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Learning and typing Japanese in Linux [solved]


theYinYeti
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Hi,

 

I've started to learn Japanese yesterday. While I still want to keep my French Dvorak keyboard for everyday use, I'd like to be able to enter Japanese text in any application, and I'd be glad to get help from some learning software.

So here I am, asking for advice for the right configuration, and maybe some helpful tools.

 

So far, I installed all japanese-related fonts I could find with urpmi, and downloaded and installed Anki, along with the Hiragana+Katakana lesson. I'm rather pleased with it, although I think I'll find it a bit limited after a month or two…

On the input front, I installed scim-honoka and im-ja; I find the former average, and the latter unusable, but maybe neither is set up right, as few of the configuration option mean anything to me.

What I would like is being able to “draw†the kanji or hiragana instead of typing roumanji…

 

Yves.

Edited by theYinYeti
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I forgot to tell something. I have a problem with SCIM, the way it currently works.

 

With most (but not all) Gnome applications, I can right-click any editable area, switch the input method from “System†to “SCIM†and then start typing roumanji, that gets converted on-the-fly to hiragana/kanji.

 

However, with some other Gtk applications (Geany…), and in Firefox, and for all KDE/Qt applications, SCIM seems to be unavailable!

 

Yves.

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Hi, Yves. I´m currently using gentoo but I think the same packages should be available in mandriva. For the input method I´m using uim with scim-anthy as frontend. For it to work in qt apps you will also need to install scim-qtimm and scim-bridge for qt4 apps. Also don´t forget to set the environmental variables so that you can switch input methods by simply pressing ctrl + spacebar.

Just add the following to your .xprofile, xsession, xinitrc or similar file.

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
export QT_IM_MODULE=scim

Anki is a great app, you will find it very useful once you start learning kanjis.

Other app you might be interested in is the Rikaichan extension for Firefox. It let´s you get the kanji reading and meaning by hovering the mouse over it.

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Thank you Soka!

 

I'll follow your instructions. I just hope it won't break my French keyboard; indeed, the Dvorak wiki instructed to put that in .bashrc:

export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim

I'll try and see… I know how to repair things if needed :)

 

I'll try Rikaichan too.

 

Yves.

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All is working perfectly! ç§ã¯æ—¥æœ¬ã®è¨€èªžã‚’å­¦ã¶ã€‚ And Rikaichan is nice too. Thank you again!

 

I don't have the slightest understanding of Anthy's configuration options, but it seems to me that “direct input†(draw kana and kanji with the mouse = sign recognition) is not one of them. Do you know if that is possible? It would be great for learning to write correctly.

 

Meanwhile, I'll keep learning with Anki.

 

Yves.

Edited by theYinYeti
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While I still appreciate the help received, I spoke too fast about the fore-mentionned total success.

Actually, all is working fine… except Anki! That's ironic, to say the least.

 

Now that I installed scim-anthy, scim-bridge-gtk, and scim-bridge-qt4, without any other change (except the .bashrc), running Anki gives:

[yves@localhost ~]$ anki
Fatal Python error: (pygame parachute) Segmentation Fault
Abandon

I tried removing pygame, as it is optional for Anki, but I still get:

[yves@localhost ~]$ anki
Segmentation Fault

On the other hand, this failure is only for me. I created a test user, and this user (who does not have the modified .bashrc) can run Anki…

Any idea what could be wrong, and how I could trick Anki into believing all is still as it was before?

 

Yves.

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I don´t think it´s possible to use sign recognition in Anthy. You can see here if you want to try a kanji handwritten recognition applet.

 

Regarding anki I´m not having any problem with it when having scim enabled but you can try disabling it for anki. In a console write the following:

 QT_IM_MODULE=simple anki

If it works, make it a script. Create a text file as the following and make it executable.

#!/bin/bash
QT_IM_MODULE=simple anki

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No luck.

— From the lines you gave to me for IM initialisation, I only kept GTK_IM_MODULE, as this one seems enough for Firefox and Geany. Not for OpenOffice though; I'll probably have to put the XMODIFIERS line back, now that my tests are done.

— I rebooted the PC.

— I removed from my home directory any file related to Anki, basically: ~/.anki and ~/tmp/anki*.

 

Still the same error. Well, I'll try and find an alternative to Anki (preferably Gtk-based).

 

Yves.

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:lol:

 

Actually, I'm starting to think that Mnemosyne is maybe better than Anki, after all. Its scheduling method adapts more to your (free) time, and it is easier to use in my opinion. As for scim, I think I may just have to install scim-bridge-qt3 to have it working (so far, I only installed scim-bridge-qt4 for Qt).

 

Yves.

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Instead of bothering to learn kanji, my cunning master plan is to wait forty years or so, at which point no Japanese people will understand the damn things either. =)

Not only that, if things continue like now, maybe no Japanese people will speak Japanese at that time. I'm amazed at how every day more and more native words are replaced with their English counterpart.

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In one hundred years who knows.

Now talking seriously, I don't think it will come to that (and I really hope it won't happen) but it's a fact that people (maybe influenced by the Japanese mass media obsession with English words) are using more loan words in every day talk. Lots of native words are being replaced by English (well, engrish to be more precise).

We often joke with my Japanese sensei that maybe we should have gone to the next classroom where English is being taught whenever engrish words like サラリーマン(sarariiman) instead of 会社員(kaishain) or ジャーナリスト(jaanarisuto) instead of 記者(kisha) appear in the lesson we are seeing.

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My issue with Mnemosyne is solved :) For some reason, I have to choose the XIM input method instead of SCIM… to enable SCIM! Well, anyway, I have SCIM working fine, and I'm happy :)

(And I saw no problem with my French dvorak keyboard so far)

 

Yves.

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