What is zokugo?

Zokugo is a tool that converts Japanese hiragana (the phonetic alphabet) into kanji (the pictographic characters). It takes words written in hiragana and transforms them into kanji that sound the same or similar when read aloud. Here's how it works in practice. When you run the tool and give it hiragana text, it looks up or generates kanji characters that match the phonetic sounds. For example, the hiragana word "よろしく" (yoroshiku, a common greeting) becomes "世露死苦", different characters that still represent the same sounds. The tool can also handle individual characters separated by dots, like "あ.い.し.て.る," transforming each one independently into "亜.慰.死.帝.流." This is useful for anyone working with Japanese text who needs to create playful or alternative written forms. Game developers might use it to generate creative enemy names or item descriptions. Content creators could use it to make stylized text that stands out. Linguists or language enthusiasts interested in Japanese writing systems might find it useful for exploration or educational purposes. The conversions often produce interesting visual or semantic effects, the resulting kanji characters sometimes carry related meanings to the sounds, creating a kind of wordplay. The tool is straightforward to set up if you have Go installed on your computer. You run a single installation command, then use it from your terminal by typing zokugo followed by your hiragana text. The README doesn't provide extensive documentation beyond examples, so users will mainly learn by trying it with different inputs and seeing what output they get.