanji book as levels for PenPen. However, as cute as PenPen looks (and it's cute and really better to start with as my program, as cuteness motivates and motivation is half the rent), I found it rather slow going when reviewing a lot of previously learned words. Also I wanted to control it with my IR-Remote through Girder while sitting comfy in my armchair and not crouched over my keyboard and Girder can't control DirectInput applications. Also I wanted a quick way to lookup the heisig keyword and my story for the relevant kanji while learning vocabulary. And so was born the second part of RudisKanjiTrain, where you can learn and review vocabulary by using PenPen Level-files, while having quick and easy access to Heisig-Information.

Well, if you are interested I recommend giving the Installation a short glance and then download it. The program is written in Java and doesn't need to be installed, so if you already have Java 5 or 6 installed just try it!