Nobody ever said to put stuff in your SRS that you don't understand. All I'm saying is that you can learn with context and without using a dictionary to look up every word. But I also say you can put stuff in your SRS, even without looking up words.

Rikaichan is not something I would ever use, because of the English translations. All I want it for is to look up the readings. At most, I would consider a J-J dic, but never a J-E dic. That's it. The rest of the learning comes from reading it. And that's all you need to do to learn, is to read it. Even if you don't look up stuff, you will still learn, and will still be able to learn from context. Because you will undoubtedly understand a lot more than you think, and it will not be the hellfire and death to your Japanese learning Tobberoth imagines it will be.

It's not slower. Looking up in a J-E dictionary is unhealthy and leads to bad habits. Looking up in a J-J dictionary takes a bit of time and is very unmotivating to have to interrupt when reading.

Last edited by alyks (2008 October 29, 7:35 pm)

alyks wrote:

It's not slower. Looking up in a J-E dictionary is unhealthy and leads to bad habits. Looking up in a J-J dictionary takes a bit of time and is very unmotivating to have to interrupt when reading.

Another AJATT fanatic idea, sigh. No, looking a word up in a J-E dictionary is NOT unhealthy. It will NOT make your Japanese bad. It does NOT lead to bad habits. This is similar to when people say it's detrimental to your Kanji knowledge to review a kanji more often than the SRS tells you to.

Yes, looking up a word in a J-J dictionary is way superior, it gives you a much better understanding of the word and gives you a better ability to use it correctly afterwards. That doesn't mean it's in any way BAD to look up a japanese word in a J-E dictionary. If I see a sentence in japanese with a word I don't know and I don't understand the sentence because of it, it's an awesome tool. In a few seconds, I can get the general idea of what the word means and suddenly the sentence makes perfect sense. Even better when people are beginners at japanese, they don't understand the Japanese definition anyway so how could they possibly use it?

As for looking up every single word up in a J-J dictionary being unmotivating, I agree 100%.  It seems were talking about different things again in this aspect, you seem to think I mean everytime you see a japanese word you don't understand, you HAVE to look it up in a J-J dictionary RIGHT away and you HAVE to learn it, right then and there. That isn't what I mean, if I'm reading a chapter of Shinchan in japanese there's no way I'm going to look up every word I don't understand, I'm reading it to enjoy it, not to study (though of course, I'm studying automatically as I read japanese). What I'm talking about is when you activly study. When you activly want to learn a japanese word, there's no faster way than looking it up in a J-J dictionary. I agree with you, you could find several sentences containing the word, put them in your SRS and learn them by context, but that WOULD be slower. You should of course do that ANYWAY because even if you understand the word form a dictionary, you still need to see it in context to learn how to use it properly, but it's still a good idea to look it up to learn what it means before you start learning to use it. Which is why I look up every word I don't know which I enter into my SRS, learning it from JUST from context when I can learn it faster by looking in a dictionary is just not smart IMO.

It's an interesting goal indeed, but I'm personally of the opinion that most Japanese share with me: You can't become Japanese. You can learn their language and you can speak it soooo well, but you will never be the same as someone born in Japan, just like you could never be a Swede like me, and just like I can never become an American like you. I mean, you're reading my English right now. I've used S-E dictionaries a lot in my years of learning English, I'm still confident in my vocabulary usage. The important point isn't to disregard J-E dictionaries, the important point is to realize exactly what you said: Japanese and English words aren't the same. That doesn't mean you can't get a very very good indication of what a japanese word is by using several English ones. What does nani mean? It means what. It isn't the same thing as the English word what, but it really doesn't matter, the subtle differences isn't THAT important, and whether you learned 何 from context or from a J-E dictionary, you will use it just as well after a year of Japanese studies.

So while I certainly see where you're coming from and share your goal, I don't really understand your fears because I personally do not feel I connect my Japanese to English in any way because of my techniques. I use English translations from time to time when I need them. I learned many words from J-E dictionaries and still use them nativly, because I realize the english translations are approximations. If the english translation says a word can't be used a certain way but my experience says otherwise, who do you think I will listen to?

What a J-E dictionary does, is explain a word you do not understand with words you understand. It isn't perfect, but then again, neither is a J-J definition. I mean, some words can't even be defined because they have so many different meanings and mean different things in different situations. Even a native person might not know how to use a word perfectly at all times, so there is IMO nothing to fear from J-E translations because while they aren't pure, nothing else is. All you have to do is be critical of what it says in the dictionary.

EDIT: I'm actually pretty sure I've read somewhere that it's actually a GOOD idea to couple languages you're studying with other languages since it gives you more connections. For example, instead of just learning that 今 means the present, learn that it means "now", that it means "nu" (swedish) and that it means "chigum" (korean). Don't know the truth in it, but I have noticed that i remember kanji better if I not only use the english keyword but make a swedish translation of the keyword and story and remember that as well. Could be that I'm simply putting more effort into that though.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2008 October 29, 8:40 pm)

Squintox wrote:

Can anyone help me here? I can't find the Rikaichan-words.jar file anywhere.

Do you mean the one already on your computer, or the one to download from the linked page?

Squintox wrote:

The one that's already in my computer, I've used the search function, even searched all .jar files, still can't find it.

Have you already installed the rikaichan English dictionary plugin?  You'll need to install that first if this is your first time using rikaichan.

The Rikaichan-word file is nowhere to be found though

Most odd.  Windows, Mac, other?

To avoid cluttering the thread further, feel free to contact me on Skype: nathanaellaw.  If you use another IM service (Google Talk, MSN, etc.) instead you can send me an e-mail with your info.

Last edited by Nathanael (2008 October 31, 8:37 am)