dramaticus
New member
Registered: 2013-06-05
Posts: 3
Hello fellow Japanese learners!
Have any of you picked up a copy of Routledge's "A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese" by Yukio Tono? I was wondering what it was like inside. Does it use kanji/have furigana/have translations for the examples? If any of you would be kind enough to share photos of a couple of the dictionary pages that would be amazing! I can't decide whether to invest or not! (Also, please remember - don't upload the whole book, as that's against the rules, and is unfair on the authors etc.)
Thank you so much! 
Animosophy
Member
Registered: 2013-02-19
Posts: 180
Based on a 100 million word corpus, composed of spoken, fiction, non-fiction and news texts in current use, the dictionary provides the user with a detailed frequency-based list, as well as alphabetical and part-of-speech indices.
All entries in the frequency list feature the English equivalent and a sample sentence with English translation. The dictionary also contains 25 thematically organised lists of frequently used words on a variety of topics such as food, weather, occupations and leisure. Numerous bar charts are also included to highlight the phonetic and spelling variants across register.
Never heard of it until now, but I see it was only published in March.
The description sounds very promising. It could be a step up from the novel/blog/newspaper frequency lists freely available online, but 5000 words is rather small in comparison. If I had the cash right now, I'd probably buy it. But I don't, so I'll second dramaticus' request.
Splatted
Member
From: England
Registered: 2010-10-02
Posts: 776
Honestly it looks pretty useless to me; word frequency depends so much on what you're reading that I can't see it being that useful as a study list (the really common words will be in any basic list anyway), and you need a much larger dictionary if you want to use it to look up words you encounter. Luckily you can get larger dictionaries, such as the Oxford Japanese mini dictionary, at a fraction of the price.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying you should get the Oxford mini dictionary. I just picked a random dictionary that has more words and costs less money.
Last edited by Splatted (2013 June 05, 7:22 pm)
rich_f
Member
From: north carolina
Registered: 2007-07-12
Posts: 1708
I picked up a copy of this out of curiosity, and also because I've been wanting a well-researched frequency dictionary of Japanese for a long time.
I think this can be a valuable book for advanced beginners on up, if you want to make sure you don't have any gaps in your vocabulary, and you don't mind the cons too much.
I wouldn't recommend it for total beginners because a lot of the top 100 entries are particles, verb endings, etc., that you need to learn beforehand. After that, it starts to settle into more of a vocab book. The lack of kana/furigana doesn't help beginners, either. (Or anyone who wants to use the indexes easily.)
It's also handy to go through and review the words to see what my word use is like. I run across words I know, but don't use much.
Reading dictionaries can get boring. (For me, anyway.) I can only do it in small doses, but I keep it around the computer while I wait for things to process.
One thing I'd love to see: a 四字熟語 frequency list/dictionary.
Pros:
-Entries listed by frequency
-Sidebars explain other findings like pronunciation for words with mutliple pronunciations
-Sidebars also show frequency lists of specific topics, like animals, transportation, sports, shops, numbers, dates, etc.
-Example sentences.
-Statistical data with each entry.
-50音 order index.
-Frequency lists by part of speech.
-Index of Word Types by origin (kango/wago/garaigo/kanseigo/proper names)
Cons:
-Entry headwords are kanji->romaaji. No kana.
-No furigana in sentences.
-Sidebars are not indexed-- you have to discover then as you go.
-Needs many more pronunciation sidebars to show variations. (Could be another book!)
-50音 order index doesn't have kana to help you sort out kanji entries, nor does it have romaaji. If you don't know the kanji reading, you'll have trouble finding it.
-Part of speech frequency lists lack kana/romaaji.
-Index of Word Types by origin limited to first 1000 entries. (Huh?)
-No e-book version. (Another pile of dead tree remains to carry around. Ugh.)
-Over US$40. 高っ！
