Oboeru

Japanese Language Vocabulary Quiz Application

Oboeru (The romanization of the Japanese 覚える, which means ‘to remember’) is an application to help Japanese language learning, particularly NUS Japanese Language students using the みんなの日本語 textbook, to practice their vocabulary, especially after a hiatus of language studies.

This project was initially started as a project in Python and later ported over as a React app. https://github.com/nbriannl/Oboeru

Features

• Vocabulary according to みんなの日本語
  • Be quizzed on a specific lesson.
• Similar part of speech will be suggested as other options in MCQ.
• Vocabulary with clauses are handled, especially useful for open-ended quizes.

Possible Future Features

• Open-ended quiz asking for different forms of words (eg: positive, negative, past, present, imperative, volitional)
• Testing particle usage of verbs.
• Choosing a range of lessons

Feel free to request a feature over at https://github.com/nbriannl/oboeru-web/issues

Developers: How to setup

Fork and clone the repo and npm install

To preview the app npm start

Please install and set up Prettier.

Vocabulary Generator

At the end of this section, updating the vocabulary boils down to updating an excel file in google sheets and running npm run updatevocab

If it doesn't work, then cd vocabulary_gen and run python3 main.py or python main.py. Install dependencies via pip/pip3 install -r requirements.txt

The vocabulary which the app uses is in the excel file hosted in Google sheets. A python script then coverts it into:

• vocabulary.json a json array of words
• poslist.json a json object. The key is the part of speech, and the value is the indices of words in vocabulary.json corresponding to that part of speech.
• poslist.json a json object. The key is the lesson number, and the value is the indices of words in vocabulary.json corresponding to the lesson.

The python script was developed with Python 3.7.4. And uses pandas to load the vocabulary excel file into the program.

Therefore, a suitable version of python in your system and pip install pandas should do fine.

How to add Vocabulary

To update the vocabulary, simply edit this excel file.

If you do not want to install npm just run python main.py in the /vocabulary_gen directory. If you really don't want to do anything but update the xlsx. Just include the xlxs in the PR.

Fields

The excel file was originally made by me for Japanese 3 revision, hence not all fields are used in the current version of the application. It would be best however to fill up all fields when adding vocabulary as future functionality may use these.

⊛ indicates a required field for the current version of the program.

• ⊛ lesson: The corresponding lesson of the vocab as found in Minna no Nihongo. For the current version of the program, ensure that the lesson numbers are not discontinuous. (i.e. The current lesson numbers are from 1 to 31. Do not add a lesson number 50 or 43 etc.)

• ⊛ pos: The part of speech of the word. The current options are 'n', 'v', 'な-adj', 'い-adj', 'adverb', 'exp' (expression) and ' '. You can leave it blank, and it will be suggested as similar words to other words that have their part of speech undefined.

• verbGroup: The Verb group of the word. Use *2 to indicate a special Group 2 verb.

• intransitive: i for intransitive, t for transitive verbs

• hasKatakanaOrKanji: J if the Japanese field contains Kanji, K if it contains Katakana

• preJapanese: Any clause or symbol (eg: ～, ー) that appears before the Japanese word

• preJapaneseParticle: The particle of the clause that appears before the Japanese word

• ⊛ japanese: The Japanese word

• postJapanese: Any clause or symbol that appears after the Japanese word. Typically the '。' for expressions will be put here.

• preEnglish: Any clause that appears before the English word

• ⊛ english: The English word

• postEnglish: Any clause that appears after the English word

• isSuruVerb: Fill with either [を]する or をする or none, depending on whether the word can be used with する and in what usage. Such words are likely nouns

• suruMeaning: The meaning of the word when added with する

Examples for language related columns:

Original	preJapanese	preJapaneseParticle	Japanese	postJapanese	preEnglish	english	postEnglish
うれます　[パンが～] [bread] sell, be sold	パン	が	うれます		bread	sell, be sold
かようます　[大学に] go to and from [university]	大学	に	かようます			go to and from	university
[ああ、]よかった。 [Oh,] that's great!	ああ、		よかった	。	Oh,	that's great!

How to Contribute

If you would like to work on this project. Do fork and PR any changes. It'll be amazing if you're a 日本語 学生 as well.

FAQ

Why not use Anki or [insert App name here]?

I get asked and probably will get asked this a lot.

• Oboeru fills up the other MCQ options with words of similar parts of speech.
• Creating over 1800 Anki cards (or any quiz question on [insert app name here]) is tedious.
• There is much more flexibility allowing more advanced quiz features to be potentially made.
• I decided to do this as a fun project before my last semester starts.

Is this illegal? Using the vocabulary of みんなの日本語

• Firstly, I don't intend to profit off this project.
• If you google 'minna no nihongo vocabulary list' you would notice that the vocabulary list is also used in other memorisation or learning platforms.
• However, I'm open to going through any due process regarding the usage of 3A Network's vocabulary list.

create-react-app related documentation

This project was bootstrapped with Create React App.

Available Scripts

In the project directory, you can run:

npm start

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.

npm deploy

Builds the application and publishes it to gh-pages on remote and deploys it to github pages.

npm test

Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.

npm run build

Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!

See the section about deployment for more information.

npm run eject

Note: this is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!

If you aren’t satisfied with the build tool and configuration choices, you can eject at any time. This command will remove the single build dependency from your project.

Instead, it will copy all the configuration files and the transitive dependencies (webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc) right into your project so you have full control over them. All of the commands except eject will still work, but they will point to the copied scripts so you can tweak them. At this point you’re on your own.

You don’t have to ever use eject. The curated feature set is suitable for small and middle deployments, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use this feature. However we understand that this tool wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t customize it when you are ready for it.

Learn More

You can learn more in the Create React App documentation.

To learn React, check out the React documentation.

Code Splitting

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/code-splitting

Analyzing the Bundle Size

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/analyzing-the-bundle-size

Making a Progressive Web App

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/making-a-progressive-web-app

Advanced Configuration

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/advanced-configuration

Deployment

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/deployment

npm run build fails to minify

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/troubleshooting#npm-run-build-fails-to-minify