Best Way to Read Japanese on PC
By: Tejash Datta
Tags: Vocabulary, Reading, Learning, Language Learning, Japanese

No matter how easy or hard the material you’re trying to read is, sooner or later you’re going to have to look something up. Whether you don’t know the meaning or the reading, the result is the same. You’re momentarily taken out of your content to open the dictionary or translator.

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since relying on physical dictionaries. All the information you could want is just a quick search away. However, we’re humans and we’re never satisfied. I’ll show how to get the information you need without even clicking, let alone searching.

Yomichan

Yomichan is a browser extension that lets you look up words without even clicking them. It’s a pop-up dictionary that’s available on both Chrome and Firefox. In that way, it’s similar to another pop-up dictionary plugin for Japanese that you may have heard of, rikaikun. However, Yomichan’s functionality extends far beyond just being a dictionary.

Features

Looking up words on Yomichan

Dictionary

There’s no point having extra features if the basics aren’t met, right? In this regard, Yomichan leaves no complaints.

Once activated, it scans onward from the point your mouse is hovering at and automatically recognizes the word, without having to select it manually. If a word is written in hiragana, then all the words with that same reading are shown.

Yomichan is able to deconjugate inflected input. For example, it can tell you which tense a verb is in.

If you add the dictionary for names, it’s also able to recognize proper nouns and tell you their readings.

You can click to hear an audio clip of the word as spoken by a native. This is sourced from JapanesePod101 and Jisho.org.

Looking up a kanji from the previous word

Kanji lookup

From the definition of a word, you can click on a kanji character to be shown its details. Yomichan displays the stroke order, meanings and readings of a character. There are useful statistics such as its frequency and JLPT level. It also includes the index of the kanji from various dictionaries, including Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji.

Profiles

You can specify the settings Yomichan should use based on what site you’re visiting. As we’ll see shortly, this is especially useful for changing how your flashcards are saved to Anki.

Shortcuts

Most functions have shortcut keys that you can easily check by hovering over their buttons. These make Yomichan much faster to use. For example, you can immediately add a word you’ve looked up to Anki without moving your mouse.

Anki integration

Visit foosoft.net/projects/yomichan to understand the terms

Yomichan’s most useful feature is its integration with Anki. This enables you to add words you come across as flashcards to your deck in just one click. You can customize your flashcards by choosing what information to store.

Given how complicated some of the options might seem, its best to take a look at their explanations on Yomichan’s own site. I’ll explain the options that I use.

Word

For the word itself, you can choose whether or not to save it with furigana, how that furigana is displayed and whether to save it in its dictionary form or in the inflected form you found it.

As I’ve said before, I like to save words without furigana and keep the reading on the opposite side of the card.

Sentence

Instead of using the {sentence} option, I like to save sentences by highlighting the word I’m learning in bold using:

{cloze-prefix}<b>{cloze-body}</b>{cloze-suffix}

Similarly, you can also create fill in the blank style cards using:

{cloze-prefix}____{cloze-suffix}

Audio

The audio field is filled with native pronunciation sourced from JapanesePod101.

Example of flashcard created by Yomichan in Anki. Learn more about my card design.

Screenshots

Seeing how pictures aid memory, the ability to automatically add a screenshot when you make a flashcard is incredibly useful. This feature is a must-use when you’re adding words from anime or dramas.

On the other hand, it’s unnecessary while reading. Instead of manually removing it in the options screen each time you don’t need it, you can create a different profile for YouTube and other video sites within which screenshots are saved.

Don’t go overboard

The utility of words like 貧弱 in daily life is questionable

Just because you can add every unknown word you come across doesn’t mean that you should. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you can save and learn every word by using Anki. However, you’ll soon be overwhelmed by a bloated collection of flashcards. Useful and practical words will be overshadowed by a huge quantity of anime expressions, specialist terms and superfluous literary vocabulary.

Therefore it’s necessary to put some thought into what you’re saving. Think about if you’ll use the word or come across it again. Consider how hard or easy it’ll be to remember. Here are some guidelines to help you decide:

Practicality

Have you seen the word before? If you remember looking up the same word a few times before, it might be frequent enough to be worth learning. Have you looked for the word yourself? Any word you search for in a dictionary or translator through English is worth learning since you need it to express yourself.

Ease of learning

Do you know the reading? Words where you don’t have to learn an entirely new reading along with the meaning are much easier to memorize. Once you have a functional knowledge of onyomi readings, you’ll be able to easily predict the readings of many new words. Of course, this applies for kunyomi as well, but onyomi readings are typically repeated across words more often. Do the kanji make sense? A word is easier to memorize if its constituent kanji characters help you to remember it. For example, 家賃 meaning rent is composed of the characters for house 家 and fee 賃. Of course, you’ll need to know the character meanings for them to help you.

Conclusion

If you’re not convinced about using Yomichan, are you even trying to learn Japanese?

To get the most out of Yomichan, you’ll want to pair it with Anki. If you don’t know how to use Anki, start with my beginner’s guides linked below.

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