Digital picture book system for foreign learners who studies Japanese onomatopoeia

Abstract

The objective of this study is to support learning of Japanese onomatopoeia for foreigners who learn Japanese. In recent years, the number of such foreigners is increasing. There are a lot of onomatopoeia words in Japanese and many of them are difficult to translate because only the number of onomatopoeia words in foreign languages (e.g., Mandarin, Cantonese) are fewer than these in Japanese. To overcome the cultural difference, this paper proposes a digital picture book system for learning Japanese onomatopoeia. The system presents 32 onomatopoeia words to a user. The design criteria of the system is that: (1) adopts an interface of user participation, (2) presents a tiny story in which onomatopoeic words are associated with pictures, and (3) enables comparison of two synonymous/antomynic onomatopoeias. We conducted a user study with foreign learners and revealed that the proposed system improves understanding of semasiological differences between two confusing onomatopoeic words.