Learn Kanji with Twitter! Have Fun Learning with Kanji Scrabble for Twitter!
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009To help you break the monotony of Kanji study, we came up with a fun game using Twitter!
To start, all you need is a Twitter account and to follow our Twitter account @japanesepod101
(What’s Twitter you ask? Read our guide here.)
How to Play Japanese Kanji Scrabble
On the day we play in the morning (Japan time), we’ll select 10 Kanji: 1 Key Kanji and 9 other possible suffix and/or prefix Kanji.
Example Tweet:
Kanji Scrabble #01 [日] 二、本、一、国、人、十、中、三、時 (Learn How to Play http://ow.ly/3xU3)
Here is what you do:
1. Using the Key Kanji (the one in brackets): Make as many compound words using the Key Kanji and Kanji in the list
*Remember each compound you create must included the Key Kanji*
2. Write those compounds in a reply to our tweet or come to Kanji Scrabble blog entry and enter your kanji compound creations in a comment! Others will be commenting.
3. At night we’ll post the answers to our Kanji Scrabble in another tweet.
4. Check our tweet again at @japanesepod101 and compare to your answers.
5. That’s it! It’s that simple to play!
We’ll be tweeting our first Kanji Scrabble on 04/22/2009 at 10:00 p.m. Japanese time so get ready! Answers will be posted 24 hours later.
Here are some examples to show you how to reply to the tweets.
Correct Replies:
@japanesepod101 Kanji Scrabble Answer: 二日
@japanesepod101 Hrm… Are these right? 二日、一日
@japanesepod101 I know only 4 Japanese words and this is one of them 
一日
Incorrect Replies:
@japanesepod101 一時, 中三、国、人
These answers don’t contain the key Kanji in brackets.
@japanesepod101 日本の人
These answers contain Hiragana. No Japanese readings or Hiragana may be used.
@japanesepod101 ichinichi, futsuka, ichinichijuu, nihonjin
Because this is for your Kanji practice, make sure to practice by actuallly typing the Kanji. Let’s graduate from romaji!
@japanesepod101 Today I read a book. Also mowed the lawn. It’s getting hot today! Kanji Scrabble 二日、一日、一日中
Try to tweet about only one topic or thought at a time. Don’t worry, everyone tweets often so turning the above into 4 separate tweets is okay!
Want to Play with your friends? Retweet!
If your friends aren’t following @japanesepod101 on Twitter, share the Kanji Scrabble question! “Retweeting” our tweet lets you work together on the Kanji Scrabble and then you can answer later. You can also share the link to the blog post.
Here’s how to “Retweet”
RT @japanesepod101 Kanji Scrabble #01 [日] 二、本、一、国、人、十、中、三、時 (Learn How to Play http://ow.ly/3xU3)
RT is short for “Retweet” and saves on character count (remember, 140 characters is the tweet limit).
We’re waiting for your tweets and blog comments!
UPDATE: #kanjiscrabble Under 3 hours left. Did anyone get the 4 character compound?
Posted by JapanesePod101.com in General Announcements, Kanji |
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
一日、二日、一日中、三日、十日
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Very awesome idea, not really good enough at kanji to play, but certainly good enough to learn. A suggestion though, require adding a #kanjiscramble hash tag, it’ll make it so much easier to search out everyones answers!
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Interesting idea! I’ll wait for the answers to this first round to make sure I understand the rules before I jump in!
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Jenny-san, thx for the answer!
Ben-san, good luck, and thank you for the suggestion. We’ll get on it.
Julie-san, thanks for the great feedback! Feel free to give it a try!
Does anyone see the 3 character compound?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 pm
C+D from Parker Brothers in 3… 2…
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 am
All right, I gave it a try! It was more tricky than I thought!
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 am
L33tminion-san, thx for the post!
Julie-san, thanks for playing! You did great! I’m actually playing right now. Pretty fun.
You can see who else is playing by searching: @japanesepod101
here:
http://search.twitter.com/
Quite a few people playing.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 am
I wrote a post attempting to give a rundown of all the answers, take a look and comment if you’re interested.
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
Hmm, I can’t seem to get it to post to the twitter site. I’m new to twitter.
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
What a nice idea, but I guess, it is just a bit to complicated for me at this time :̵
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
If you don’t know how to use Twitter, check out the guide here: http://ow.ly/3xU3
It’s really fun once you get the hang of it
Or feel free to write answers in the comments box
April 24th, 2009 at 8:11 am
I am curious about the whole rule thing, since it is Kanji Scrabble, each Kanji is treated as one tile right? So shouldn’t it be the case that each kanji is used once?
In the next one is it possible that there might be two of the same kanji to be used again or a blank tile?
Yes, I am a Scrabble Nerd. I enjoy the game and this is a new way for me to play the game.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:58 am
@digitaljo: i think a real scrabble game with kanji wouldnt make sense. too short words, too many stones ^^
@Jonathan, can we have the list of solutions with readings and translations too? maybe here in the blog?
April 27th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Digitaljo-san, you are correct.
We bent the rules a bit. It’s kind of a scrabble/boggle mashup. 
We’re still working on it, and we’ll consider the great feedback. 
Marvin-san, here you go:
http://blogs.japanesepod101.com/blog/2009/04/24/kanji-scrabble-01-answers-and-meanings/
September 14th, 2009 at 3:05 am
AWESOME IDEA! I need to study Kanji more before I will be able to play, but good idea.
October 7th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Very creative, I will give it a try.