Development Blog

Hi! Welcome to my development blog. Here you can get some background information about 1776 Kanji, the Kanji Explorer, and (occasionally) the guy who writes the program.

Our software got better again. I added quite a big set of new Kanji lists. My personal favourites. Maybe the best lists in the whole program. We cover about 1200 essential Kanji and you can learn some 1600 well used no nonsense everyday words with these new lists. Have fun.

I put together a quotations page. 'hope you like it.

Follow @1776kanji

No changes that I would expect you to notice. Just made the program a bit more perfect.

I added some new screenshots to the website. The old website was online for quite a while and I got fond of it but with all the new features that I added this was a great opportunity to make a new one.

While I was at it I also moved the development blog over to this new home. I experimented with a Wordpress blog first but that did not quite work for me. Easy to post a quick article but to make that thing fit into my existing website would have been hairy. And very not-nice to backup or to move to another server. So I wrote a couple lines of php code and started my own blog-system here.

Now we have a Multiple Choice mode for Kanji learning. The new learning mode is fully integrated into the existing interface and you can switch between typing and choosing at any time.

I added some new stats to 1776 kanji. They show how many you got right in a row. Did not sound like much when I started and may now seem small but this little thing actually makes quite a nice difference when you are learning. Check it out.

Today I uploaded version 6.2 of 1776 kanji with the all-new slide show mode. I have been toying around with the kanji slide show mode for quite some time and this current version works very well for the betatesters, including myself.

The idea behind this kanji slideshow mode is to make better use of the time when you normally would click or type or think. When the kanji just slide by there is no time for much thinking. You know it or not. And then the computer will show you the translation instantly. You get a couple of seconds (depending on your settings) to remember the thing and a minute or so later you get your next chance.

It makes, in truth, not much sense to “know” a kanji after staring at it for five minutes. That kind of knowledge simply won’t do when you are reading a book or taking a test. The slide show mode forces your brain into some speed.

When you already know a kanji then the program will slow you down a bit, you can’t just confirm in slideshow mode and go on, you get a chance to look at the kanji closely and remember some details, maybe write it in your head.

A good thing to try, I would say. Let me know how the kanji slideshow works for you.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is a good place to start if you need some prove for your employer or university that you know some Japanese.

There used to be four JLPTs. Now there are five. The most difficult and prestigious one was JLPT 1 for which you should know some 2000 Kanji and basically speak Japanese better than most natives. This one is now called JLPT N1 and is more or less unchanged. To get a perfect score got even more difficult but passing the test is still as.. um.. mildly challenging.. as it has always been.

JLPT (old) 2 is now JLPT N2, 3 is now N4, and 4 is N5. More or less. The big change is the introduction of a new JLPT N3 between what was JLPT 3 and JLPT 2. A lot of learners of Japanese felt that the step between 2 and 3 was too big. And there was a lot of material to cover for sure. So the new JLPT N3 is somewhere half way in between.

I added a new list to 1776 Kanji for the JLPT N3 and I believe it contains most of the words and kanji that you will need for that test. I “believe” because we do not yet have all that many past tests for reference and because as of this writing I am not aware of any official lists so there is a bit of educated guessing involved in creating the JLPT N3 word list. Keep that in mind if you plan to take the N3.

I updated the joyo kanji lists for the online kanji explorer. The kyoiku kanji stayed the same so the only page that really changed is the one with secondary school kanji. And of course every single last page in the kanji explorer as filtering for words with exclusively joyo kanji means something different now.

I played with the thought of adding some option so that you can filter for old or new joyo kanji but I dropped that idea rather quickly. I did not want to clutter up the interface all that much for 5 (five) dropped kanji. If you need that functionality drop me a line and maybe we can work something out.

A couple of days ago I changed the name of site and program to 1776 Kanji. It used to be 2000 Kanji – so up popped the question if there are now fewer Kanji in the built-in lists.

1776 Kanji ships with the very same 2309 Kanji (I seem to remember it were 2309 but count yourself if you want to be extra sure) as did 2000 Kanji. I had my hands full with the name change. I did not touch the lists.