About the example sentences
Where the Japanese and English sentence data comes from, why it was added and what to bear in mind when using it.
Sentence data and attribution
The example-sentence collection used on this site was imported from data made available through Tatoeba. Many of its Japanese and English sentence pairs originated in the Tanaka Corpus.
Tatoeba is a collaborative collection of sentences and translations. Information about its downloadable data and applicable licences is available on the Tatoeba downloads page.
Why include example sentences?
I wanted to add practical examples to the conjugation tables, both to make the site more useful and to support my own Japanese learning. Seeing a verb in a complete sentence helps show how a conjugation is actually used.
I originally used the iKnow API to display sentence lists. When that service became paid and the API was discontinued, I began entering sentences individually—an extremely slow process. Discovering the Tanaka Corpus and Tatoeba provided a much more practical source of Japanese and English sentence pairs.
Are all the translations accurate?
Not necessarily. Sentence collections of this size can contain mistakes, awkward translations and examples that need more context. Treat the sentences as learning aids rather than definitive translations, and double-check anything important.
The Tanaka Corpus documentation and Tatoeba provide further information about the source data, editing and reliability.
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Try uTalk Japanese →How can I contribute?
Tatoeba is maintained collaboratively. You can create an account there to add sentences, supply translations and help improve existing entries.
This site uses an imported snapshot rather than a live connection, so changes made on Tatoeba will not appear here immediately.
Why do only some sentences have romaji?
Romaji was not included consistently in the imported source data. The romaji shown on this site was added separately as a learning aid, so it is only available for part of the collection.
Some romaji was produced with automated assistance and may contain errors. The Japanese text should always be treated as the primary version.