Dictionary with audio readings?

[Javizy]

People might have used the encarta and dictionary.com dictionaries, which offer audio readings for each word. They don't seem to have Japanese versions, but a tool like this would be great for pronunciation practice, since you can't pick up pitch accent from reading. Does anybody know if a Japanese dictionary of this sort exists?

[Belton]

I know of one online resource that has sound files.
http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html
It mentions the NHK pronunciation dictionary (most likely in Japanese without audio files)

My understanding of pitch accent though is that it can change depending on speed of speech and also the words around a particular word. It's not completely fixed. (never mind regional accents, etc.)

Older (out of print) texts I have attempt to mark pitch accents but current texts seem to ignore it (or rely on you copying a teachers accent or the CD's accent).

I have one book that does try to mark accent (unfortunately using romaji and capitalisation, so it's hard to read). The name escapes me at the moment but I'll post it later.

I find pitch accent difficult both to hear and to reproduce. But then again I spend most of my energy on remembering the words themselves and tend to hope for the best on pitch.

Shadowing practice of phrases and listening to native dialogs seem to be the current way of achieving a good accent.

[Ulver_684]

People might have used the encarta and dictionary.com dictionaries, which offer audio readings for each word. They don't seem to have Japanese versions, but a tool like this would be great for pronunciation practice, since you can't pick up pitch accent from reading. Does anybody know if a Japanese dictionary of this sort exists?

Javizy-san!

Thank you for such great topic!

[Belton]

Having got a Premium subscription again for a while, I notice the dictionary in the learning centre has audio files with some entries (by no means all but it's a huge task and I'm sure it's slowly expanding)

The books I mentioned earlier that attempt to mark pitch accent are

Colloquial Japanese, Clarke & Hamamura, Routledge 1987

The title is very misleading as its part of a series Colloquial French, Colloquial German etc. that actually teach standard language rather than what I'd think of as colloquial. The series is still in print but I don't know if the current edition tries to mark pitch accent. I'd hope they'd be using kana rather than romaji by now.
The romaji is typeset using acute accents to indicate rising pitch. and strikethroughs to show devoiced vowels.


Japanese Step by Step, Gene Nishi, Mc Graw Hill 2001

Also tries to mark pitch accent using Capitals and underlines. It is very distracting to read.

An older book I have
Japanese for Beginners, Yoshida et al, Gakken 1984
has a short section using musical notation.


Also of note are the graded readers
レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー　にほんご よむよむ文庫
http://www.ask-digital.co.jp/tadoku/index.html
While obviously pitch accent isn't marked, they come with a CD of the stories being read aloud. So as well as reading practice you can improve your accent and listening skills.