WaniConjugation - Practice conjugating verbs - RFC

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
1
Hello, WaniKani community. I have a bit too much time on my hands and an interest in coding, so I made a thing! I call it 'WaniConjugation'. A tool to practice conjugating verbs and adjectives. Apologies for mistakes and bad code.  (Screenshots below show earlier version without adjectives.)

http://waniconjugation.co.nf/


Disclaimer: 


I am a total Japanese noob and this project was way too ambitious for my current amount of knowledge. I did some research and attempted to be accurate with things, but I understand that there are things I need to fix. Especially since all categorizing and conjugating has been generated via script. This tool doesn't aim to replace a textbook or your own research/learning (especially knowing when to use what form/tense). The 'translate' feature is the driving force between the project, meant to be a tool to help you practice writing/reading verbs in their various forms only, not learn them or their contexts. Hopefully useful though. 

If/When you see something off (like maybe my English translations?), you can respond in this thread or email me (waniconjugation@gmail.com).
 

Features: 


- Search within a collection of WaniKani verbs and adjectives by level, english meaning, or dictionary form (kanji or hiragana reading). 

- Click on a verb/adjective to pull up a table of Japanese AND English conjugations, with both plain and polite forms for Japanese. 

- Toggle between kanji and hiragana. 

- Click on any Japanese text for automated text to speech! (ONLY IN CHROME. Uses responsivevoice.js to access browser's Speech Synthesis API.) 

- Go to 'Conjugate' to practice conjugating verbs/adjectives at and/or below your WK level in whichever tenses you select. 

- Go to 'Translate' to practice translating between English/Japanese or Japanese/English verb/adjective conjugations at and/or below your WK level in whichever tenses you select. 

- Text input uses WanaKana.js to automagically convert your romaji to hiragana. 

- After submitting your responses, answers are shown and incorrect responses become dark gray/black. 


My to-do list: 


- fix special suru verbs

- allow user to select which words to practice

- add more verb forms?
 

Screenshots: 


800×450 60 KB


(Search for verbs by english meaning, or dictionary form (kanji or hiragana reading) 


800×377 90.1 KB


(Click on a verb to pull up a table of Japanese AND English conjugations) 


800×377 51.2 KB


(Go to ‘Conjugate’ to practice conjugating verbs at and/or below your WK level in whichever tenses you select.  Text input uses WanaKana.js to automagically convert your romaji to hiragana.) 



800×376 59.8 KB


(Go to ‘Translate’ to practice translating between English/Japanese or Japanese/English verb conjugations at and/or below your WK level in whichever tenses you select.) 


800×376 57.1 KB


(When given an English meaning to translate, a more specific prompt is given to clarify plain/polite and tense). 


Feedback/corrections very much appreciated! Have fun. :slight_smile:


~nadagio


12 Likes
2

Looks really cool! I’m definitely going to try it out… after reviews. :stuck_out_tongue:
Thanks for putting in the effort to make this. :]

3

Awesome. I konw you call yourself a noob and all, but this is great - can’t wait to see what it becomes!

4

Looks absolutely amazing! I have no idea how accurate it is but after a quick poke around it seems to work fairly well. Hopefully more knowledgeable people can help you improve it for the future but it is definitely something i can see myself using a lot. Well done!

5

I tried out a few, it seems like a great way to help speed up one’s conjugation.

It would be nice if the keyboard controls were a little more streamlined so that we don’t need to use the mouse. Maybe something like putting focus on the first textbox automatically, and having the Enter key trigger Submit/Next.

It would also be cool if it had a feature where you could go through the conjugations in a random order to prevent one from simply memorizing the order.
Just throwing ideas out there, good job!

6

Just had a wee poke around…



Thanks for sharing!

7

These two also exist (and aren’t specific to WK vocab):
http://www.verbix.com/languages/japanese.shtml
http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/

They of course don’t offer quizzes, but throwing another form of SRS or similar onto what you’re already managing just for conjugations seems like a waste of time to me. Use it if you need help, memorize the forms through time.

8

Out of curiosity, which browsers did you test this in? I can get it to work in Chrome, but not at all in Opera, which is my main browser (31.0.1889.151, latest version). None of the buttons respond to anything.

It looks good otherwise though! Thanks for your time and effort!

9

This is super cool. Works great. 

But since this is Wanikani, I am of course going to request SRS integration. 

10

Darcinon, thank you for the suggestions. I was planning on adding keyboard functionality and the auto-focus is a good idea. I consider the ‘Translate’ tool to my solution to not just rote-memorizing tables. But I maybe can randomize the order of rows in the ‘Conjugate’ section.

melodicwaffle, I opened it up in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Didn’t do much testing. I’m leaning heavily on AngularJS code and it may be a problem with that. I’ll look into it more soon, thanks for letting me know.

Takaikioi, that would be very ambitious of me. :smiley: No guarantees but I’ll keep it in mind.

11

Not sure why it doesn’t have the Te form by itself? 

Either way, I immediately looked up 行く which has an irregular Te form and past, so it should be 行って and 行った

12

Actually Takaikioi, to clarify, do you mean keeping track of conjugations you’ve gotten right/wrong and then timing when you’ll see them again, or just gathering a list of words to test you on from those you’ve learned on WK using the user API? The latter would be significantly easier.

13

Syphus, I don’t believe the te form by itself out of context really has a translation does it? I was focusing on forms that can used to practice translating but I could include it in the tables for completeness.

Thanks for letting me know about 行く, I’ll work on fixing that soon.

14
nadagio said... Darcinon, thank you for the suggestions. I was planning on adding keyboard functionality and the auto-focus is a good idea. I consider the 'Translate' tool to my solution to not just rote-memorizing tables. But I maybe can randomize the order of rows in the 'Conjugate' section.
 Oh snap, I didn't look at the Translation tool yet. Excellent!
15

This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen to come from WaniKani! Amazing job.

Just a few things though:
1) In Level 8, 対する doesn’t conjugate like how する and words like 算定する do. I have an Anki deck similar to your site so I had to make a different category for verbs like 対する. Maybe you can call it “special する verbs.” So far, I have 7 different categories of verbs.

2) In Level 4, you didn’t include 見える. I’m not sure if you did that on purpose or not.

3) Much less importantly, for 擦る and 擦れる, the past tense of rub should be rubbed instead of rubed lol,

16

Very cool. Thanks a lot, nadagio.

17
nadagio said... Syphus, I don't believe the te form by itself out of context really has a translation does it? I was focusing on forms that can used to practice translating but I could include it in the tables for completeness.

Thanks for letting me know about 行く, I’ll work on fixing that soon.

 Well it’s used in two main ways, first, by itself it is an imperative, or a conjunction (as in blah blah and then blah blah). But it also attaches to so many auxiliaries you need to learn it on its on, beyond what you have we’ve got ～てある、～てみる、～ておく、～ていく、～てくる、and on and on. As far as 行く, there’s a few others out there that are irregular in a conjugation or two, but may not even be in WK. 


newyorkaru said…
This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen to come from WaniKani! Amazing job.

Just a few things though:
1) In Level 8, 対する doesn’t conjugate like how する and words like 算定する do. I have an Anki deck similar to your site so I had to make a different category for verbs like 対する. Maybe you can call it “special する verbs.” So far, I have 7 different categories of verbs.


 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.lang.japan/n91snqqSJSY

Interesting relevant discussion here. Seems that this is mainly relating to only one conjugation and in many cases both forms exist. 

18

Great idea!

19

Excellent! This info is exactly what I needed to fix things up.

I’ve found this wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_irregular_verbs which I’m hoping will be comprehensive with the irregular te and suru verbs.
 

newyorkaru said…2) In Level 4, you didn’t include 見える. I’m not sure if you did that on purpose or not.

3) Much less importantly, for 擦る and 擦れる, the past tense of rub should be rubbed instead of rubed lol,

 When I sorted WK vocab for verbs I looked for meanings that start with "to ", which must be how I missed 見える or ‘can see’. Although now that I look at it more closely I’m baffled by its existence. As an ichidan verb, 見る’s potential form is 見られる right? So why 見える? And what does its potential form 見えられる mean? Capable of being able to see? Is that really a word and how would you use it? And then there’s 見せる instead of 見させる…

Thank you for pointing that out. …rubed. Haha

20

Long story short, it’s not the potential of 見る and is a word in its own right. There are some cases where the potential is actual a different word and the actual potential form is used a bit different. Think of it how “goed” is a valid English past tense word that is never used.

If I recall 見られる is more like “able to see” versus being blind. But someone can correct me. 

I’m finding some definitions of 見えられる but I’m not sure how to articulate it into English. http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/2835229.html place to start if you want.