WARNING: This repository is abandoned and has not been significantly updated in years. Expect many parts to be broken.

These are some scripts that help me learn Japanese.

Most scripts are supposed to be used as plugins for an IRC bot or run on a shell. I find the following aliases quite useful:

alias ja="$JAPANESE_TOOLS/jmdict/jm.sh"
alias wa="$JAPANESE_TOOLS/jmdict/wa.sh"
alias rtk="$JAPANESE_TOOLS/rtk/rtk.sh"

I do most of my dictionary lookups with these aliases.

All scripts have only been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 and later. There are a few dependencies not present on a default Ubuntu system. You can install them with

$ sudo apt install mecab-jumandic-utf8 mecab kakasi xmlstarlet xsltproc python-irclib sqlite3 bc liburi-perl tesseract-ocr imagemagick

audio/

find_audio.sh finds an audio version of a given Japanese word on languagepod101.

$ ./find_audio.sh 夜空
Audio for 夜空 [よぞら]: http://tinyurl.com/p8aq8jo

compare_encoding

Compares the size of different encodings of the same Japanese Wikipedia article. In almost all cases UTF-8 is smaller than UTF-16.

$ ./compare_encoding.sh 夜空
UTF-8 vs. UTF-16: 91213 vs. 156876 bytes. UTF-8 wins by 41.8%.

gettext/

Internationalization support. Currently supported languages:

• English
• German
• Polish

Be sure to run gettext/regenerate_mo_files.sh if you would like to use a translation.

jmdict/

jm.sh provides jmdict lookups and wa.sh wadoku lookups. Works best for Japanese->English (or Japanese->German), not so well for the reverse direction. This is because jmdict is a Japanese English dictionary and not an English Japanese dictionary.

To start, you first need to run the scripts prepare_jmdict.sh and prepare_wadoku.sh. This will download and process the respective dictionary files.

$ ./jm.sh 村長
村長 [そんちょう] (n), village headman
市長村長選挙 [しちょうそんちょうせんきょ] (n), mayoral election

kana/

A simple hiragana and katakana trainer.

Example IRC session

<Christoph>  !hira help
<nihongobot> Start with "!hira <level> [count]". Known levels are 0
             to 10. To learn more about some level please use
             "!hira help <level>".
<nihongobot> To only see the differences between consecutive
             levels, please use "!hira helpdiff <level>".
<Christoph>  !hira 5
<nihongobot> Please write in romaji: す と に ね へ
<Christoph>  !hira su to ni ne he
<nihongobot> Perfect! 5 of 5. Statistics for Christoph: 44.64% of
             280 characters correct.
<nihongobot> Please write in romaji: は と ぬ ほ な

kanjidic/

Implements a lookup in kanjidic: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjidic.html

$ ./kanjidic.sh 日本語
日: 4 strokes. ニチ, ジツ, ひ, -び, -か. In names: あ, あき, いる, く, くさ, こう, す, たち, に, にっ, につ, へ {day, sun, Japan, counter for days}
本: 5 strokes. ホン, もと. In names: まと {book, present, main, origin, true, real, counter for long cylindrical things}
語: 14 strokes. ゴ, かた.る, かた.らう {word, speech, language}

kumitate_quiz/

A quiz asking JLPT style 文の組み立て questions. Only works as an IRC plugin for now.

Example IRC session

<Flamerokz> !kuiz skm2
<nihongobot> Please choose [1-4]: 周囲の人たちの　＿　＿　★　＿　と思う。 (1: 協力を 2: 優勝は 3: 無理だった 4: 抜きにしては).
<Flamerokz> !kuiz 2
<nihongobot> Flamerokz: Correct! (2: 優勝は)

Example question file

A question file (a file ending in .txt in kumitate_quiz/questions/) should contains lines of the following form:

周囲の人たちの　＿　＿　★　＿　と思う。|協力を,優勝は,無理だった,抜きにしては|2

lhc

This script has nothing to do with Japanese. It OCRs the image on http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php?usr=LHC1 to provide live statistics of the status of the LHC.

reading/

read.py converts kanji to kana using mecab.

$ ./read.py 鬱蒼たる樹海の中に舞う人の如き影が在った。
鬱蒼[うっそう]たる　樹海[じゅかい]　の　中[なか]　に　舞[ま]う
人[じん]　の　如[ごと]き　影[かげ]　が　在[あ]った　。

reading_quiz/

A quiz asking kanji -> kana questions. Only works as an IRC plugin for now.

Example IRC session

<Christoph>  !quiz jlpt2
<nihongobot> Please read: 発見
<Christoph>  !quiz はっけん
<nihongobot> Christoph: Correct! (はっけん:
             (n,vs) 1. discovery, 2. detection, 3. finding)

romaji/

romaji.sh converts kanji and kana to romaji using mecab.

$ ./romaji.sh 鬱蒼たる樹海の中に舞う人の如き影が在った。
 ussoutaru jukai no naka ni mau jin no gotoki kage ga atta 。

rtk/

rtk.sh looks up keywords, kanji and numbers. The keywords and numbers refer to Heisig’s amazing book “Remembering the Kanji”.

$ ./rtk.sh 城壁
#362: castle 城 | #1500: wall 壁

$ ./rtk.sh star
#1556: star 星, #237: stare 眺, #1476: starve 餓,
#2532: star-anise 樒, #2872: start 孟, #2376: mustard 芥

$ ./rtk.sh 1 2 3
#1: one 一 | #2: two 二 | #3: three 三

simple_bot/

As the name says, this is a simple IRC bot. You can start it with:

$ ./bot.py <server[:port]> <channel> <nickname> [NickServ password]

It uses all the other scripts.