Hey everyone,

I've decided I need to buy some kind of dictionary, but after searching through the previous posts here I'm still a little confused (I'm not really all that hot with technology stuff) - I hope someone can help me.

I'm just really looking for is something where I can write a word I don't know into it and it will give me its reading, definition etc. I assume this will be fairly easy with a denshi jisho, but I am also interested in an Ipod.

Is this possible on an ipod? I think someone on a previous thread mentioned they did this, but I think you have to download dictionaries etc. I don't have wireless internet so is it possible to connect the ipod to my computer and download it that way? ANd how easy is it to actually write the character and get it to appear on screen? Are the controls difficult?

Thanks
I hope you can help

I have a wordtank and really like it, but getting it to recognize the kanji that I write in it with the stylus is a nightmare. I've heard people have a lot of success with the DS dictionary though.

Save up and wait for the Open Pandora =D
http://openpandora.org/

I use both.

The denshi-jisho is my goto dictionary whenever I'm reading or studying near my materials, while my iphone is useful when I'm in public without my dictionary trying to translate small expressions, snippets of text, etc.

I've heard there are several dictionaries available for iPhone. Do a Google search for something like "iphone japanese dictionary" and I'm sure you'll get an idea of what's out there.

The dictionary you want is Kenkyusha Eiwa Daijiten. I just checked iTunes, and it is available.

At the same time adding adding the dictionaries to the iPhone price makes it not worth it. (ie. Kenkyusha is $109.99 on iTunes)

The Canon G55 Wordtank can be bought for about $200 and includes:
新編英和活用大事典 380,000
リーダーズ英和辞典　第2版 270,000
リーダーズ・プラス 190,000
オックスフォード現代英英辞典　第6版 80,000
コンサイスオックスフォード英語類語辞典　第2版　 365,000
オックスフォード英語連語辞典　 9,000
新和英中辞典　第5版 97,000
コンサイスカタカナ語辞典　第2版 52,500
改訂新版　漢字源 13,112
スーパー大辞林（逆引き機能付）※1 252,000
類語大辞典 79,000

English-Japanese usage dictionary: 380,000
English-Japanese dictionary: 270,000
Readers Plus dictionary: 190,000
Oxford English dictionary(6th ed.): 80,000
Concise Oxford thesaurus (2nd ed.): 365,000
Oxford Collocation dictionary: 9,000
Japanese-English dictionary: 97,000
Katakana dictionary: 52,500
Kanji dictionary: 13,000
Super Daijirin Kanji dictionary: 252,000
Japanese thesaurus: 79,000

oregum Wrote:At the same time adding adding the dictionaries to the iPhone price makes it not worth it. (ie. Kenkyusha is $109.99 on iTunes)

Seriously, who's gonna pay that? They're asking people to pirate it!

FutureBlues Wrote:I use both.

The denshi-jisho is my goto dictionary whenever I'm reading or studying near my materials, while my iphone is useful when I'm in public without my dictionary trying to translate small expressions, snippets of text, etc.

Same here, except that it's my Android phone (and jisho.org) or a computer, when I can't be near my electronic dictionary.

[Katsuo]

I bought an iPod touch a couple of months ago. Despite having several denshi jisho lying around I tend to reach for the iPod first because the interface makes it a pleasure to use.

There is a vast amount of software available, some free, some not. To investigate, open the iTunes program on your computer and then go: iTunes store > Power Search > Applications (from the Power Search pop-up list). Then enter one or more suitable keywords in English or Japanese.

My favourite applications are:
Kotoba! (Free) Uses EDICT. Useful for quickly checking a word.
ShinKanji-Lite (Free). Check the readings etc. of a kanji. *Edit: An "update" to this application has removed the search facility, making it fairly useless.
Wisdom E-J, J-E Dictionary (2,800円). This is a medium-size dictionary.
大辞林 Daijirin (2,500円) J-J

The latter two have a great interface feature whereby you can jump to another word entry just by wiping your finger along that word on the present screen. They are aimed at Japanese natives, so could be difficult to use if you are just beginning Japanese.

JKson Wrote:I'm just really looking for is something where I can write a word I don't know into it and it will give me its reading, definition etc...
...ANd how easy is it to actually write the character and get it to appear on screen?

You can input the kanji by drawing with your finger on the iPod touch, but there are a couple of drawbacks: 1) That input is intended for Chinese. It does work fine for most Japanese kanji too, but not all (and no kana of course). 2) At 3.2 cm square, the drawing area is a bit small for persons with large fingers.

Quote:I don't have wireless internet so is it possible to connect the ipod to my computer and download it that way?

Yes, you don't need wireless.

Oh, one disadvantage of the iPod touch compared to many denshi jisho is that it's usually harder to jump between separate dictionaries or to search a selection of dictionaries simultaneously.

"Oh, one disadvantage of the iPod touch compared to many denshi jisho is that it's usually harder to jump between separate dictionaries or to search a selection of dictionaries simultaneously."
This is a limitation of the current software as available, not the iPod touch itself, just to be clear.

bombpersons Wrote:Save up and wait for the Open Pandora =D
http://openpandora.org/

You're assuming that there will be something other than a crap edict parser ported..

Jarvik7 Wrote:

bombpersons Wrote:Save up and wait for the Open Pandora =D
http://openpandora.org/

You're assuming that there will be something other than a crap edict parser ported..

Well then you could port it yourself =P

Or you could just use something pre-existing on another platform instead of buying hardware with no support for what you'd buy it for. Use the time you would have spent programming on studying Japanese. You'd save money too.

If you are running Mac OS X Leopard, it already has professional Japanese-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries built right in. The reason many people don't know about it is that you have to manually select the Japanese dictionaries in Apple's Dictionary app.

Even better, just highlight any word and hit Ctrl-Command-D and the dictionary comes up with the definition for the highlighted word.

There are actually denshi jisho that use the dictionaries that Mac OS X uses.
So you know its quality..... :-)

It has kanji jump (click on a kanji) and tons of example sentences.

Kanji Sono Mama DS is an awesome dictionary for DS and IMO the easiest dictionary to use. It has J-E, E-J and J-J dictionaries. The J-E also contains example sentences with translations and includes sentences which highlight idiomatic usage. Best of all is you just write the kanji in using the stylus and it recognizes it very well. Very simple, Very fast, Very good.

I have an Iphone and I have the Kotoba dictionary on it. It's useful when im watching something and want to look up the word on the fly but it doesn't really compare to the DS dictionary at all. And trying to input kanji on it is a nightmare. Complete nightmare. On the plus side, something it is extremely useful for is that you can look up a word and it will give you all the information about the kanji used in that word. Including stroke order diagrams for most of them and the heisig keyword (plus more meanings) and what heisig number it is (plus what number it is in other orders). I find that feature extremely useful on a semi-frequent basis.

In summary, I love having both!

I really recommend a separate Denshi Jisho in combination with software/internet ones. I would recommend the Casio EX-WORD XD-SF4800. I got mine at an electronics store in Japan for about 28,000円. I think I just got lucky when I bought it, because I have not regretted it since.

The model is intended for high school students in Japan. Usually when you use a Japanese-made electronic dictionary, you feel the pain of all these great features designed for Japanese people learning English, with very little thought put into usability for JSL learners. That is not the case with this dictionary.

Aside from the TWO J-J dictionaries (Meikyo,　Koujien), a kanji dictionary that has pronunciation guides for names, there are a couple of killer features that make this dictionary really JSL friendly.

One is the NHK pronunciation dictionary, which I have yet to find online. This combined with the fact that the Meikyo also speaks the pronunciation for many of the entries. Usually you only see this for English.

However, the single most useful thing for me has been the way you can use the Progressive J-E dictionary. Every entry has tons of example sentences (check Yahoo's J-E dict for a taste, it's the same), whereas if you use the more common Genius J-E , you often get single words with little or no clues on what kind of situations the word is used in. I mine sentences from it all the time, as they are virtually all accurate, natural Japanese - no twisting grammar or obscure words.

However, the KILLER feature that I have only seen on this dictionary (correct me if there are others) is that they have cross-referenced it so you can use the J-E dictionary BACKWARDS as an E-J dictionary. You can search the example sentences for the English word you're looking for, find a sentence that has the intended usage/meaning in English, and then see how the meaning is expressed in natural Japanese. I really can't stress to you how useful/killer this is compared to other dictionaries - I don't even use the Genius E-J dictionary (even though it's there too) at all because of this.

Another great feature is that it has dual touchscreens, so when you want to jump between dictionaries to look up words in a definition, you just tap the word on the upper screen with the stylus and then tap the dictionary you want to see it in. Man that is so much better than rewriting/retyping/scrolling around with an arrow key. Then just press the back key and you're back in the original definition.

Everyone will tell you that what you buy depends on your needs. If you are serious about using an electronic dictionary, I think you need one with a full physical keyboard and touch screens. "Touch screen only" (a la DS) created problems for me, and I found myself avoiding the dictionary because of how slow it was to look things up. Anything less than a full keyboard, no matter how accurate, is going to be slower, and this was eventually my frustration with the DS dictionary, and is likely to be similar on the iPod. The EX-WORD handwriting recognition for kanji is excellent, and you decide when you're done writing the character instead of an arbitrary time limit - perfect for when you need to double-check what you're writing. This is one of the best dictionaries out there right now for JSL learners, and I will very arrogantly suggest that it would be almost impossible for you to go wrong with it.

I feel really out of character (and slightly inappropriate?) recommending a specific product like this - it's not like I get paid to write this, but I have been 110% thrilled with it. Very well thought-out and designed for non-Japanese users, something rare in my experience when it comes to electronic dictionaries.

Katsuo Wrote:My favourite applications are:
Kotoba! (Free) Uses EDICT. Useful for quickly checking a word.
ShinKanji-Lite (Free). Check the readings etc. of a kanji.
Wisdom E-J, J-E Dictionary (2,800円). This is a medium-size dictionary.
大辞林 Daijirin (2,500円) J-J

I second this list, but I'd replace Wisdom with the green goddess.

mezbup Wrote:Kanji Sono Mama DS is an awesome dictionary for DS and IMO the easiest dictionary to use. It has J-E, E-J and J-J dictionaries. The J-E also contains example sentences with translations and includes sentences which highlight idiomatic usage. Best of all is you just write the kanji in using the stylus and it recognizes it very well. Very simple, Very fast, Very good.

I have an Iphone and I have the Kotoba dictionary on it. It's useful when im watching something and want to look up the word on the fly but it doesn't really compare to the DS dictionary at all. And trying to input kanji on it is a nightmare. Complete nightmare. On the plus side, something it is extremely useful for is that you can look up a word and it will give you all the information about the kanji used in that word. Including stroke order diagrams for most of them and the heisig keyword (plus more meanings) and what heisig number it is (plus what number it is in other orders). I find that feature extremely useful on a semi-frequent basis.

In summary, I love having both!

The Kanji Sonomama dictionary is okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're interested in the DS for other reasons or if you already have a DS. I had the dictionary for about a year and used it pretty regularly, but I eventually broke down and bought a real denshi jisho. Kanji Sonomama is good for kanji lookup , but really slow when you want to look up a word and know the kana. Even kanji lookup is quite a bit faster, as it takes a second or two on the DS rather than being instant.

Now I really only use my denshi jisho, the EX-Word Dataplus 4 XD-SF6200. It blows the Kanji Sonomama dictionary out of the water. It's very noticable faster, has tons of example sentences, tons of dictionaries. I even used it when I recently went to France thanks to its extensive French phrasebook with sound files. The only downside is that it certainly does have tons of features that you wouldn't really be able to use unless you were quite good at Japanese. For example, there's all these encyclopedias, but they're all just in Japanese. There's even a really unnecessary extensive wine dictionary. I can tell you the market price, taste, and color of just about any wine you've ever heard of thanks to this silly feature.

I got it for about 20,000 yen, about 8,000 yen less than standard, so I was a bit lucky for the find. Sad to say, getting a DS and Kanji Sonomama is still cheaper by about 50 bucks, but the quality makes up for it.

If you like to play games though, or if you want an Ipod, the DS and the Ipod touch are definitely options.

Edit: Having a real keyboard is way faster than a touch screen, no comparison.

coverup Wrote:I really recommend a separate Denshi Jisho in combination with software/internet ones. I would recommend the Casio EX-WORD XD-SF4800. I got mine at an electronics store in Japan for about 28,000円. I think I just got lucky when I bought it, because I have not regretted it since.

The model is intended for high school students in Japan. Usually when you use a Japanese-made electronic dictionary, you feel the pain of all these great features designed for Japanese people learning English, with very little thought put into usability for JSL learners. That is not the case with this dictionary.

Aside from the TWO J-J dictionaries (Meikyo,　Koujien), a kanji dictionary that has pronunciation guides for names, there are a couple of killer features that make this dictionary really JSL friendly.

One is the NHK pronunciation dictionary, which I have yet to find online. This combined with the fact that the Meikyo also speaks the pronunciation for many of the entries. Usually you only see this for English.

However, the single most useful thing for me has been the way you can use the Progressive J-E dictionary. Every entry has tons of example sentences (check Yahoo's J-E dict for a taste, it's the same), whereas if you use the more common Genius J-E , you often get single words with little or no clues on what kind of situations the word is used in. I mine sentences from it all the time, as they are virtually all accurate, natural Japanese - no twisting grammar or obscure words.

However, the KILLER feature that I have only seen on this dictionary (correct me if there are others) is that they have cross-referenced it so you can use the J-E dictionary BACKWARDS as an E-J dictionary. You can search the example sentences for the English word you're looking for, find a sentence that has the intended usage/meaning in English, and then see how the meaning is expressed in natural Japanese. I really can't stress to you how useful/killer this is compared to other dictionaries - I don't even use the Genius E-J dictionary (even though it's there too) at all because of this.

Another great feature is that it has dual touchscreens, so when you want to jump between dictionaries to look up words in a definition, you just tap the word on the upper screen with the stylus and then tap the dictionary you want to see it in. Man that is so much better than rewriting/retyping/scrolling around with an arrow key. Then just press the back key and you're back in the original definition.

Everyone will tell you that what you buy depends on your needs. If you are serious about using an electronic dictionary, I think you need one with a full physical keyboard and touch screens. "Touch screen only" (a la DS) created problems for me, and I found myself avoiding the dictionary because of how slow it was to look things up. Anything less than a full keyboard, no matter how accurate, is going to be slower, and this was eventually my frustration with the DS dictionary, and is likely to be similar on the iPod. The EX-WORD handwriting recognition for kanji is excellent, and you decide when you're done writing the character instead of an arbitrary time limit - perfect for when you need to double-check what you're writing. This is one of the best dictionaries out there right now for JSL learners, and I will very arrogantly suggest that it would be almost impossible for you to go wrong with it.

I feel really out of character (and slightly inappropriate?) recommending a specific product like this - it's not like I get paid to write this, but I have been 110% thrilled with it. Very well thought-out and designed for non-Japanese users, something rare in my experience when it comes to electronic dictionaries.

That sounds like an awesome dictionary! Like, mega awesome!

I'd disagree with the comment about it being too slow to look up things on the DS though. I think it's very fast. Although it is just a touch screen, it has keyboards the same as a physical keyboard. You can either write in the kanji to look stuff up, which is really quick or you can toggle the keyboard and type the letters in which is really fast too. Sometimes its faster than writing in the kanji so I just use it out of laziness But mostly I write it in.

[Katsuo]

Jarvik7 Wrote:...I'd replace Wisdom with the green goddess.

Has anyone tried the latter on the iPod? Considering the cost, I'd want to check out how well it's been implemented before buying. For example, I wonder if the abundant example sentences in the GG might be a disadvantage on a small screen – you could be forever scrolling.

The cost isn't significant. I use the LogoVista one, which is 3600Y for both chuu eiwa and waei. The only downside is that there is no superjump like on my denshijisho. There are also chuujiten waei only and eiwa only apps from a different dev for 2000Y each, but I haven't tried them.

Daijiten is obviously better, but it costs 13,000Y each for waei and eiwa (which you don't need but still).

I used to be a big advocate of denshijisho, but I can't really justify the cost for a single purpose device anymore now that iPod touch has EPWING readers and pro dictionary apps. Denshijisho do have a lot more content for your yen, but very few people use anything other than the main J-J and J-E dictionaries. If you must have one, Casio is still the best brand though.

coverup Wrote:I really recommend a separate Denshi Jisho in combination with software/internet ones. I would recommend the Casio EX-WORD XD-SF4800. I got mine at an electronics store in Japan for about 28,000円. I think I just got lucky when I bought it, because I have not regretted it since.

The model is intended for high school students in Japan. Usually when you use a Japanese-made electronic dictionary, you feel the pain of all these great features designed for Japanese people learning English, with very little thought put into usability for JSL learners. That is not the case with this dictionary.

Aside from the TWO J-J dictionaries (Meikyo,　Koujien), a kanji dictionary that has pronunciation guides for names, there are a couple of killer features that make this dictionary really JSL friendly.

One is the NHK pronunciation dictionary, which I have yet to find online. This combined with the fact that the Meikyo also speaks the pronunciation for many of the entries. Usually you only see this for English.

However, the single most useful thing for me has been the way you can use the Progressive J-E dictionary. Every entry has tons of example sentences (check Yahoo's J-E dict for a taste, it's the same), whereas if you use the more common Genius J-E , you often get single words with little or no clues on what kind of situations the word is used in. I mine sentences from it all the time, as they are virtually all accurate, natural Japanese - no twisting grammar or obscure words.

However, the KILLER feature that I have only seen on this dictionary (correct me if there are others) is that they have cross-referenced it so you can use the J-E dictionary BACKWARDS as an E-J dictionary. You can search the example sentences for the English word you're looking for, find a sentence that has the intended usage/meaning in English, and then see how the meaning is expressed in natural Japanese. I really can't stress to you how useful/killer this is compared to other dictionaries - I don't even use the Genius E-J dictionary (even though it's there too) at all because of this.

Another great feature is that it has dual touchscreens, so when you want to jump between dictionaries to look up words in a definition, you just tap the word on the upper screen with the stylus and then tap the dictionary you want to see it in. Man that is so much better than rewriting/retyping/scrolling around with an arrow key. Then just press the back key and you're back in the original definition.

Everyone will tell you that what you buy depends on your needs. If you are serious about using an electronic dictionary, I think you need one with a full physical keyboard and touch screens. "Touch screen only" (a la DS) created problems for me, and I found myself avoiding the dictionary because of how slow it was to look things up. Anything less than a full keyboard, no matter how accurate, is going to be slower, and this was eventually my frustration with the DS dictionary, and is likely to be similar on the iPod. The EX-WORD handwriting recognition for kanji is excellent, and you decide when you're done writing the character instead of an arbitrary time limit - perfect for when you need to double-check what you're writing. This is one of the best dictionaries out there right now for JSL learners, and I will very arrogantly suggest that it would be almost impossible for you to go wrong with it.

I feel really out of character (and slightly inappropriate?) recommending a specific product like this - it's not like I get paid to write this, but I have been 110% thrilled with it. Very well thought-out and designed for non-Japanese users, something rare in my experience when it comes to electronic dictionaries.

Note that OS X Leopard uses the Progressive Dictionary for Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese.... :-)

[Katsuo]

Jarvik7 Wrote:The cost isn't significant.

Ah, I'd presumed you meant the "dai", hence my comment about the cost.

Incidentally, I bought the LogoVista "chuu" wa-ei and ei-wa on CD about four years ago for 9,200 yen. I'm now investigating whether it's possible to get it into the iPod via something like EBPocket.

Jarvik7 Wrote:now that iPod touch has EPWING readers

What EPWING readers does the iPod have? Is it just EBPocket and iDic? Any suggestions on which one is better?

Jarvik7 Wrote:I used to be a big advocate of denshijisho, but I can't really justify the cost for a single purpose device anymore now that iPod touch has EPWING readers and pro dictionary apps. Denshijisho do have a lot more content for your yen, but very few people use anything other than the main J-J and J-E dictionaries. If you must have one, Casio is still the best brand though.

Yeah, my sense is that we're getting close to realizing the promise of multipurpose devices but still not quite there. I could revise my argument and say that I just prefer a physical keyboard and stylus over the available touchscreen keyboards (only when it comes to denshi jisho-like functions)... that would probably be our only real difference then. You can blast a word in on the Casio's qwerty keyboard as fast as you can type on a PC and then boom the entry's there - plus the cross-referencing ability of the excellent Progressive J-E that I have yet to find in any other dictionary.

But I have a secret ulterior motive to admit to as well... I needed to be using a dictionary while I was at work, and I had gotten asked about the DS a couple of times and ended being self-conscious about having a gaming console out on the job!

Certainly not the main reason, but as I was writing this I remembered! It's cool to hear that some people like mezbup get good use out of the DS though!

coverup Wrote:But I have a secret ulterior motive to admit to as well... I needed to be using a dictionary while I was at work, and I had gotten asked about the DS a couple of times and ended being self-conscious about having a gaming console out on the job!

Haha. I have to admit to this as well.