Multimedia style Japanese language learning system - design of educational kanji database and its application

摘要

Kanji characters have very complex and profound informations, such as, the radical, construction of the shape, several kinds of reading, the stroke order and the origin. When a foreigner and a child learn a kanji, it is very important to approach by actual experiences, like tracing the shape structure, listening the reading, handwriting the letter. We propose multimedia style Kanji database, which supports various Japanese language education. The database contains stroke data, and is implemented by XML. We prepare about 1000 educational Kanji information in elementary school. We discuss the shape structure of Kanji by elements and patterns. As some applications of Kanji database, we introduce Kanji retrieval system and exercise system for handwriting.