Kana Stroke Order Videos and Pronunciation Practice!
Saturday, August 18th, 2007Mina-san,
Earlier this week we announced the launch of the Dialog and Review premium clips, which I hope everyone is enjoying. Today, we are glad to announce the much anticipated release of two more essential premium features which are sure to take your writing and speaking skills to new heights.
Kana Stroke Order Videos
The Kana Stroke Order Videos show you the proper stroke order for all basic Hiragana and Katakana characters. The videos, which include the sound of each character, show you exactly how to write each character stroke by stroke. They are available for all active Premium subscribers on the Hiragana Chart and Katakana Chart pages in the Reference Material section of our Learning Center. Below is a sample of one of these videos (requires Quicktime to view):
Pronunciation Practice
To address speaking practice, we have integrated a state-of-the-art software to allow you to record your own voice so you can compare your pronunciation to our teachers and continue to refine your speaking skills. This feature is available to all active Premium subscribers in the Kanji, Kana, and Romaji sections of the Line-By-Line Audio Transcript page for each lesson in the Learning Center (see screenshot below):
We hope you enjoy these new premium features and as always please let us know what you think.
Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
Posted by Eran Dekel in New Features, General Announcements |
August 19th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Mina-san,
When accessing the Line-By-Line Audio Transcript to try out the new Pronunciation Practice feature you may see an Applet Authentication window pop up (see sample mac alert, see sample pc alert). It is absolutely safe to trust and run the Applet as it using a digital certificate has been verified and authenticated by Thawte.
- Eran
August 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Eran-san
I would like to know if this application would work on Windows Vista
Because the picture above is from Windows XP and I’m not sure!
Well thank you for your time!
S_R_C
August 19th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
They look like interesting features.
But I wonder about the font used as a handwriting model. It’s forms are based on using a brush. While it looks pretty I think it complicates matters if you are copying it. If you are using a pen the first stroke of ほ would be a slightly curved line without the hook at the bottom. Actual good clear handwriting would be a better model than computer fonts. lots of work though. just my 2せん
August 19th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Sindy-san,
While I don’t have Windows Vista installed to test, I see no reason why the voice recorder will not work on that OS. The utility should work on all Windows platforms that have Java. To stroke order videos should also work on Vista as long as you as the QuickTime plugin. - Eran
August 20th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Belton-san,
There are different writing styles that differ from person to person. Both me (non-japanese) and my girlfriend (japanese) writes with the “hook” at the end of the first stroke, but some people dont. If you go to http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Japanese.html , you will find a big collection of japanese fonts. Look up the “mikachan” font and “sanafon” fonts. Both are handwritten fonts. Mikachan does not make a hook on her ほ but sanafon does.
August 24th, 2007 at 8:08 am
I appreciate there are different styles of writing and different typefaces.
Maybe what I meant to say is that there may be a style suitable to learning to write. Just as there are forms and sizes that are easier to read.
I wouldn’t let anyone use my handwriting as a model for writing English for instance and it’s been a long time since I wrote with the model script I learnt in school. Mikachan while handwritten isn’t especially clear in her letterforms at times. Clarity and simplicity (no stylistic embellishments) was what I was thinking of. Although there are worse models than (what looks like) Hiragano Mincho Pro.
The style of writing in a book I saw in a store today teaching children how to write English is very different to anything I write and very different to any typeface designed for print. A teacher friend of mine, who teaches young children, tried to explain to me once about the letter shapes suitable for children when starting to learn.
Maybe a suitable model would be one that’s used for Japanese schoolchildren.
(and in a passing observation, Japanese friends’ roman script is so completely different to their kanji and kana in terms of neatness and forms. It’s interesting. Sometimes their kanji looks like copperplate but thier romaji looks almost child-like in comparison.)
But you’ve done the work. It looks great. And I know the effort it takes.
お疲れさまでした〜♪
It was just an observation about something I’m interested in.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Belton-san,
thank you for the input. If I get time, I’ll try to research a bit more into what kind of typefaces/writing styles are used to teach Japanese children. There should be books one can buy in bookstores I guess
Although it is almost 20 years ago, I can still remember learning to write the alphabet. Writing those a’s and b’s and A’s and B’s over and over again. I must say, my current handwriting looks quite different from what i initially learned. I’m not sure if it got better or worse, hehe.
Again, I’ll take a closer look into the matter on the best typeface to use if/when I get the time.
Jonas