Hi, i would like to buy an english japanese dictionary and was wondering which one to buy. i was considering random house e-j-j-e dictionary but it doesn't have example sentences. i need one which has example sentences. i don't want kodansha's furigana dictionary because it is somewhat limited or so i have heard many times and kenkyusha's english japanese dictionary. i was considering kodansha's basic english japanese dictionary and i was also able to find shogakukan random house english japanese dictionary on amazon. there are two shogakukan's dictionary. "shogakukan progressive english japanese dictionary and shogakukan random house english japanese dictionary"

can anyone tell me what is the difference between shogakukan's progressive and random house dictionary? i was never able to find any sample pages for these two that's why i don't know how the pages looks like and how's the content. i read in wikipedia that random house one has 345,000 headwords and 175,000 usage examples. that's why i chose this dic as well. if anyone can find a sample page of this dictionary i would be very grateful. out of these three which one should i go for? or any other recommendations.

Maybe not exactly what your looking for, but I want to throw this out there as a recommendation. If you don't mind paper and decide to make the leap to a monolingual Japanese dictionary, look for a children's dictionary. You really can do no wrong.

Daichi Wrote:Maybe not exactly what your looking for, but I want to throw this out there as a recommendation. If you don't mind paper and decide to make the leap to a monolingual Japanese dictionary, look for a children's dictionary. You really can do no wrong.

This!

I wouldn't be concerned about kodansha's furigana dictionary being limited. If your goal is to go J-J it will do just fine. It has tons of example sentences and every Kanji has furigana. The same is true about dictionaries for children. I have a mixture of paper dictionaries, mainly for browsing, but they range in complexity. If you're on a Mac, it comes with a J-E and J-J dictionary installed.

Excellent suggestion. elementary school japanese dictionary will be quite helpful in the studies but it is not available in amazon.com, right? i wasn't able to find it there. it's only available in amazon japan. Daichi, sesshomaru, tokyostyle, thankyou for your recommendations. i will go through them and buy a monolingual dictionary according to your suggestions. you guys really helped me out in finding me a good japanese - japanese dictionary which i was also looking for along with english-japanese dictionary.

Some links to the wiki with a list of dictionary software with brief descriptions:
-iOS
-Android

I have the Kenkyuusha dictionaries in paper form. In all honesty, I pretty much only use my electronic one now. An iPod or smart phone dictionary might be a good investment, or I have a Casio that's great, including sample sentences. It's more expensive, by a lot, though, than the paper dictionaries and probably the apps, as well.

I thought of buying an iphone. many people like it and have suggested it in the websites. iphone has many kanji apps which are good for learning japanese and it also has good japanese dictionaries. electronic dictionaries are really expensive, out of my budget actually. iphone is like 150-200 dollar range. i can get this.
Boy.pockets, bertoni, thanks a lot for the suggestion and the link. quite helpful. i had thought of the iphone/ipod but had never seriously considered buying it. after your suggestion i'll look more into it.

tokyostyle, i had only looked into amazon japan. kinokuniya has it too right? i didn't even think about that website. Thank you. i don't like the shipping charges. they charge a lot as far as amazon japan is considered. i'll have to look into kinokuniya's charges. hope it's not that costly.

Does anyone know how to look up a kanji in kenkyusha's new japanese english dictionary, 4th edition. if i want to look up a certain kanji then how do i look up? since it's written all in romaji i don't quite understand. a local library has this dictionary so i wanted to know how to look up kanji before i get it. In a kanji dictionary there are options which can be used like radicals, on-kun reading etc. but how do i use this dictionary to look up a kanji?

You might want to consider an iPad as well for the bigger screen. Should be nice for reading and stuff. But if you just want something to slip in your pocket, 肌身離さず, get an iPhone/iTouch instead. Depends on your priorities.

astendra, i was going to buy the ipad as a portable laptop/slate but it lacked some features like USB which is important for me so didn't buy it. at that time my focus was on buying a slate and not on apple apps. i've heard a new ipad version is going to come out soon in late april or so i think so i'll check that out. like you said a bigger screen is going to be quite good. thanks for the suggestion. it didn't occur to me that i can also get an ipad to use iphone/ipod apps.

In a way i think i have figured it out how to look up a kanji in romaji dictionary (kenkyusha).
what i need to do is if i come across a kanji that i don't know about, i need to figure out which reading was used in that kanji by using kanji dictionary or any other online resource and when i know which reading was used, i can form the pronunciation of that kanji and then i look that word up in kenkyusha.

Is that how it is? if someone can guide me by saying whether the method is right or wrong it will be quite helpful, please.

Your approach is fine, but an electronic dictionary will make it easier to find words. Many or all of them allow you to enter the character on the screen using a pen, assuming you have a reasonable idea of stroke order. I know the iPad and iPhone have this type of support.

At this point, it's a matter of how much you want to spend to save X amount of time.

I hope I don't sound condescending. I'm just not sure which technology you've been using.

Let me share a Japanese-English dictionary that contains kanji, hiragana and katakana keyboards and content: http://japanese-dict.com/
It has a word teacher java applet program as well with which you can study your own vocabulary.
Can anyone suggest such vocabulary study program for android?

Daichi Wrote:Maybe not exactly what your looking for, but I want to throw this out there as a recommendation. If you don't mind paper and decide to make the leap to a monolingual Japanese dictionary, look for a children's dictionary. You really can do no wrong.

Then how would you look up English words?

I recommend a good electronic dictionary. No single dictionary is perfect and electronic dictionaries contain a good variety of dictionaries, including monolingual ones or even an accent dictionary, and they are small and easy to carry with you around all the time. Make sure you can input kanji by hand.

[Zgarbas]

Rather than an iPhone, wouldn't a DS work better, whilst being in a much lower price range?

(if what I'm saying is wrong please correct me, as I was planning on getting a DS for japanese learning reasons).

Zgarbas Wrote:Rather than an iPhone, wouldn't a DS work better, whilst being in a much lower price range?

(if what I'm saying is wrong please correct me, as I was planning on getting a DS for japanese learning reasons).

A lower-end Droid tablet would fall in the price range between the two, and should be able to do what you need. Plus, it would have more to offer than a DS.

Depending on how tech-savy you are, you can get a refurbished Nook Color for about 150$ and root to to have full access to the Droid operating system, which will let you install anything you want from any of the Driod market places instead of just being locked to Barnes and Nobles' stuff.