I would like to use a Japanese dictionary only as soon as possible right?
Is there anything out there like Jim Breen's text translation but a Japanese version?

I would like to be able to put in a block of text and get the definitions of words written in Kanji kind of just how the WWWJDIC works.

For example:

秋涼の候皆様方にご健勝にてお過ごしのことと存じます。

秋涼し 【あきすずし】 (n) the coolness (and relaxedness) of autumn
候 【こう; そうろう】 (こう) (n) season; weather
皆様 【みなさま】 (n) (hon) everyone;
健勝に 【けんしょうに】 (adj-na,n) good health;
お過ごし 【おすごし】 (exp) (hon) getting along;
存じる 【ぞんじる】 (v1) (hum) to think, feel, consider, know, etc.

But instead of having English definitions I'd like to see Japanese ones.

Anyone know of a site I can use besides manually putting each word I don't know into a dictionary?

Get firefox and install this addon -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7004

Then you can click on the kanji or the kanji compound and get a definition.

sdntx Wrote:Get firefox and install this addon -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7004

Then you can click on the kanji or the kanji compound and get a definition.

Uhh, not only did you misunderstand the OP's question, you are seriously recommending a machine translator?

To answer the OP: there is no free monolingual Japanese dictionary in a machine readable format.

What's the name of that monolingual dictionary that's shock-full of sentences written by Japanese? I know I've seen that recommended here sometimes. Not free of course, but related.

It might be http://www.alc.co.jp.

ALC = frontend for Eijiro = bilingual dictionary made from user contributions

Hmm essentially what I want isn't a translation but instead what http://www.dictionary.com is in English. But maybe has the ability to do multiple words instead of one at a time like most dictionaries.

What the http://www.alc.co.jp does is if you type an English word it gives you the Japanese, if you type the Japanese word it gives you the English.

http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch　　<< like the 国語 version of this

Also can you clarify "Machine readable format"?

randomkrazy Wrote:Also can you clarify "Machine readable format"?

Something that can be embedded into programs like rikaichan or offline dictionary apps - as opposed to kokugo dictionaries accessible online at yahoo.co.jp etc.

randomkrazy Wrote:Also can you clarify "Machine readable format"?

It's a general term; when applied to things that are already digital, it means "easily lexed, parsed and programmatically manipulated based on the resulting parse tree".

As Jarvik suggests, even though online dictionaries are usually pretty machine-readable, the additional constraint of coming in a format where the whole thing can be searched, parsed, and manipulated at once is implied.

~J

Jarvik7 Wrote:To answer the OP: there is no free monolingual Japanese dictionary in a machine readable format.

Check the Reading Tutor.