Japanese/Contributor's Guide

This page aims to help potential contributors better understand the principles behind the current work and give ideas for how best to add new material.

Structure to follow

This book has been restructured so many times but there is an effort under way to merge some of the duplicate material.

A syllabus and lesson plan was created for the so-called "Practical Lessons". This may be useful for future contributors, but never turned out any lessons.

User:Retropunk sorted the JLPT 4 grammar list. This is now up at Sugu ni Hajimemashō where it is being sorted into a lesson plan.

Lessons

There are many ways to organise a lesson, this is one:

Dialogue (by posters, conversations, or whatever.)
Discussion of Vocabulary in Dialogue
- Discuss various uses of vocabulary if necessary (e.g., politeness)
- Optional links to dialogues for previously learned vocabulary
Grammar
- Discuss grammar points, giving more examples if necessary.
- Link to previous grammar points (maybe by categories)
Optional Quick Review
Optional link to Wikiversity for practice work.

Reading material

Text (poster, conversation, literary text or anything fitting the level)
Vocabulary
- List new vocabulary.
- Discuss various uses of vocabulary where appropriate (e.g., politeness)
Grammar
- Discuss grammar points, giving more examples if necessary.
- Link to previous grammar points (maybe by categories)
Optional Quick Review
Optional link to Wikiversity for practice work.

Style guide

Romanisation

Learning the Japanese scripts will give the student useful insight into the language that the simple (and limited) romanisations cannot offer. Romanisation (rōmaji) should, therefore, only be used in introductory lessons to assist with the learning of the kana, and in the reference guides. Kana and kanji should be used in all subsequent lessons.

Please use the Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles. Specifically:

Consonants will be written using the Revised Hepburn system (s, sh, z, j, t, ts, ch, f)
"n" mora will be written n' before a vowel, or "y" (zen'aku, kon'yaku)

Examples:

しつ: shitsu
どうぞ: dōzo
えいご: eigo
せんぱい: senpai
せんや: sen'ya (as different from せにゃ senya)
東京(とうきょう): Tōkyō

The macrons (Ā,ā,Ē,ē,Ī,ī,Ō,ō,Ū and ū) are easily added through the edit interface by choosing "Romaji" in the drop-down list below the "Save page" button.

Furigana

The lessons make extensive use of furigana. Please use the following templates to insert furigana:

{{furi|楽|たの|しい}}: 楽(たの)しい

Conversations

For conversations with Japanese and English side by side, use {{Japanese conversation}}.

Patterns and examples

Sentence patterns and examples can be highlighted using the {{Japanese pattern}} and {{Japanese example}} templates.

Related modules

Linking to related modules makes it easier for readers to refer to past lessons (e.g. to brush up on topics), vocabulary lists (e.g. when practicing new sentence patterns) or other useful content (such as the Verb conjugation table). The {{Japanese related}} template can be used to consistently style these links.

Vocabulary pages

Please place vocabulary lists on subpages of Japanese/Vocabulary and use {{Japanese vocabulary entry}} to structure them. The {{Japanese related|vocabulary}} can be used to conveniently link to the list from lesson pages.

Stroke order

Black to red fade

Gif animations

There is a project on the Wikimedia Commons to upload images and animations of the stroke order for characters. There are directions on how to contribute. It's easy with the use of some free programs. Please contribute so that we'll have a standardized reference for our Wikibook users.