The Japanese kanji symbol 'gaku' meaning 'happiness', which is also part of my Chinese name.I have found a useful site (claiming to be "free"), which helps "hiriganize" Japanese "kanji". This is really helpful for me as I recognize most "kanji" (due to my knowledge of Chinese), but don't know how to read the words in Japanese. Of course this might not be 100% accurate, as there are many different pronunciations for the same "kanji", but on the other hand, it should prove extremely helpful. The link is http://www.furiganizer.com.
To test it, copy the following Japanese characters ("kanji"): 日本語, meaning "Japanese (as a language)" and click on the hyperlink to the website above. Then insert the three characters on to the page as instructed, and click on the word "Furiganize" at the bottom, and there you are!
Here is a slightly longer sentence:
もし、何かあったら連絡してね。
moshi, nani-ka attara renraku-shite-ne.
If there is anything, please contact me. (Courtesy of NHK)
In this sentence, if you can already read hiragana, you would be able to pronounce everything except "何" and "連絡". By copying and posting/furiganizing the whole sentence, you will be given the pronunciations for these kanji and in this case they agree with the roman pronunciation provided in the NHK lesson.
What is also particularly interesting, is that if you click on the kanji, an explanation of what the word means will appear in a box. This saves a lot of time that may otherwise be spent thumbing through a dictionary.
Hi Bruce,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your positive review of the Furiganizer. I'm glad it was/is of help to you.
I thought you might be interested that there is a new version of the Furiganizer which
- supports downloading the furiganized text to MS Word
- uses Google Accounts for logging in (a lot less cumbersome)
- has seen a major face lift, which should make it a lot easier to use with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer
http://www.furiganizer.com
Happy about all kinds of feedback,
Ben
PS: it is free, really : )