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Finally a module for Japanese verbs
by Raphael
A new tool has arrived on the site. It's the much awaited Verbs module!
In the surveys, many of you requested it, so I had a look on the internet to see what was already available. The first goal for me was to create a conjugation tool for Japanese verbs, which is essential to read and form Japanese sentences.
From what I saw on other sites, I was surprised that no efficient tool was available, because they always applied grammatical rules to the user input to conjugate verbs, and the result was quite bad when they even allowed the user to write anything, even anything else than Japanese, and that the tool was still able to conjugate that...
The other issue was to recognize Ichidan and Godan verbs. With the verb ending, it's often possible to know whether a verb belongs to the former or to the latter. But there are many verbs having Ichidan endings actually belonging to the Godan group, and no tool could clearly make the distinction when ambiguous... And what to think of Kaeru (to go back, to return, Godan), and Kaeru (to change, Ichidan) ? How to know which one we are dealing with ?
There also exist a few subtleties not much known, such as with the verb 問う whose TE form isn't 問って as one might expect according to the rules, but 問うて. Of course the creators of those tools didn't pay attention to such details.
This new module for Japanese verbs is a solution to all those problems, and make it an efficient and trustworthy tool for students learning Japanese and anyone willing to learn Japanese seriously. Japan Activator's conjugator knows the rules, but also the exceptions to those rules. Moreover, it doesn't just function as a conjugator, but also as a dictionary because it contains nearly 7000 Japanese verbs translated into English. So when searching a verb, the meaning will be given, too. That will allow you to choose the right verb and avoid problems such as the one of Kaeru.
To meet everybody's needs and preferences, I didn't want to choose between Romaji or Kanji. Each member can choose what writing system is best for them, and the preference will be saved.
The tool quality required much work (over 100 hours). All verbs were checked and reviewed manually using Japanese dictionaries. I'm very proud that we can release this tool now and that the work is finally done, because this conjugation module will be of great help to students majoring in Japanese.
On top of that, the tool will also display common Japanese structures such as "be able to do", "to start to do", " I want him to do", "You should do", "To try to do", etc.
For two days the module will be available to all members. After that as I announced it in my previous message, it will become a tool for Samurai members only. The reason is simple : to give more value to people's contributions, help the site move forward, and give me enough motivation to spend time creating more tools. We'll go on adding more grammatical documents for all members and for free, along with new lessons soon.
Marmia
Administrator
Celestral
I noticed a little mistake though (at least in the screenshot)
It says "Polite negative" twice. The above one should be "Polite positive".
Will there be a review mode for this? Where you are asked for a verb in a specific tense and need to input it. Or maybe I missed it while reading.
Either way this is awesome :)
Firithfenion