I know this may sound stupid but could you give me an example lets say I was looking up the word 行く in a mono dictionary.

Honestly, don't stress about it.  You don't need to go completely J-J right away. There's no harm in doing a little of both.
When I'm looking up new vocabulary word, I check the J-J definition first. If I can understand it, then it gets written in my notebook and put into Anki.  If not, then I look at the J-E definition and use that instead.
At the beginning, there were very few J-J definitions that I could understand, but I'm now gradually using more and more.  It just seems more efficient and less confusing than doing the 'branching' method of looking up the J-definitions of the words that were used in the definition of the word that you were originally looking up.

Last edited by quark (2013 April 14, 5:51 pm)

Isn't the most important thing understanding? J-J dictionaries can be important in clearing up poor translations, or extending on non-trivial definitions, but they're far from the holy grail. Your choice of dictionary isn't going to improve your Japanese unless it's actually helping you to learn words.

I think this step will help you a lot. Using Japanese to learn Japanese is obviously better than learning english to learn Japanese. Now  a days there's rikai-sama (looking up words that are in sanseido easily. I remember the guy from ajatt recommended that dictionary since the definitions are shorter and simpler.  You know what the whole "oh i don't know the words in the defintion" thing isn't even a big deal because there's rikai-chan and rikai-sama. So you can easily look up a word in the j-j dictnoary. and if you want you can look up the japanese definition to the japanese word you don't know in the japanese dictionary entry with rikai-sama. 

I only do J-J now a days. The only time I use J-E now a days is to look up the word that's in Japanese to ENGLISH because I can't remember or I wonder how do you translate that to english. I used to do J-E and then i switched J-J following the AJATT advice ( I was around 2000 cards? he said something 1000 words or something. I waited till it was more but even though i came across stuff that made me go wtf/ i don't know). During my initial use of J-J i made conscious effort to not use J-E unless it was reallllllly dire. And now a days  i also try googling the word or chiebukuroing it ( depending on the word i can tell which one will give me what i want) . Sometimes the dictionary definition doesn't cut it (I need more explanation by a japanese person with examples and whatnot)

Like anything the more you do, the more you get used to it.  so go for it and use j-e if you really need to.

And the ruigo (synonym? ) explanation on goo .ne is mad helpful
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/thsrs/13722/m0u/
obviously it doesn't make any sense to use english to explain ruigo as far as efficiency is concerned.

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2013 April 14, 9:18 pm)

Yeah, I think it's bad to think you have to necessarily "switch" 100% right away. Mix for a while. Use both at the same time. I, too, occasionally use J-E together with J-J for proper nouns and words based in Buddhist beliefs and such.

You're greatly overstating the benefit of J-J dictionaries.  There are disadvantages to using them as well, no matter what your level.

I tend to use J->E dictionaries for sentence examples with English translations, and I use J->J dictionaries for precise definitions, and I use EDICT (mostly via rikai) for a quick English gloss when that's all I need.

I think it is worth spending some time looking words up in J->J first and only looking them up in J->E after you've gotten what you can from the J->J, and I can see it being worth looking up some known words - dictionaries have their own idiomatic way of phrasing things (very tersely!) ; forcing yourself for a period at least to go to J->J first will force you to get used to that, and after you're comfortable you can use whatever dictionary for its own advantages.

As for being a gateway to fluency, I think the only 'going monolingual' that truly matters is when you 'go monolingual' in your own head and read Japanese words and understand them without thinking of an English translation. I think that comes from reading more Japanese, not from the language of your dictionary.

howtwosavealif3 wrote:

I think this step will help you a lot. Using Japanese to learn Japanese is obviously better than learning english to learn Japanese. Now  a days there's rikai-sama (looking up words that are in sanseido easily. I remember the guy from ajatt recommended that dictionary since the definitions are shorter and simpler.  You know what the whole "oh i don't know the words in the defintion" thing isn't even a big deal because there's rikai-chan and rikai-sama. So you can easily look up a word in the j-j dictnoary. and if you want you can look up the japanese definition to the japanese word you don't know in the japanese dictionary entry with rikai-sama. 

I only do J-J now a days. The only time I use J-E now a days is to look up the word that's in Japanese to ENGLISH because I can't remember or I wonder how do you translate that to english. I used to do J-E and then i switched J-J following the AJATT advice ( I was around 2000 cards? he said something 1000 words or something. I waited till it was more but even though i came across stuff that made me go wtf/ i don't know). During my initial use of J-J i made conscious effort to not use J-E unless it was reallllllly dire. And now a days  i also try googling the word or chiebukuroing it ( depending on the word i can tell which one will give me what i want) . Sometimes the dictionary definition doesn't cut it (I need more explanation by a japanese person with examples and whatnot)

Like anything the more you do, the more you get used to it.  so go for it and use j-e if you really need to.

And the ruigo (synonym? ) explanation on goo .ne is mad helpful
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/thsrs/13722/m0u/
obviously it doesn't make any sense to use english to explain ruigo as far as efficiency is concerned.

This is all baseless shill rhetoric, which is all you get when you follow AJATT. Dictionaries are there to define; what people want to avoid is a lack of clarity. This means inaccurate, ambiguous J-E translations and vague, example-less J-J definitions. Looking up 爪立つ in 大辞林 didn't tell me it's a useless word and that I should use つま先立ちをする any more than 'to stand on tiptoe' did.

Avoiding J-E to the point of misunderstanding and time-wasting offers no benefit at all and won't magically improve your Japanese. It's as deluded as the English schools in Japan that refuse to utter a word of Japanese. Try looking up something like 胡麻 or 陶器 for a reality check. And how do you deal with katakana words and definitions that include English anyway?

Regarding the benefit of J-J and J-E, I'd like to use my experience using E-Romanian and E-E. I switched to using exclusively E-E about 10 years ago. While you do get extra nuance (especially when it comes to words which are translated using the same word, which happens a lot when translating from English as it has a way wider vocab than other languages), you lose points when it comes to matching the words from one language to another. This is now a big problem for me as I'm basically reading En-Ro dictionaries in preparation for my translations MA, since I know the words in English very well, and the words in Romanian, but I can't match them up well. Then there's words which can easily be directly translated without losing much (names of trees, flowers, foods) where I'm completely useless since i just think of them as "a type of tree/flower/food".

I think the main pro monolingual dictionaries argument is becoming self-sufficient in the target language, which is of course important, but it depends on what you want to use the language for, I guess. I noticed having issues in J-Ro translation classes in which I see a Japanese word, can picture it/explain it, but for the life of me I can't think of a direct equivalent. I'm thinking of making the switch back to J-E dictionaries for this reason.

@Zgarbas

Some great points. I've thought about the exact same thing when people say they just use sentences without any back. I didn't mention it myself because I figured translation isn't important for everyone, but it does make me wonder how well I actually understand the nuance of a word when I can't express it in my L1.

@howtwosavealif3

My post sounded a bit abrasive, but it's nothing personal - I just can't stand anything related to AJATT. I mentioned katakana and definitions containing English, because I was wondering how the more brainwashed among the disciples would spiritually reconcile this with their unwavering J-J commitment.

As for 胡麻, I don't think the images or the J-J definition guarantee someone simply understands it's sesame. There's nothing lost here by using J-E. People should incorporate whatever resources and methods they like into learning, and you seem to agree with that. I just have issues with the idea of (or at least the practice of preaching about) walking tightropes to avoid a quick J-E lookup when it's not only helpful and convenient but may actually be the better option.

As a learner with the intention to be fully self sufficient as the target language as I am in my native language, monolingual dictionaries will be, at some point, of a similar importance as English dictionaries are for my English understanding. Yet there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding (and I'm going to name a name which tends to evoke emotionalism, but try to look beyond that) about the concept and some of this I attribute to the almost dependance many people seem to have in following what Khatzmoto at AJATT has researched and prepackaged for the general audience.

Especially the concept of switching to mono-lingual dictionaries after the arbitrary (and without merit, in my opinion) number of X (1000 or some such) mined sentences in the target language. Yes, using the target language to understand the target language can provide a sense of understanding which ultimately a translation cannot obtain, however at what cost? Most of those using English as their language of choice are likely to be native English speakers (or, like many of the forum members here, not native but f**k me may as well be; better than many natives I've spoken to) and in such their conceptual understanding of the world has a strong association to that language. To simply discard many years worth of complex neurological networks linking up to various sectors of our brain which have honed a greater understanding of the nuanced and idiosyncratic phenomenon that is to exist, is almost unnervingly wasteful.

In due time, with enough repeated exposure, many of these conceptual mappings of our language regions of the brain with eventually adapt to rationalizing the world through the lens and locus of our experiences, as it once did with the language before it. But being able to use the native language as a temporary scaffolding, even in the "advance" stages of learning, provides support, not a crutch.

It does remind somewhat or the similar argument (again, popularized heavily from within AJATT) of "grammar does not exist/don't learn grammar". Yet being able to use already learned grammatical and linguistic concepts, along with a native language accessibility, allows for targeted study of patterns and nuances (made especially easier with the use of the three popular volumes of A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar), as opposed to handing things simply as they come.

I think a lot of people misunderstand the functions of language, and often confuse the map for the territory- particularly in respect to the misinterpretation of Antimoon's 10k Sentence Method, popularized by AJATT, by not taking into account the group was already heavily studied in English before they began the project.

tokyostyle wrote:

For what it's worth AJATT isn't alone is advocacy of transitioning to monolingual resources.  JALUP spends quite a bit of time on this subject and how important it is to switch once you've gotten to the intermediate stage.

I probably should have elucidated a little more on that, given how the name can turn a topic rancid. To be honest I consider JALUP and a few other similar sites to be, in many ways, sort of "followers" of AJATT, using their own platform to further expand some of the concepts with their own twist.

It is hard to describe without it sounding derogatory, or demeaning to the individual efforts and products/brands they've built for themselves. Even though I don't mean it to be so, I fear people will take it in such a manner regardless.

JALUP seems to be far more structured than a few of the other sites I've seen.