I've had a Canon Wordtank V80 for awhile and was wondering if anyone out there has used it as well as the iPhone apps Daijirin or Daijisen? If so, any input on the matter?
Anything you feel you miss without the Wordtank?
Anything extra in either of the iPhone apps that you wish the Wordtank had?
How limited are the English-Japanese/Japanese-English capabilities of the iPhone apps?
How easy to jump around?

On a side note, how do the Daijirin and Daijisen apps compare with each other?
What do you like most from each app?
What do you hate most?
Is one better than the other? Why?

I only have 大辞林 on my iPod, and haven't used any 電子辞書 before. I can say that the 大辞林 app is really well implemented, and runs like a dream. It has its own excellent Japanese handwriting input, which is 100 times better than Apple's Chinese one, which was never appropriate in the first place. I've literally scruffed out 15-stroke characters with my left thumb (I'm right-handed) that it's recognised.

Jumping around is easy too. You just highlight the text you want by dragging your thumb over it and then tap jump. If you use Anki or read PDF's (the retina screen is awesome for this), it's also possible to jump to 大辞林 from them and have it automatically look up the word you selected.

As for what the iPhone has over a dictionary, it's an iPhone, not a dictionary, so a lot! If you use SRS, then having Anki with you all the time is invaluable, especially if you have trouble keeping up-to-date with your reviews. Then you've got your podcasts/music, videos, news, Skype, Wikipedia, manga, games, PDF's, JLPT questions, brain training, and whatever else you can find in the store that interests you. You can find a few threads on here about app recommendations if you want to get a better idea.

I originally bought my iPod 2G as an alternative to a dictionary because they were so expensive, and I've used it every day for the past two years (well, I upgraded to 4G last year). It's easily the best, most useful gadget I've ever owned, and my Japanese studies would fall apart without it.

How useful the iPhone is as a dictionary definitely depends on how old it is, I'd say. I have an original 3G and... well, it's slow as shit, to be frank about it. It was convenient to have when I lived in Japan and actually needed to have a dictionary on me at all times, but the difference between a device with instant look-ups (my ex-word) and a device that takes upwards of five seconds just to switch keyboards (my iphone) is just too much.

I know some people are crazy about it, but as far as I'm concerned, you should only get an iPhone if you want an iPhone, and the dictionaries are a bonus. Actual dictionaries are still better dictionaries.

Mcjon01 Wrote:How useful the iPhone is as a dictionary definitely depends on how old it is, I'd say. I have an original 3G and... well, it's slow as shit, to be frank about it. It was convenient to have when I lived in Japan and actually needed to have a dictionary on me at all times, but the difference between a device with instant look-ups (my ex-word) and a device that takes upwards of five seconds just to switch keyboards (my iphone) is just too much.

I know some people are crazy about it, but as far as I'm concerned, you should only get an iPhone if you want an iPhone, and the dictionaries are a bonus. Actual dictionaries are still better dictionaries.

What was the deal with that? It was painful on my 2G with OS4. Thankfully, it's not an issue on the 4G. I wonder how the iPhone's performance compares, since it must be running more stuff than an iPod at any given time.

I guess the decision depends more on your needs and methods. I never use a dictionary just for the sake of looking something up, because it's a waste of time when I forget it in two days. I only bought 大辞林 last week because I can use it with Anki now, and before that I only really used 'Japanese' to make vocab lists for importing into Anki.

I don't see why an average learner would need more than 'Japanese' and 大辞林 though, so I'd try them out in an Apple store or something to see if they suit you before blowing $200+ on a one-function device.

Well, one thing I've noticed with the Wordtank is that it has several dictionaries including Japanese-Japanese (it uses Daijirin), English-Japanese, Japanese-English, English-English, English-Chinese, Chinese-English and a few others. My first thought was "why would I ever need that many dictionaries?!" Originally I didn't think I'd use or need even more than a couple of those, but I've found it's more useful than I thought it would be.

An example was when I was reading the manual for the Wordtank and it said something about having the ability to look up idioms and I was like "idiom... man, I feel dumb, cuz I'm pretty sure I know this word, but...." so I hit the Eng-Eng dictionary to look up idiom:

idiom - group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words. Ex. 'Let the cat out of the bag' -> tell a secret by mistake.

Oh right... idiom... duh. Then say you wonder how to say one of the words from that example in Japanese, let's say 'secret'. You highlight 'secret' and tap it and it pops up a list of any entries in any of the dictionaries that have the word 'secret'. I see it's in the Eng-Jap dictionary and tap on that entry to go there. The Eng-Jap entry for 'secret' shows what the Japanese word for secret is and happens to be 2 kanji... but no kana or anything that shows you how you'd pronounce it. If you're not familiar with those 2 kanji you can highlight them and tap them and it shows you any dictionary that has those 2 kanji together. So you highlight the 2 kanji and tap them and up pops all the dictionaries again and I see that the Jap-Jap dictionary is the 1st result and tap on that and it brings me to the Japanese definition for 'secret' and the very first thing it has is the kana pronunciation for these 2 kanji together -> 'himitsu'.

So I've noticed that when you have all these dictionaries tied together like this that it promotes jumping around a lot more and you seem to be able to do a lot as a result and also learn a lot.

I've also had a few times where I highlight some Japanese, usually kanji, and tap it cuz I have no idea what it's saying, try to look it up in the Jap-Jap dictionary but there's too many words I don't know, and then don't see any entries in the Jap-Eng dictionary. *BUT* I'll see a result in the Chn-Eng dictionary and tap on that and now I see a bunch of English words that help me to figure out the meaning. I never thought the Chinese dictionaries would be useful at all unless I started learning Chinese, but I've actually run across this a few times.

I've heard Daijirin offers an Eng-Jap dictionary but not Jap-Eng. I'm not sure about Daijisen. So I'm curious if anyone has done anything like what I'm talking about above with the iPhone with either of those iPhone apps and just how much of this scenario could be done w/ either of those programs, if at all. I'm mostly interested in just using one of those 2 apps without having to bounce in and out of different apps, but I guess I'd be interested to hear anyone else's experience doing the multitasking thing as well and how easy (or painful ) that is. I've tried to find more English reviews of both of these iPhone apps and none really give the depth I'm looking for, so I thought I'd throw it out some line on some forums myself.

[Katsuo]

Javizy Wrote:Jumping around is easy too. You just highlight the text you want by dragging your thumb over it and then tap jump.

There's a faster method too, just drag over the text and release instantly – it will jump to the selection if there is an entry for it in the dictionary. Drag and hold (for about 2 seconds) on the other hand, brings up the menu list you mention.

@tenaciousjay. I've got a Canon M300 Wordtank, but it just collects dust since I got an iPod touch. The screen on the latter, especially the new "retina" models, is so much better that I'm reluctant to return to the Canon. The only advantage of the Canon is that it can search all its dictionaries simultaneously. For searching & jumping within one dictionary however, the iPod version of the Daijirin is much better. I haven't had the speed issues Mcjon01 mentions; even my older iPod Touch (2008 model) switches between keyboards instantly.

The developer that makes the iPod Daijirin do a J-E, E-J dictionary called "Wisdom" that is also well-designed. When searching you can choose between main entry, idioms and example sentences. The only weak point for me is that it's a "中", i.e. medium-sized dictionary and therefore does not have the coverage of a "大" large-size.

I did quite a bit of research between 大辞林(daijirin) and 大辞泉(daijisen) and decided to get 大辞林. It sounds like 大辞泉 actually had more search results (I found a site that showed a search for おばま(obama) and the 大辞泉 actually popped up Barack Obama as one of the results. It also had maps integrated in. And I'm not sure but I think it also allowed you to link in other dictionaries, including English-Japanese. But in the end I went with 大辞林 because it seemed much more "Apple-ish" and just had more aesthetic appeal. The colors seem nicer, the layout seemed cooler, and it just felt more traditional with it's up-down/right-left layout. The basic indexed layout also seemed like it would promote dictionary "surfing" a bit more as you can just kinda slide the screen around and randomly select words to check out.

(Note:Just in case anyone has trouble finding 大辞林 in the U.S. Apple App store, I think it's only listed under the Japanese Kanji, so you have to search for 大辞林 and NOT "daijirin" (it's the reverse for 大辞泉, you must use "daijisen" and NOT 大辞泉).)

@Katsuo
Do you know if the Wisdom Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary you mentioned has the same kanji input engine as 大辞林? I think I found a post of yours that says it doesn't, but I was wondering if you know if they've updated it perhaps? It works great in 大辞林, so I was hoping that they'd put it in the Wisdom dictionary as well so you could look up kanji without having to know how they're pronounced or having to use the Chinese kanji keyboard (I'm assuming the Wisdom dictionary will at least let you look words up with that). As a side note, are there any E-J/J-E dictionaries that have their own kanji input engines? Longman? Genius?

[Katsuo]

tenaciousjay Wrote:But in the end I went with 大辞林 because it seemed much more "Apple-ish" and just had more aesthetic appeal. The colors seem nicer,

I'm slightly confused by that comment because it's in B&W only (the Daijisen has colours).

Quote:Do you know if the Wisdom Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary you mentioned has the same kanji input engine as 大辞林?

I'm afraid there is no handwritten input for kanji. The dictionary is aimed at Japanese persons learning English, so presumably most of the time they'll be going E-J rather than J-E.

Quote:...Chinese kanji keyboard (I'm assuming the Wisdom dictionary will at least let you look words up with that).

Yes, that can be used. It works for maybe 80% of kanji (and 0% of kana, of course).

Quote:As a side note, are there any E-J/J-E dictionaries that have their own kanji input engines? Longman? Genius?

I don't know of any by the professional dictionary publishers. I think at least one developer has added that function to EDICT though.

My G50 Wordtank has handwritten kanji input. It's not great though -- I hear there are other densijishos (Casio I think? I forget) with better UI for this.

大辞林 on my 3G has always worked a dream for me. I just don't see why the hell I'd fork out a few hundred extra dollars on an additional device I'd have to lug around, and which doesn't even have decent handwriting support.

Edit: I've had my 3G for 3 years and the speed is still fine. (Takes about 10 seconds to load the 大辞林 app). I would upgrade to the 4G for extra speed, but iPhones are just too damn expensive.

tenaciousjay Wrote:I did quite a bit of research between 大辞林(daijirin) and 大辞泉(daijisen) and decided to get 大辞林. It sounds like 大辞泉 actually had more search results (I found a site that showed a search for おばま(obama) and the 大辞泉 actually popped up Barack Obama as one of the results. It also had maps integrated in. And I'm not sure but I think it also allowed you to link in other dictionaries, including English-Japanese. But in the end I went with 大辞林 because it seemed much more "Apple-ish" and just had more aesthetic appeal. The colors seem nicer, the layout seemed cooler, and it just felt more traditional with it's up-down/right-left layout. The basic indexed layout also seemed like it would promote dictionary "surfing" a bit more as you can just kinda slide the screen around and randomly select words to check out.

If the one on Yahoo is anything to go by, then 大辞泉 doesn't have pitch accent codes, so I didn't even consider it. Seems like 大辞林 is the way to go.

thecite Wrote:Edit: I've had my 3G for 3 years and the speed is still fine. (Takes about 10 seconds to load the 大辞林 app). I would upgrade to the 4G for extra speed, but iPhones are just too damn expensive.

Can't you use multitasking on a 3G？I know it's not real multitasking, but it still starts up instantly if you don't close them. I always have Japanese, Anki and 大辞林 open, and I never have to wait for them to load. 大辞林 performs especially well. Switching to handwriting input, doing lookups, jumping etc doesn't have even the slightest delay.

I don't know about the 3GS, but the original 3G doesn't support multitasking. Hell, it doesn't even support custom backgrounds. About the only thing it got from iOS4 was folders and a performance hit.

And 10 seconds to load 大辞林? Glaaaaaacial. No thanks.

Are electronic dictionaries really such a bad deal? I only spent around $250 on my EX-word XD-A9800. The only model of iPod Touch cheaper than that is the 8GB, and that's before you buy any dictionary apps. And the handwriting recognition on the Casio dictionaries is pretty great all-around from what I tried out in stores. At the very least, mine very rarely mistakes what I'm trying to write, and if it does the kanji I meant to write is usually near the top of the list of other options.

Then again, I very rarely (never) have a need to use a Japanese dictionary when I'm just walking around town, so maybe I'm not really in the market segment these dictionary apps are shooting for.

I have a Canon wordtank V300, daijirin (大辞林) and daijisen (大辞泉).
Wordtank already has daijirin (the EXACT same definitions).

So there's not much point in getting it for the iPod .

I would actually recommend daijisen 大辞泉 over daijirin 大辞林 for 2 reasons.

1. Daijisen is updated for the iPad and the interface is fantastic. Daijirin is only
for the iPhone.

2. Daijisen has it's own custom built-in Japanese kanji handwriting recognition. No other
japanese dictionary for the iphone has this feature. The other dictionaries use Apple's Chinese Handwriting IME. The makers of Daijisen went through the effort of making their own handwriting recognition for Japanese kanji. And it works really well. Kudos to the developers.

[Katsuo]

chamcham Wrote:2. Daijisen has it's own custom built-in Japanese kanji handwriting recognition. No other japanese dictionary for the iphone has this feature. The other dictionaries use Apple's Chinese Handwriting IME.

大辞林 and 広辞苑 both have Japanese handwriting input as well.

@Katsuo
I meant that the colors used for the 大辞林 app seemed more appealing. They mostly used black and white and then the buttons and highlights are blue which look very nice to me. 大辞泉 seemed to have faux redwood like colored search bars and I think the buttons were normal colored and over all did not look quite as "simple", and in general I prefer simple/clean layouts.

Do you know much about the Green Goddess, Genius, or Longman iPhone dictionaries? (I doubt I'd consider paying $109 for a dictionary, but $40 for the Genius is more of a possibility. I just wasn't sure if the Genius is worth twice the price of the Wisdom, so I was wondering if it was a much larger dictionary or had a kanji input engine, good UI, good "jump" capability like the Wisdom, etc.). Right now I'm mostly considering the Wisdom for the price and UI, but just curious if any of the others had something substantial going for them that would sway me.

@chamcham
Dang, I was thinking about getting an iPad whenever the new ones come out. Since I already jumped on 大辞林 I'm hoping they decide to update. (I might consider getting the 大辞泉 down the road, but the wife isn't too fond of me blowing so much on dictionaries in such a short period of time).

I was also going to mention that you might need to update your 大辞林 because I just bought mine this weekend and it has it's own handwritten kanji input engine now. I think they licensed it from Panasonic (or Matsushita for you purists) and added it in August. So far it seems to work great, much better than the Chinese iPhone one.

I don't know if it's pure luck, but Daijisen was just updated to version 7.0 today:

6,000 new words added
30,000 words updated
New Icon
Improved UI

:-)

I'm not as familiar with the iphone, and I guess it depends on what you use the dictionaries for, but I definitely recommend a smart phone over a denshi jisho.
Also, I would suggest getting an EPWING reader (the iphone has EBPocket, right?) because multi-dictionary lookups are so useful!

I'll give a little background info so you know where I'm coming from:
I wanted a portable Japanese dictionary/text reader for a long while (mostly for novel reading), so I did lots of research and looked into many denshi jisho models as well as the ipod touch. I found that a lot of denshi jisho screens had very little contrast and were hard to read (for me), they were also pretty expensive (outside of Japan). The ipod touch had more possibilities for reading text, and I liked it's portable size, but I didn't like the touch screen keyboard on the store demo version I tried, and selecting options with only the touch screen made it hard to pick the right option (and not the one below or above it), so in the end, I saw that my aunt had an older Blackberry she wasn't using, so I asked if I could have it, and after installing EBBerry (EPWING reader) and MobiPocket (txt reader), I was amazed at how fast I could do lookups! I also like the idea of having multiple dictionaries because I get a better idea of the definition of a word by reading multible kokugo dictionary (Meikyou, Daijisen, Koujien, Sanseido dictionary) definitions, and I like keeping the E-J dics (EDICT, Kenkyuusha, Genius) around because often times one of them will have a definition of a word when none of the kokugo dics do. (Strange, I know)

Mcjon01 Wrote:I don't know about the 3GS, but the original 3G doesn't support multitasking. Hell, it doesn't even support custom backgrounds. About the only thing it got from iOS4 was folders and a performance hit.

And 10 seconds to load 大辞林? Glaaaaaacial. No thanks.

The 3G supports anything when it's jailbroken; however multitasking really slows down my 3G, so I didn't keep it.

7 - 10 seconds. You would seriously rather carry around an extra device than wait a few seconds? Alright, each to their own. (This is ignoring the fact that the 4G is pretty much instantaneous.)
I'm not recommending buying an iPhone or touch purely for the dictionary apps; they're just an added bonus. I find a portable dictionary to be extremely useful. Whether I'm just thinking something in my head and wonder "What's that word in Japanese?" or I see something on the street or in a building and wonder "What's that called in Japanese?" Or when I think of a word in my head but can't remember one of the kanji; or when I'm sitting down reading a book etc, it's far easier to search and bookmark it on my phone than to go back to my computer.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but does anyone here have a wordtank? or any other e-dict that does Chinese? Do they let you select traditional/simplified chinese?

I have not heard of EPWING or EBPocket (for iPhone), maybe someone could clarify what they are and what they do? You get free access to all kinds of dictionaries? Is this something that I could use to look at the 大辞林 iPhone dictionary app I just bought?

@liosama
Yes, I have a Wordtank V80 with a stylus that let's you write kanji AND Chinese characters on the screen (which is the main reason I bought it). You can also enter Chinese using pinyin. It also has a little speaker and you can highlight Chinese characters and it says the word in Chinese using the correct intonations (unfortunately it does not say the Japanese words, only Chinese). I originally thought I'd try to learn Chinese after Japanese so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone but I'm not sure if I'll really get around to it. That's actually why I started this thread, I'm thinking of selling the Wordtank since I got an iPhone now but I'm not sure if the iPhone will be able fully replace the Wordtank, mainly cuz when you search on the Wordtank it's nice to have results pop up from multiple dictionaries all at the same time, where as on the iPhone right now I have to manually switch from dictionary to dictionary to see what's in each. On the Wordtank I would draw a kanji and then highlight it and tap it again and it would pop up results in the Jap-Jap (daijirin), in the Eng-Jap (Genius), Jap-Eng, Chn-Jap, Chn-Eng, etc. Even though I never intended to use the Chn-Eng dictionary sometimes it would be the only one that popped up when I'd enter a kanji and it would have a few english words that would remind me of the gist of what the kanji was in Japanese which I actually found pretty helpful. So I'm still on the fence, I might try to use my iPhone as much as I can and just hold on to the Wordtank. Not sure yet.

@tokyostyle
Yeah, I've been trying to find iOS programs that have their own kanji input engines because the Chinese one does not seem to work that great for entering Japanese. Seems like quite a few of the characters I input have different stroke ordering or just aren't recognized at all. 大辞林's (daijirin's) iPhone app has their own engine and it's awesome, so far has recognized everything and I can be much more sloppy, plus it seems like it guesses much better. That's partially why I'm asking so many questions about J-E/E-J iPhone dictionaries here, I'm hoping one of them has a similar kanji engine or is planning to update with one.

tenaciousjay Wrote:@liosama
Yes, I have a Wordtank V80 with a stylus that let's you write kanji AND Chinese characters on the screen (which is the main reason I bought it). You can also enter Chinese using pinyin.

Awesome a V80 user! But does it let you pick from displaying (and inputting) simplified and traditional chinese? From what I've looked at so far (manuals etc) it seems to only talk about simplified characters, but I find it quite absurd that they'd only support one set, since, for all practical purposes it can run off a direct 1:1 mapping table. It'd take about 1 hour of programming and less than 1 meg of memory. Most Chinese-English e-dicts I've looked at only seem to have simplified which is a real bitch.

@liosama
Yeah, I think it might primarily use simplified since mainland China is kinda the big kid on the "Chinese" block. I know for sure it's Mandarin cuz I asked a Chinese co-worker who moved here from mainland China. She listened to the audio for me and confirmed it was Mandarin but I thought she looked at the characters I highlighted and told me they were traditional, that it looked like Cantonese characters (which I assume meant traditional) but that she said pretty much any Chinese person could read it. I did find a section of the dictionary that has 300 modern conversational phrases it says are useful for "sightseeing, business, or living in China" that has phrases in "Chinese as well as Cantonese and Taiwanese" so that kind makes me wonder.

[Katsuo]

tenaciousjay Wrote:Do you know much about the Green Goddess, Genius, or Longman iPhone dictionaries?

I don't own any of those so can't speak from direct experience. I'd like to get the first one (研究社新和英大辞典) for its content, but the developer is LogoVista and I've been disappointed with other products I bought from them.

Also Enfour who make the Longman app, do not seem reliable as their versions of the Kanji Learner's dictionary and Eijiro for some reason disappeared. Monokakido (Wisdom, Daijirin) on the other hand make very good UIs and their products get good ratings & reviews in the App Store.

I don't know who to listen to now. The seller on ebay of a V80 says that it only supports Simplified Chinese, gargh

tenaciousjay Wrote:I have not heard of EPWING or EBPocket (for iPhone), maybe someone could clarify what they are and what they do? You get free access to all kinds of dictionaries? Is this something that I could use to look at the 大辞林 iPhone dictionary app I just bought?

EPWING is a dictionary file format. It's very convenient because you can use EPWING files on any device that has an EPWING reader software. There was a place with "translator's tools" that might have had EPWING files and reader, but I don't seem to remember where it was. Must have dreamed it up. Anyway, I don't think EPWING readers can access other dictionary apps, but they make up for it in portability.