Vocabulary resource I'm developing for all levels of learners

Japanese Language Resources
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Hi community,

I have been working on a vocabulary source on Youtube that I’d like to share (youtube is having some trouble finding the right audience it seems, so I figured I’d try myself). The main goal is to provide a source for vocabulary, focusing on understandable explanations and including pitch accent information. Something I would personally like to use back when I finished the textbooks and got to that intermediate level where you’re kinda left on your own.

I have a bunch of ideas for the future, but for now working on 2 specific series - all to aid learners with studying specifically vocabulary ( geared mostly to intermediate till advanced learnes). In the end it’s all Japanese, so of course beginners can use it too.

The first series is a daily Japanese quiz: every day 3 questions with 1 beginner, 1 intermedia and 1 advanced word. These are shorts. The answers include an example sentence and pitch accent. I also upload a recap of all of the videos from the past month as long form videos.

The second series is a “all vocabulary from insert anime here”. I’ve started with Death Note because of the vocabulary being more on the “daily japanese” side of the spectrum, as opposed to other popular anime. Each episode gets it’s own video, and words don’t repeat. The idea is that after studying the vocab from each video (with whatever tool you like), you would be able to understand the episodes without needing English subtiles. Episode 1~4 are up on the channel currently. The video format is a bit of a work in progress still, as well as my code that helps me produce them.

The channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@NihongoHero-e9n

As a thanks for letting me post this, I’ll pay it forward by trying to help out in the questions category.

3 Likes
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Your episode vocab videos have a black background - is this a choice to keep them spoiler free and/or avoid copyright issues?
I would think the words would be more memorable with a screenshot from the relevant scene where they are used.

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Thanks for putting in the effort to create this.

At the risk of seeming overly critical, here are a few brief observations:

a) The size of the text used for the question words is mostly fine (at least for my computer) for viewing within the YouTube page in my browser (although characters containing many short strokes would be easier to read if the characters were somewhat larger, especially because the font that is used has a relatively heavy ‘weight’) - but the rest of the text is too small. I have to view the episode full-screen to be able to comfortably read it. FWIW, I have been viewing in default ‘auto’ quality of 360p - maybe it’s better at HD quality, but the videos are so quick that changing the quality takes almost as much time as viewing the video.

Example:

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b) I find several other aspects of the production to be both distracting and annoying, including the short time that each answer is displayed on the screen (requiring me to actively pause the playback to read the entire answer), the abrupt interjection of the ‘level’ indicator text ahead of the next question word, and the colored background to each question word that changes to white as a timing indicator when the question word is displayed (which has the effect of partially obscuring the question word, because there is not enough color contrast between that background color and the question word text color, the reddish color being the biggest offender, but the yellow and blue are not great either - which is especially problematic for characters that have lots of short strokes, as it adversely impacts legibility). While I get it that you want to make each video “short and sweet”, the practical effect is that, at least for me, the annoyance factor overwhelms the usefulness factor, which is discouraging me from continuing to watch the videos.

Example (compare the readability before and after the colored background passes the question word):

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c) If you are watching an individual video from the playlist page, after it completes, the next video shown in sequence is not the ‘following’ video, rather video 5 was followed by 4, and video 1 was followed by IIRC video 33. While I guess that the monthly compilation video could be viewed instead, you have to wait a month to see each one - and within the compilation videos it does not appear to indicate which word/video number is being shown, which makes it hard to keep track of what you are viewing in sequence.

d) Are you considering publishing a pdf ‘companion’ to the daily videos (or for the compilation videos)? That would simplify reviewing after the fact, taking notes, etc.

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They’re black mostly because I didn’t really think about anything else but the vocab information. I like the idea of having pictures in there, it would make the videos less boring, but like you said, the words also more memorable. Screenshots of the scene would be hard to pull off, but maybe having pictures related to the word would be doable, I’d have to check.

I have some ideas to make the information less convoluted, which makes the videos better for all levels. I was very invested in adding the J>J dictionary information, since I think it gives a better idea of the actual meaning, as opposed to the English translation. But I now realize that the entry barrier for reading the Japanese is maybe too high for most learners, which kinda goes against the whole goal. The idea I have will keep the informational value of the J>J intact, but in English.

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Thanks for the elaborate feedback.

The short form videos are “designed” to be viewed as a Youtube short. The idea behind the pacing is to keep it, well, short. I figured those who want to would actively pause the video to read the answer screens anyway. The color scheme is there to signify the level of the question and up the production value a bit. I asked some friends and they personally like it, so it could be personal preference.

I’ll take a closer look to your feedback soon and see where I can incorporate some of your feedback.

I also like the idea of providing a document with the videos. I’ll look into that for the monthly video since I dont feel like creating and uploading documents everyday. As opposed to the long form videos, these are 100% manual and are already enough of a chore to produce every day.

Thanks again for taking the time to write feedback! <3

1 Like