Thread: Useful programs/links/books/etc

I'll name some resources that I consider particularly valuable.
I'll be happy if other people post their suggestions, too.
Most people probably know of these resources already, but in case some slipped from your attention, here they are.

Programs:
(PC):
1. Firefox + rikaichan -- absolutely invaluable. inline dictionary, kanji dictionary, etc -- it's that good. Now with an optional J-R dictionary.
http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/
2. Yarxi -- a very good Russian kanji dictionary
http://www.susi.ru/yarxi/
3. JWPce -- a text editor+a nice dictionary interface+a converter between different file formats. You need this, even if not for word processing (Windows native IME is far better).
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html

(Palm OS):
4. Twinkle -- a great, free flashcard program.
http://twinkle.sourceforge.net/
5. PADict -- a portable dictionary that includes pretty good handwritten kanji recognition. It is being actively developed now.
http://padict.sourceforge.net/

Websites:
1. Jim Breen's WWWJDIC:
- Words lookup (thanks, ST):
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi- ... dic.cgi?1C
- Example search:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi- ... dic.cgi?10
2. http://www.alc.co.jp/
3. Reading tutor: http://language.tiu.ac.jp/tools_e.html
4. If you are following Heisig, you *absolutely* have to check out http://kanji.koohii.com/ .
5. of course, http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
6. And finally probably the best collection of all things, like grammar explanations, kanji info, etc:
http://www.yookoso.com/
you'll find a lot more links there. I also like their mailing lists.

A few other sites that you may or may not find useful:

7. A useful little site with audio, transcripts and vocabulary: http://www.njuku.com/
8. A full text translator that seems to work better than others (thx. ST): http://translation.infoseek.co.jp/
9. this is something that I just recently came across, but it seems to have a few nice features:
http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do
it has a website reading feature similar to that of rikaichan and a flashcard system that works surprisingly well. It has a few shortcomings too, though.
10. I haven't used this one in a while, but it is also an interesting resource for learning kanji:
http://www.kanjicafe.com/

Books:
1. Textbook -- probably Nakama by Makino. Also Situational Functional Japanese, but it is more suited for a classroom rather than an individual learner.
Frankly, I have not gone much into either one but I've browsed through quite a few so far, and these looked best.

2. Reading the Kanji by Heisig, another must have. It works. You can browse a part of it online for free. Industrious Russians will find it all, although it's definitely worth its' price.

3. As I've already mentioned a few times, Japanese the Manga Way by Lammers -- it's a better reference than most references, and a better textbook than most textbooks. I wouldn't recommend it as the only resource of course, but...

4. Kanji in Context
http://www.iucjapan.org/html/text_e.html
Extremely helpful, the best possible thing out there to increase your vocabulary and improve your kanji knowledge. It's probably best to start with other materials, and a bit later to add this one, as it assumes some kanji knowledge, and it works better if you already know the kanji from something like Heisig.

6. "Japanese: A Comprehensive Grammar": Kaiser, Ishikawa, Kobayashi and Yamamoto. A nice book, with quite a few examples. A lot of people also mention the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese grammar, but I so far have not found them too important, plus they are kinda expensive, and you really need to have both since they share the same index. Again, some people might come across some of these on the internet.

6. And I'd also mention Miura's Japanese Words and Their Uses, and also The Complete Japanese Verb Guide:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804834245

7. I also have NTC's New Character Dictionary -- it can be bought quite cheap used (in US, but even shipped to Russia it shouldn't be too much -- I got it for $12 from Amazon, not bad for a 2000-page book). It's nice, especially when you need to know things like what's the difference between 聞く　and　聴く, etc.

THANK YOU SO MUCH LAXXY!

Those links are wonderful, especially the first one.

ОГРОМНОЕ СПАСИБО

updated to add Kanji in Context to the list, which is a real must have.

Industrious Russians...

お金があればいいですね。私はそれらの本がほしいです。

私もお金がありません。 　私は貧乏になります!　それはすごいですね・・・

シカゴの図書館はいいですね。
それにしても、Lammersや三浦やVerbGuideはあまり高くありません、せめてアメリカで。「な かま」は良い高い本ですけど、私は今あまり読みません。Dictionary of Basic Grammar や Heisig　はインターネットで探せます。それから先何の本はダウンロード可能になる、誰も知りません。 ^_^

Originally Posted by laxxy

シカゴの図書館はいいですね。
それにしても、Lammersや三浦やVerbGuideはあまり高くありません、少なくともアメリカでは。「なかま」は良い本で高いですけど、私は今あまり読みません。Dictionary of Basic Grammar や Heisig　はインターネットで探せます。今後どの本がダウンロード可能になるか（は）、誰も知りません。^_^

さすがに値段の張る本をたくさん買うのは難しいですね。でも、京都の図書館も悪くないですよ。上記の本は大 学に大体揃っているみたいです。検索したらすぐ見つかりました。ここは留学生たくさん受け入れてますからね 、日本語教育はしっかりしているようです。それに対して、ロシア語はどうもいまいちという気が します

Thanks a lot for the corrections!

About the textbooks: I did like Nakama more than other books I've seen, but I haven't actually studied with it much -- I ended up taking a quarter of Japanese and we used Japanese for College students (which is quite a nice book, but imo rather unsuitable for self-study, as the emphasis is very heavily on group work). But there are lots of other decent and cheap options -- a lot of ppl seem to like Minna no Nihongo, for example, and you can get it all from the internet... I would not really call Nakama a must have, I just felt like including at least some textbook there.

KingKanji is out, Twinkle is in

http://twinkle.sourceforge.net/

It rules, really. A must have.

Adding http://www.njuku.com/ , a very delightful little site.

The latest version of rikaichan now includes a Japanese-Russian dictionary, I just tried it and it seems to work pretty well. Strangely, it switches back to J-E for kana words.
It apparently also has a few typos: during the 15 seconds I was testing it, I noticed that it translates 郵便局　as "потовое отделение", rather than "почтовое отделение" so I think I'll be using the English one myself.

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi- ... %A4%EB_v5r -very good dict. There is -tte and -masu forms, examples etc.

Originally Posted by ST

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1W%C1%F7%A4%EB_v5r -very good dict. There is -tte and -masu forms, examples etc.

ええ、便利ですね。最初の書き込みを加えました。

Adding http://kanji.koohii.com/ to websites.

laxxy-ага. но если 2 разных человека о нем напишут-это только еще раз подтвердит полезность этого сайта

Originally Posted by ST

laxxy-ага. но если 2 разных человека о нем напишут-это только еще раз подтвердит полезность этого сайта

True, that's why I added your link (to word translation) beside mine (which was only to the sentence examples). I'll put a credit there in a second.

I have not used wwwjdic much as a word dictionary before, but looking at it closer I see a few things that are quite nice and unique about it -- primarily those links to verb forms/google/examples/etc.

laxxy-a amikai пробовал? http://translation.infoseek.co.jp

Мне иногда лень отдельные слова переводить, я сразу туда загоняю несколько предложений...неплохо получается. По крайней мере из онлайновых полнотекстовых-лучшее что я пока видел. И поддерживает кансайский диалект

Originally Posted by ST

И поддерживает кансайский диалект

лжекансайбэн...

I wonder how good this is.
I do not trust online translators much in general, this group provides only too many examples of how horrid they are for Russian.
But perhaps if one wrote short easy sentences, it could work? Let's test it now.

私は、これがどれくらいよいかについてわかりません。
私はそれほど大方のオンライン翻訳者を信用しません、このグループは彼らがロシア語のためにどれくらい恐ろ しいかというあまりに多くの例だけを提供します。
しかし、おそらく、人が短い簡単な文を書くならば、それは働くことができます？すぐにそれをテストしましょ う。