I'll be returning to Japan in January (This time Osaka), and after spending the last 3 months hardcore AJATT method, I have finished RTK1, 150 kanji into RTK3, and am at about 200 sentences (adding 20 more a day).

I will have a ton of money this time returning to Japan, as I have been serving at a very busy restaurant for the last 3 months and will continue for the next 3.

What is the best electronic monolinguistic dictionary I can buy there? Money is no object.


Also, once I reach 500 sentences, I will be going monolinguistic. The whole thing is very intimidating to me. My biggest worry is I will be in a neverending loop of not knowing what words mean.

For example I will have the sentence ''これは犬です。''. Obviously i know what inu means but this is just for example. I look up the definition in the monolinguistic dictionary and don't understand the kanji used to define 犬。 so i look up that kanji and don't understand the kanji used to define it and so on.

Maybe this is all an invalid concern but could someone explain to me how it is done?

1. Look up word in Japanese.

2. You don't understand a word in the definition, so you look that up.

3. After looking up a few of these nested words, they become recursive.

4. You understand or you don't understand. Understand = Yeah, happy! Don't understand = Look up word in English and move on.

5. Repeat until necessary.

After some time, you'll be reading the Japanese definitions with no problems except for a few words here and there and you'll have this awesome sensation of "Oooooooooh yeah, I get it".

You know you have reached a milestone when after reading and understanding a Japanese definiton, it takes alot of work to actually change your of mode of thought to English and understand it that way

Dictionary: I like the Canon Word Tank G55 because I have one

I'm quite happy with my EX-word XD-SP6600.

As for monolingual dictionary-using, the above has the right of it—if you don't get it after a couple of pages, look it up in English and move on. There will be other words.

~J

I also use and would recommend the Canon Word Tank G55. I won it in a Japanese speech competition. It is completely sufficient, has plenty of huge dictionaries, and is very sleek and easy to figure out, even in Japanese when you don't know the majority of the button labels.

Good luck in Japan!

If you don't want to spend any money, 2 good options are:

Mac OSX Dictionary ( comes built-in on Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard)

It uses the Daijisen Japanese-Japanese,Progressive English-Japanese, and Progressive Japanese-English dictionaries. These are actually professional dictionaries used in some Japanese electronic dictionaries.

Eijiro dictionary (http://www.alc.co.jp)

type in any word into the text input box that is labeled "eijiro on the web" in the japanese. Eijiro is the largest Japanese-Japanese dictionary in the world and is too
big to put on electronic dictionaries. It's filled with example sentences from real sources
like books, newspapers, etc.

If you are looking for the "best" dictionary, you can Casio's top-of-the-line dictionary, which in this case is the

Casio GF10000:
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/catalog/...16665.html

Also, I have actually had lots of Japanese language partners over the years
and by far I've noticed 2 series of dictionaries that they use the most.

1)Seiko dictionaries
2)Casio Ex Word Dataplus/GF9700/9800 series of dictionaries

chamcham Wrote:If you are looking for the "best" dictionary, you can Casio's top-of-the-line dictionary, which in this case is the

Casio GF10000:
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/catalog/...16665.html

Also, I have actually had lots of Japanese language partners over the years
and by far I've noticed 2 series of dictionaries that they use the most.

1)Seiko dictionaries
2)Casio Ex Word Dataplus/GF9700/9800 series of dictionaries

The question though is "What dictionary was used by those that became good/fluent at Japanese."

Yeah, I'm sure the style/brand would have upgraded, but the core thing that made it good would still be there (Symantec/Norton counter arguments not-withstanding).

The "best" in my opinion is a top of the line model that includes the following:

•Kenkyusha English-Japanese Compound Word Dictionary - 480,000 words. Also known as the Green Goddess. I love this dictionary! It has never disappointed me. It has EVERYTHING in it and lots of sample sentences in Japanese and English. This is a MUST for serious students.

•Stylus input - this is the best way to look up stuff. I used to have a top of the line Casio and had to search for kanji by inputing Japanese radical names, stroke count, other than radical stroke count, etc via keyboard. I got good at it but am loving my present stylus input.

Right now I'm using a Casio EX-Word XD-GP9700 and love it. It has the above, lots of extras that I and my Japanese wife love (she's trying to steal this dictionary from me so that I'll have to use my old Casio), and is even set up so you can input additional programs.

Bottom line: do some comparrisons on line and get the best tool possible. Going cheap will only frustrate you.

The best system is this:

http://www.japaneselanguagetools.com/

you can put gigs and gigs of dictionaries on it. Even the NHK dictionary with audio pronunciation. A conjugations dictionary, and all the dictionaries that people talk about and use. Just type or write on the screen to lookup.
I've been using mine for 2 years solidly and feel constrained when I have to use a Wordbank etc.

However, a level up option that I'm currently looking into, is to get a UMPC that will run the epwing dictionary software, allow pen input and let you run Anki.

mistamark Wrote:A conjugations dictionary, and all the dictionaries that people talk about and use.

unfortunately, it seems that only a handful of the dictionaries that are included in electronic dictionaries are also available in EPWING format

One hint for Osaka, unrelated to your question, is that you should definitely learn about Kansai-Ben. I lived in Shiga for four months in college, and never understood half of what the hell people were saying. I refused to learn about Kansai-ben because there were some idiots in my class that would never shut up about how 'cool' it was. Only coming back to Kyoto and learning about it a bit did I realize just how prevalent it was. In Osaka they're particularly proud of the dialect, so you'll be hearing it all the time.

Anyway, just read some basic stuff about it and after a couple of weeks you'll be able to understand it well. Luckily you don't have to speak it yourself, so you don't have to invest too much time in it (and some people might find it weird if you do). There's a few books on the dialect, including "Colloquial Kansai Japanese." It, like the other ones I've seen, isn't very good at all. But it's enough to get you by. Wikipedia might be just as good an option, but it gives you way too much information which makes it a bit harder to take in.

You could also watch shows which are in Kansai-Ben for a lot of listening practice. 'Lovely Complex' is one of them. It's pretty girly, but it's a damn good source of over-the-top Kansai-ben.

Buy an iPhone/ iPod touch and then buy the 大辞林 app. An iPhone/Touch is by far the best portable tool for learning Japanese, and it has chinese characters handwriting support, which is eternally useful for when you come across a new character etc.