I've seen some discussion of dictionaries lately, which have been quite good. The only problem is that my frustration is a bit different. I want a dictionary that I can use to look up kanji compounds and other words (maybe all hiragana), but which will be more likely to have every blinkin' word in it.

In my reading I can almost always figure out what the word means, from context, from the individual meanings of the kanji, etc. But I don't know how to say the word! So, I look it up in the dictionary and the word isn't there. Doh! Here in Georgia, there just aren't many native speakers to ask, and anyway, it gets to be a bit of a pain for my few friends. I can find a couple of examples a day of words that are not in my dictionaries. I just hate guessing which reading of the kanjis will be used this time, and then there are the times when they just use those kanji for that word, in spite of none of the readings being used---ateji.

Pasteing the word into Google will give me an idea of how rare or common it is, but not the pronunciation of the word, so . . . Frequently the online dictionaries also don't have entries for the word in question.

So, this is a weird use for a dictionary, but do any of you have a recommendation for something like what I'm describing? Very complete, lots of words, and I don't particularly care about the definitions. Just give me the reading of the word, and enough of a definition to reassure me that I've got the correct word.

I don't need another stand alone device. A PC based dictionary would be fine, because it seems like the electronic versions of some dictionaries sometimes will have a CD to port to the PC, and then you can look stuff up faster than a big hardcopy one, like Nelsons old one (that I use some---still not complete enough btw). About my old Nelson's, I'm also somewhat concerned about it's age/currency. I bought it when I was in high school, back in the early 70's.

Recommendations? Observations? Help?

If you can't find words, I'm guessing the way you look stuff up is wrong (parsing word boundaries incorrectly, not deconjugating verbs/adjectives, trying to lookup names/places, etc). EDICT is what almost every single free online dictionary uses and while its definitions leave something to be desired, I very rarely fail to find a word in it.

Can you give some examples of the words you have had trouble with.

Have you tried searching the Japanese Wikipedia? If you are lucky, it will have its own page or be a part of the title (reading is provided). Even if it does not, some unusual words also have their reading included when they are used in a text.

Here's an example (maybe not the best one) of a question I asked my friend:

同じように変てこりんで、同じように…まともじゃないってね。

This little sentence has several questions for me. "変てこりん" ("へんてこりん") I couldn't find in any dictionary. I found "変てこ" in one that used the word "bizarre", but then I'm still left with "りん"? What's that "りん" about?

Then there is "まともじゃない", the word "まとも" I'm getting a meaning like "direct", "honest", "upright", "upfront"...is there another nuance? This is "真面" or "正面" right? Does it have the feeling of "normal"?

It appears to have been translated from:

"just as strange, just as -- as -- abnormal"

Or here's another similar set of questions:

ハリーや、おまえに話し聞かせるのは、俺には荷が重すぎるかもしれん…だが、誰かがやらにゃ…何も知らずにホグワーツに行くわけにはいくまいて

"荷が重すぎる" this is pronounced "にがおもすぎる", right?

"いくまいて" this bit I don't get. Is it really just 行くまい "don't want to go", with a colloquial て?

From the English version:

"Ah, Harry, I don't know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh -- but someone's gotta -- yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

Well I mainly use Denshi Jisho and 変てこりん comes up straight away.

http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E5%A4%89%E3%...dict=edict

荷が重すぎる also comes up if you drop the すぎる.

The others are best explained by someone with a higher level than me.

CharleyGarrett Wrote:Then there is "まともじゃない", the word "まとも" I'm getting a meaning like "direct", "honest", "upright", "upfront"...is there another nuance? This is "真面" or "正面" right? Does it have the feeling of "normal"?

It appears to have been translated from:

"just as strange, just as -- as -- abnormal"

One other meaning of もとも in 三省常 (sanseido) is:
まとも
〈名・ダ〉 （１） まじめ．正常． （２） 真正面．

CharleyGarrett Wrote:Or here's another similar set of questions:

ハリーや、おまえに話し聞かせるのは、俺には荷が重すぎるかもしれん…だが、誰かがやらにゃ…何も知らずにホグワーツに行くわけにはいくまいて

"荷が重すぎる" this is pronounced "にがおもすぎる", right?

"いくまいて" this bit I don't get. Is it really just 行くまい "don't want to go", with a colloquial て?

From the English version:

"Ah, Harry, I don't know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh -- but someone's gotta -- yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

Well, I guessed that わけ is a part of some expressions and searched on わけには and according to yahoo dic there is a set expression:
訳(わけ)にはいかない
理由・事情による不可能の意味を表す。
・ 多忙で、とても引き受ける―ない

That leaves the transformation of いかない to いくまい. I recognize the 〜まい part from Tae Kim's guide and it is used in negative intention.

The last て seems to be slang for という.

CharleyGarrett Wrote:Or here's another similar set of questions:

ハリーや、おまえに話し聞かせるのは、俺には荷が重すぎるかもしれん…だが、誰かがやらにゃ…何も知らずにホグワーツに行くわけにはいくまいて

"荷が重すぎる" this is pronounced "にがおもすぎる", right?

"いくまいて" this bit I don't get. Is it really just 行くまい "don't want to go", with a colloquial て?

From the English version:

"Ah, Harry, I don't know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh -- but someone's gotta -- yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

Do you know わけにはいかない？　It means something like "There's no way that X can do ~~." (That's the わけ that means "reason, explanation, excuse, etc.")
E.g. 夢を死なせるわけにはいかない, "There's no way I can let my dream die."

And ~まい　is used for "don't want to," but it's also used for ~ないだろう. With a colloquial て I guess, though I actually haven't seen that before.

So, "There's no way that you can go to Hogwarts not knowing anything."

A lot of the time, what looks like a dictionary problem is actually a grammar problem. Or an idiom problem...

CharleyGarrett Wrote:This little sentence has several questions for me. "変てこりん" ("へんてこりん") I couldn't find in any dictionary. I found "変てこ" in one that used the word "bizarre", but then I'm still left with "りん"? What's that "りん" about?

Actually, the word appears on Edict. I suppose the problem was that it isn't usually written with that kanji/kana combination. Whenever you find a kanji/kana combination that doesn't appear on a dictionary, try looking up the kana-only version.

I did that on Edict and got this:

　　　　　へんてこりん【変梃りん】
　　　　　(adj-na) strange
　　　　　weird

In　大辞林 (from Yahoo.co.jp), I found:

へんてこ-りん [0] （名・形動）
「へんてこ」に同じ。へんちくりん。「―な呪文を唱える」

So, 変てこ and 変梃りん are synonyms.

Quote:Then there is "まともじゃない", the word "まとも" I'm getting a meaning like "direct", "honest", "upright", "upfront"...is there another nuance? This is "真面" or "正面" right? Does it have the feeling of "normal"?

I found that expresion on ALC:

.

Quote:まともじゃない

* off [out of] one's block [box, crumpet, crust, gourd, loop, nut, onion, squiff, skull, track, wack]
* off one's chump〈英俗〉
* off one's head
* off one's nana
* off one's rocker〔【語源】ゆらゆらと前後にゆれる木馬の底の部分の木(rocker)がはずれて(off)いる ⇒ 木馬は正常に動かない ⇒ 狂っている〕
* off the edge
* out of one's box〈英俗〉
* out of one's head
* out of one's mind [senses]
* over the edge
* queer in the head
* thin in the upper crust
* up the loop

Quote:"荷が重すぎる" this is pronounced "にがおもすぎる", right?

From 大辞林:

Quote:――が重・い
責任や負担が大きい。責任や負担が大きくて耐えられない。「彼には―・い仕事だ」

From Edict:

Quote:荷が重い【にがおもい】
(exp) to have a lot on one's shoulders
to bear a lot of responsibility

When using a dictionary, look up deinflected verbs and leave the auxiliar verbs (in this case, the すぎる part) out of the equation.

Quote:"いくまいて" this bit I don't get. Is it really just 行くまい "don't want to go", with a colloquial て?

It seems so. This point is different from the other ones. In this case the problem is that you're not used yet to a phrasal pattern. If you find trouble understanding it and want to get it right, check some grammar sources (Tae Kim, JGram, etc.) and they probably will help you. If you don't grasp something from the beginning, exposure will help on the long run.

Tip: If you use several online dictionaries (as well as search engines and site specific search boxes) you can attach keywords to them in Firefox (don't know about other browsers).　Then you just go to the location bar (by clicking it or hitting ctrl-L or F6), write the proper keyword and the search term.

For example, if I hit "y へんてこ" in my location bar, it will take me to the Japanese Yahoo dictionaries site and it will look up へんてこ.

You can check more uses for search keywords in Lifehacker: Hack Attack: Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

I guess I didn't express myself very clearly. I'm looking for a solution to the frustrating problem that I have of not knowing the correct pronunciation of words that I find in my reading. If I can find the word in a dictionary, frequently the pronunciation of that word will be provided. That's the ONLY reason I'm looking up the word. I'm getting the meaning of the word usually from context, and if I have questions concerning grammar, etc. then I discuss those with a native speaker friend of mine. But the main major frustration is just getting the pronunciation of new words.

Hence a specific, but weird sort of dictionary request. I'd rather not have to go to several online dictionaries, but I'd rather just have the one, very complete, PC based dictionary, most likely to have lots of words in it, but just for the point of providing the best reading of compound words, not really for the definitions.

I suppose, as Sebastian was sharing, if looking up the words was easier with the keyword searches, then maybe going to multiple online sources would be less distasteful. It would be cheaper, and actually that is a significant factor. It's just that the frustration has risen to the point where I'm about ready to "fix it" by throwing money at it. That's probably not such a good solution anyway!

I suppose this is one of those cases where the novice wants to shortcut the hard work by buying another "silver bullet" book, or something, anything, that will fix it. Anybody up for a "fluency pill"?

Anyway, thanks for the input, everybody. I'm going to read that stuff about keyword bookmarking and see if I can't set up quick searches of different online dictionaries. I'll search for a thread giving links to online dictionaries. I've already got bookmarks for jisho.org and Yahoo! Chiebukuro and that's really about all. I thought I had more, but I cannot put my hands on them now. Actually, I guess I always try JPEce's built in dictionary first.

I use Tagaini Jisho. It uses EDICT though, so take from what what you will.

http://www.tagaini.net/

Its good because its offline so looking things up is fast. The only problem it has is that it doesn't convert verbs back to dictionary forms, so you'll have to do it yourself or use jisho.org.

CharleyGarrett Wrote:I guess I didn't express myself very clearly. I'm looking for a solution to the frustrating problem that I have of not knowing the correct pronunciation of words that I find in my reading.

I think you just didn't understand the answers, although some people did misinterpret your question. Your problem with looking things up doesn't stem from the dictionary being incomplete, you just aren't looking things up the right way. You have to "de-grammar", for lack of a better word, what you want to look up. There will always be some ambiguous cases, since some words have multiple readings, but 99.9% of stuff you look up should be in EDICT based dictionaries. Harry Potter appears to have lots of colloquialisms in it, so you will have to think about what it would look like in a dictionary before you look it up. Ex: かっけえ→かっこいい

Other things to do include splitting up strings of kanji, because sometimes what looks like a 3 kanji word is actually a 2 kanji word next to a 1 kanji word. If you try out Rikai-chan it should handle most cases satisfactorily, but I don't use it myself.

I can't even remember the last time I couldn't find a word I was looking up..

I like Rikaichan, and I do use it a lot. But to use it, the text has to be on a web page, which adds another step to the process. I'm reading a hardcover book. To look up a word in any PC or web-based dictionary, I do have to figure out how to type the word. But then to get it into a web page...that's a whole 'nother step. Another "problem" with Rikaichan is that it will give you multiple readings of the same compound at times. Then you're left to ponder "the first one or one of the others?" From my current level of exposure to the language, I sometimes feel a pull to the other readings...they feel more familiar to me. I've got no idea which reading is more frequently selected by a native reader. My friend tries to reassure me that in these cases there probably is no "right" or "best" answer. It's okay to pick any of the listed readings as "my answer", and that natives pretty much do the same thing. Even prime ministers.

You're exactly right, it is the colloquialization of the words that sometimes break the dictionary look up. I actually think that I get most of those already without true questions. Maybe just a "that's right, isn't it?" sort of confirmation by a native speaker.

On the other hand, for example, 変てこりん, the dictionary I used didn't have that word, but because of で　I pretty well knew that was the word boundary (and in fact that is correct). Finding　変てこ　left me puzzled about　りん, but that is not my main concern. Still I was pretty sure that　変てこりん　was going to be pronounced　へんてこりん、so, I was content to that point. I suppose I have to be ready to accept that　adding りん　is just another synonym.

There is an ebook of the Japanese Harry Potter floating around on a torrent somewhere, so you might want to grab that for ease of lookup.

There is unfortunately no way for a dictionary to help you any further, since they can't really tell which context the word you're looking up is used in. Some words simply have multiple readings which may or may not have the same meaning. You can invest in professionally compiled dictionaries (EDICT is a gloss made by an Australian computer teacher in his free time), which will offer more detailed information.

Ex: one of mine says へんてこりん＝こんてこ＝へん, and that りん is "口拍子で添えた語", essentially a meaningless suffix to give the word rhythm (think of Ogura Yuko -> Yukorin). Other variations include へんちくりん and へんちき.

It's much much worse when writers try to show accent in writing. I was playing the Famicom version of Zelda 1 a bit yesterday, and one of the guys in a shop/cave said コウテクレヤ (the entire game is in katakana), which I guessed means 買ってくれよ in some inaka/hillbilly accent.

I don't know why I forgot to mention this, but if you have trouble getting the readings for kanji compounds, try using Wakan.

With Wakan you can look up kanjis by their heisig index number, number of strokes (including ranges), radicals or meanings (among many other options). Once you entered the kanjis, you can look up words that have those characters at the beginning, end or in between.

I hope those features are all you need.

Wakan is a pretty great application but it is getting a little long in the tooth. I dearly wish it'd be OS'd just so there'd be a better chance of updates as the original maintainer seems to be busy with other obligations.

I had a similar problem trying to get pronunciations for words in Harry Potter so I bought the audio book from Kinokuniya in L.A.! It was expensive but it makes it real easy to figure out how a word should sound. I also got a digital version of my Harry Potter book which helps a lot with looking up meanings.

OK. I know it's not PC-based, but.....

I like to use the built-in Japanese-Japanese and Japanese-English dictioaries
that come with Mac OSX Leopard and Snow Leopard.

In Mac OSX, Snow Leopard that added Chinese character handwriting recognition.
So when I don't know the reading for a kanji, I just draw it with my finger
on the glass trackpad that comes with the Macbook pro.

Really awesome.

Of course, there are many PC dictionaries (JWPce, Wakan, and the EPWING dictionaries).

My dictionary of choice is JLookup. You have to load the dictionaries separately, but once you get it to work it's a decent dictionary.