The Construction of a Database to Support the Compilation of Japanese Learners’ Dictionaries

The number of Japanese language learners outside Japan, especially of advanced level learners, is increasing yearly. From the intermediate level onwards, they could profit from bilingual Japanese learners’ dictionaries in their native language, but in most linguistic areas of the world only very simple dictionaries for beginners and for tourists are available. Our project therefore aims at supporting the compilation of Japanese language learners’ dictionaries for intermediate and advanced learners by building a database of contents needed when editing a Japanese language learners’ dictionary, and offering it online. This 4 year project is going to be running from 2011 to 2014. Two surveys were conducted: a survey of the vocabulary used in textbooks of Japanese as a foreign language and a quantitative survey on the targeted area of the Japanese language in a large-scale corpus, in order to select the list of words to be included in the database, and a general list of basic vocabulary for Japanese language instruction was created. At present, usage examples are being compiled on the basis of this vocabulary list, and a database system is being developed. A prototype of a database search interface and download system has been completed. The database is going to include various types of information which are considered to be useful for learners, such as grammar, phonetics, synonyms, collocations, stylistics, learners’ errors etc. These are presently being studied in detail to be made public in 2014