Kanji-lish

Kanjilish is a Firefox add-on that allows you to practice kanji while you read English (or other languages). It helps you learn the meaning of kanji. Since you have to read sometimes in your native language, you might as well practice kanji while you do it. What the program does is simple. It replaces the first letter of a word with a kanji of similar meaning. For example, the word read might appear as 読ead.

Details

The program works by using a list of words and their corresponding kanji. If a word on a web page exists in current "profile" the first letter will be replaced by a kanji character. Each word in the list can be tied to more than one kanji if desired. The default installation includes three different profiles, Heisig, Kanji In Context, and Kanjidic. However, you can easily create your own profiles or modify the existing ones and add them through the options menu. You could easily create a Spanish version of the Heisig file, for example. The format is xml and must be UTF-8:

<root title="Kanji In Context">

<entry key="a few seconds" kanji="秒">

</entry>

<entry key="a little" kanji="少">

</entry>

<entry key="abandon" kanji="棄;捨">

</entry>

<entry key="ability" kanji="腕;能;力;才">

</entry>

</root>

Limitations

Kanji-lish has many limitations. For example, it doesn't know how to tell the difference between all of the different forms of bow, like bow and arrow, bow on a present, bow of a ship, bow as in to an acquaintance, etc., which would correspond to different kanji. Thus, it is only accurate on a per word level, not a per sentence level.

When browsing ajax intensive websites, you may need to manually re-enable the kanji-lish, for example when browsing to new mail messages in gmail. In this case, you can simply use a keyboard shortcut.

Although speed has been optimized, on some pages the program can take a while to execute, especially on pages that are very long.

This will help you learn the English meaning of kanji, which is helpful in recognizing kanji characters so you can get to the next step: the Japanese readings. However, it won't teach you kanji. Really, its strength is that it allows you to practice kanji while doing something you would have to do anyhow, namely reading in your own language.