wrightak Wrote:Honestly, it's very simple, you bookmark the search page, put the word you want to look up in the box and press enter.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm convinced. I mean, you're probably right if it is a very simple search, but if I can't read the other information, options, links, prompts or error messages on the site, I can't help feeling I'll be missing a lot and won't get much value from it. Especially if it's one I have to pay for (and go through what seems like a pretty complex registration process to boot, plus I can't see anywhere that tells you what it costs.).

I'll give http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp a shot though and see how it goes.

dilandau23 Wrote:Where to start? I guess I will start with the type of statement I originally took a bit of a dislike to:

jarvik7 Wrote:EDICT is pretty much laughably bad/vague/inaccurate/misleading/flat out wrong whenever I look something up with it

For example? I understand that you are a 4th year Japanese language / linguistics / translation major at a major university. That is all fine and good, but how can you discount the work of a professor with well over 4 years under his belt. I am sorry, you can take issue with Edict if you want, but to call it all those things above comes across as, well, a bit haughty.

Breen may have been a professor, but not a Japanese professor, or a linguistics professor, or anything related to Japanese or language. He was a computer science professor. Knowledge is not transitive.

Like I said, EDICT has its uses, such as embedding into programs, but that is only because there is no alternative.

Tourne Wrote:Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm convinced. I mean, you're probably right if it is a very simple search, but if I can't read the other information, options, links, prompts or error messages on the site, I can't help feeling I'll be missing a lot and won't get much value from it.

All of the default options are perfectly adequate. What options do you have on edict or goo that you want to use?

There is no other information that you need, there are no prompts, I have only received one error message in 6 months of usage. The value you will get is that when you look up a word, you get lots of professionally produced examples with a detailed breakdown of meanings.

Click on 申し込み to register, click on 料金 for fees. There is even a guide for foreign users: http://kod.kenkyusha.co.jp/service/faq/quick.jsp

The registration process is not difficult at all, I was just acknowledging that for a beginner it might take a while but given the above guide, it looks fine.

There is also a demo page: http://kod.kenkyusha.co.jp/demo/form.jsp

It's a demo so you can only submit queries that start with あ or A. You can't put in kanji either. Try typing in あかい and press enter. You'll see that two results appear on the left. Click on them.

Ooh, this is a good one. On the demo page, try typing in あし and select the result that corresponds to foot (足 or 脚).

You even get pictures. edict can take a hike.

wrightak Wrote:What options do you have on edict or goo that you want to use?

On WWWJDIC I use english, japanese and romaji for input, I use the common words and exact word match options quite a lot. I also use the german jddict option sometimes, for words that don't translate to English very exactly. I use the Examine option a fair amount to see the kanji details and the stroke order diagram. From that page I also use the search option for other entries with a particular kanji first, to get a feel for how it can be used. I even use the Google and Google Image links, and the links to other dictionaries.

There's probably a ton of useful stuff like this in Kenkyusha as well, my only point was that I won't be able to tell. There's certainly a bunch of check boxes, dropdowns and radio buttons even on the example page you linked to (thank's for that by the way - very interesting).

I'm not against using a Japanese site, anything that helps me learn is OK by me. It's just a bit daunting at first look, when you can't read any of it.

wrightak Wrote:Ooh, this is a good one. On the demo page, try typing in あし and select the result that corresponds to foot (足 or 脚).

You even get pictures. edict can take a hike.

OK, that is pretty cool.

http://kod.kenkyusha.co.jp/service/guide/fee.jsp

The fee seems pretty reasonable for what you are getting.

I think it's awesome sites like this one (RtK) that make us take things for granted.

You can also buy an EPWING copy to use on your computer or PDA. It costs about $200 for the 大 version of both 英和＆和英 dictionaries, but the subscription fees will equal that after a few years anyways and having the dictionary offline is much more convenient.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/研究社-EPWING版CD-RO...000I5YW4W/

You should really use a monolingual dictionary if you are at a level where you can figure out the definitions. Just reading the definitions improves your Japanese, and the definitions are more accurate. Kojien (6th edition) is the most respected of all the kokugo dictionaries and it's what I mostly use, but lately daijirin has been growing on me.
http://www.amazon.co.jp/広辞苑-第六版-DVD-ROM版...400130161X
http://www.amazon.co.jp/電子辞典-大辞林第三版/dp/B000P288KW/

Jarvik,

Do those dictionaries install completely on your pc or do you need the cd/dvd when you run the program?

suffah Wrote:Jarvik,

Do those dictionaries install completely on your pc or do you need the cd/dvd when you run the program?

The default software may or may not support only reading from the disc, but there is 3rd party stuff. There is the shareware Jamming for OSX & windows, but I use the open source kotonoko for OSX. There are also freeware etc ones for Windows but Jamming & kotonoko are the most well known readers.

The advantage of 3rd party readers is that you can load multiple dictionaries into them and search them all at once. I have ~25 (although mostly specialist dictionaries) - 7GB worth - loaded in mine.

http://dicwizard.jp/
http://www.afternooncafe.jp/kotonoko/

Great, thanks I will check out kotonoko for OSX.

Tourne Wrote:On WWWJDIC I use english, japanese and romaji for input, I use the common words and exact word match options quite a lot. I also use the german jddict option sometimes, for words that don't translate to English very exactly. I use the Examine option a fair amount to see the kanji details and the stroke order diagram. From that page I also use the search option for other entries with a particular kanji first, to get a feel for how it can be used. I even use the Google and Google Image links, and the links to other dictionaries.

You can use English and Japanese by just sticking it in the box. I don't think you can use romaji. The first drop down list allows you to select exact word match, or search from the front, back etc. I never change it though. As for everything else you mentioned, kod doesn't have any of that functionality. It's a pretty simple look up the word scenario. All of the check boxes that you see are just to select which dictionaries you want to look in. (There are medical ones, katakana ones etc.) The default is more than sufficient but if you want to tick them all, you can. The result will be that the list of search matches on the left will be much longer.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that kod doesn't have much hidden functionality that you're missing out on. As far as I know anyway. It's pretty simple stuff.

There is one downside with Kenkyuusha's dictionary for beginners that I forgot about: although the actual examples are always translated, in some cases the different general meanings for words are provided only in Japanese. Since you can look those up, it's better than nothing, but this may make it less useful for complete beginners.

About monolingual dictionaries: daijirin and koujien just don't have example sentences in the way Kenkyuusha's dictionary, which has examples for virtually everything, does, and personally I think the examples are at least as useful as definitions. Are there any monolingual dictionaries that have more example sentences?

Edit: also, epwing is great; I can simultaneously look up koujien, daijirin, shin meikai, kodansha's j-e, edict, eijiro, edict's kanjidic (skip is nice), kanjigen, and japanese wikipedia (a pain to convert, but still)

So I decided to contact Jim Breen for his thoughts on this discussion and with his permission, I am going to post his reply here.

Jim Breen Wrote:The JMdict/EDICT dictionary file certainly has errors. This is a bit
inevitable, as it has been compiled largely from contributions from a
wide range of people, and in the early days there was only minimal
checking. Now I am sorry more care was not taken, as a lot of the work
is going into correcting and improving entries. There is an active
community of people submitting corrections and new entries; often over
100 per day. (Most of the amendments now are to expand the glosses and to
break them up into specfic senses. Reporting an incorrect gloss is
relatively rare.)

When the EDICT file was started (in 1991) there was nothing like it available.
I probably would not start something like that now, as there are so many
sources available online and for purchase. I use a battery of dictionaries
I've installed on my disk (Koijien, Daijirin, etc. etc.) and I subscribe to
the online Kenkyusha.

What makes JMdict/EDICT unique and for many people useful is that it is free
and downloadable. Hence the many applications like RikaiChan and JWPce that
have been able to incorporate it. Also it has been found useful by a number of
people as a resource in NLP research. It is largely for these reasons that I
have kept it going. I have been pleased to discover that many professional
translators use it regularly (along with other resources, of course.) I see
a lot of Japanese teachers, rightly or wrongly, recommend it to their
students.

I really would like people who see an error or a shortcoming in JMdict/EDICT
to send in a correction. This is easy to do; WWWJDIC has this as an option
and preloads a form with the target entry. Like all such "open" resources,
continued improvement depends on a community of users and developers.

I agree with many of the comments about Eijiro (which I have on disk too.) It's
a very useful resource, but to be handled with care. (Translators love it.)

[For what it's worth, I did a major in Japanese at university (in later life)
and I have lived and worked in Japan.

One small doubt and I think its offtopic. How is the dictionary on excite.co.jp different from subscribing to the Kenkyusha online dictionary? It seems to be using this 新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社） for its 和英 lookups and the 大辞林 第二版 （三省堂） for the 国語 lookups. The example sentences are also using the 新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社）. I am sure "新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社）" means the Intermediate Kenkyusha Dictionary 6th Edition, if I am not mistaken and "大辞林 第二版 （三省堂）" means Daijirin 2nd Edition (Sanseido) although I have no idea what Sanseido means :/

And what about the example sentences on the Yahoo Japanese Dictionary, are they more natural as compared to Edict or Eijiro and what dictionary engines are being used for the lookups ?

And also, I can't seem to find the option to search for examples in the goo dictionary... :/

Two huge advantages of Edict over Kenkyuusha for sub-advanced learners:
1) specifies the grammatical class of the word (verb/noun/"suru" verb/sufix/conjunction/"taru" adjective/etc). It still boggles me that Japanese dictionaries don't normally include this information, leaving the reader to figure it out for themselves -- it's not always clear from the definition and example sentences. And it's mildly annoying that every -iru/-eru verb requires a hunt through the example sentences to see if it's a godan.
2) contains some really helpful tags giving things like basic word frequency information (the "P" tag) which of course isn't perfect but incredibly useful when you need it; the "usually kana"/"kanji" tags and others are pretty useful, too.
Bear in mind that dictionaries are best used for reference rather than for learning new words; I think it's really shortsighted to dismiss EDICT out of hand.

snallygaster Wrote:Bear in mind that dictionaries are best used for reference rather than for learning new words; I think it's really shortsighted to dismiss EDICT out of hand.

Depending on what you mean by "learning new words" I may disagree. In learning Japanese, you have to memorize so many words that there's nothing you can do but learn them when you encounter them. Previously, when I saw new words in something I was reading, I would look them up but not specifically try to memorize them. If they kept appearing but I couldn't remember the meaning or reading, I would look them up again but try to memorize them. Due to my limited vocabulary (or the inappropriate level of what I was trying to read?) this was necessary. However, now in many cases new words are a relatively small portion of what I am reading. Instead of wasting time looking up words multiple times, I will often look up a word, try to understand it as well as possible, and then pick an example sentence that makes the general meaning as clear as possible and enter it in anki for memorization. I think this would be rather difficult with edict, unless you used the sentence from what you're reading as your example sentence. However, in this case, the sentence will often be overly complicated or overly vague in terms of using the word in question. I much prefer to be able to understand the meaning and then select a sentence in which the appropriate particles as well as the precise meaning of the word are made clear. Edict may be good enough to understand the meaning of the word in the sentence you read, but unless you want to re-memorize the word later I don't see how you could usefully use Edict for memorization.

Edit: grammar
Edit2: minor stylistic changes. sorry.
Edit3 because I have no self control: I disagree with the AJATT guy about a lot of specific details. However, I think he has the most important thing correct: memorize everything, or at least always be memorizing something. I've met a lot of people in Japanese classes who never learned Japanese because they kept worrying about *what* to memorize. They felt that the words they were being taught weren't "useful enough". I did this much less, however I have avoided memorizing various words before; I felt that there were just too many words in Japanese, and it would take too long to learn them all, so I really had to prioritize. I now think this was a mistake. I'm not fluent or anything, and I can't guarantee that it won't take me another 100 years to become fluent, but just based on how quickly the percentage of unknown words has been decreasing for me since I started just memorizing as much as possible, I really think this is the right approach.

Sorry that this is kind of a total tangent from what I'm replying to. However, I would really like to know what other people think about this and I don't really feel like starting a thread.

Sorry about this, but I am bumping the thread just in case anyone missed my post... <_<

atreya Wrote:One small doubt and I think its offtopic. How is the dictionary on excite.co.jp different from subscribing to the Kenkyusha online dictionary? It seems to be using this 新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社） for its 和英 lookups and the 大辞林 第二版 （三省堂） for the 国語 lookups. The example sentences are also using the 新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社）. I am sure "新英和中辞典 第６版 （研究社）" means the Intermediate Kenkyusha Dictionary 6th Edition, if I am not mistaken and "大辞林 第二版 （三省堂）" means Daijirin 2nd Edition (Sanseido) although I have no idea what Sanseido means :/

The 6th edition is the latest published version of Kenkyuusha's dictionary. I don't use the online version, but I think they are supposed to update it in real-time, so it has the advantage of having material that otherwise won't be accessible until the 7th edition comes out. You should be fine with the 6th version.
The Intermediate dictionary isn't all that good; does excite also provide the examples from the full dictionary?
Sanseido is just the publisher responsible for the Daijirin.
I haven't really used yahoo dictionary, so unfortunately I can't answer that question.

BTW Sanseido is a free [kana]kokugo[/kana] dictionary on the web: http://www.sanseido.net/
What I've started doing lately is to use that and use EDICT via rikaichan to help with words in definitions I'm not familiar with.

I has a few other features like word-of-the-day and etymologies for selected words.

And my $0.02: EDICT definitions need to be taken with a grain of salt, but it is incredibly useful once you are aware of its limitations. Also it's free--good for someone like me who doesn't have the budget for stuff like that.

mystes Wrote:The 6th edition is the latest published version of Kenkyuusha's dictionary. I don't use the online version, but I think they are supposed to update it in real-time, so it has the advantage of having material that otherwise won't be accessible until the 7th edition comes out. You should be fine with the 6th version.
The Intermediate dictionary isn't all that good; does excite also provide the examples from the full dictionary?

See this thread for a comparison of different Kenkyusha versions: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1165 and also questions about the quality of examples on Yahoo and the like.

dilandau23 Wrote:See this thread for a comparison of different Kenkyusha versions: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1165 and also questions about the quality of examples on Yahoo and the like.

Awesome! Thanks! That sort of cleared my doubts regarding the dictionary on excite.co.jp. But then again, the thread doesn't discuss in detail about the example sentences on yahoo dictionary. Is it possible for you to elaborate more on it. Thanks.

dilandau23 Wrote:See this thread for a comparison of different Kenkyusha versions: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1165 and also questions about the quality of examples on Yahoo and the like.

Wow, that's very complete. I hadn't given the intermediate dictionary much attention because I didn't like its definitions as much, but I hadn't really thought about the fact that it would have completely different example sentences. I'll have to remember to check if I'm not satisfied with the examples from the full dictionary.