Electronic Dictionaries

[rhondavb]

皆さんー

I brought this up during the week that there were no podcasts, and I got a few responses, but now that we have these wonderful forums here now, I thought I would try posting again to see if I can get some more user feedback.

I'm considering an electronic dictionary purchase (i.e. Canon G55, V80, etc.). They are very pricy, but lugging around my japanese dictionary and kanji dictionary is getting awfully heavy.

So, my questions are: Do you have one? Was it worth it? At what point in your studies did you feel like it was time to get one? Which one did you get, etc.?

To give you some background on me. I'm just starting my 2nd year of Japanese this Fall, so I'd say I'm an upper beginner/lower intermediate (is that a contradiction?)

Any info would be much appreciated.

-Rhonda

[kij]

i bought a canon G55 after moving to japan from whiterabbitpress and i use it every single day. it was so worth the money - the only thing i use more is my ipod

[PeteS]

I don't know the model no. but I use a Casio dictionary which has a stylus and touchscreen. As well as standard English / Japanese dictionary (which doesn't seem as comprehensive as some admittedly) it has a Kanji / Japanese lookup using kanji you draw on the screen which has come in very useful when I'm trying to find what something is without the benefit of any readings.

[jacksonboyle]

I've been thinking about buying a dictionary too, and am leaning heavily towards a Nintendo DS. There's new kanji software available for it. I read quite an informative article here.
Although it concludes by saying if you don't have a DS then best get a dictionary instead. Of course, I'm keen on a DS so I can play Mario Kart on wifi...

[Nate]

I have been studying Japanese for about 7 months so far and I have a long way to go obviously. I have looked at the Electronic Dictionaries, but they all seem to be geared for the Intermediate and Advanced users, but nothing for the Beginners. At least none that I have found.

Is there, in fact, an ED one could use even though they are a Beginner?

Arigatou gozaimasu.

ネイト

[Belton]

I bought a Canon G55 and love it. (heavily discounted at Amazon.jp)

BUT

It's a dictionary for Japanese people learning English, so it's not immediately as useful as it might be to an English speaker. You have to cross reference to get readings for entries. So oddly it can be slower than a paper dictionary. But it's improving my reading!
I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner.

If you have a PDA (palmOS), PAdict is worth a look. It uses the EDICT data to make what was once my favourite dictionary. It even has kanji writing recognition (of sorts) It doesn't need a Japanese operating system.
http://padict.sourceforge.net/

If you forgive my shameless self publicity I wrote about dictionaries at my website
http://www.shiawase.co.uk/reading/jisyo.html

mata ne

[Brody]

I have a good one.

However, I mostly do my Japanese things near my computer, in which case I use alc.co.jp or Jim Breen's website as my dictionary. I like these far better than the electronic dictionary. I take my dictionary to school or anywhere else I can't take my computer, but I like the internet far better.

Reasons being:

Searching is far easier
There are far more words/examples
I get many more example sentences
I can search through examples
etc etc

I am kind of disappointed that I bought my electronic dictionary before finding these websites. However, if you can't get to a computer, I have a Canon Wordtank G55. As far as elec dictionaries go, this one is very good.

[Alan]

I've got two

The Casio XD-470 allows you to draw kanji & get the meanings, which is quite useful. However, it expects the handdrawn version of each kanji. If you try to copy one from a book, sometimes it gets the wrong one because of that. You can even draw a sequence of Kanji to get a compound. However the lookup is in japanese. To get the english, you have to look at the displayed entry, remember the hiragana, then select the japanese-english translation option & type it in again. Furthermore the dictionary is very very small (in number of words). No english manual, but once you've manually translated all the menu options, it is easy enough. Overall, handy to find that unknown kanji (if you're lucky), but useless as a dictionary.

Canon G70: I was going to get a G55 when I went to Japan in April, but the first shop I went to was out of stock, but had the more expensive G70. It costs a lot more, but has a much bigger Japanese->English dictionary. It's my dictionary of choice. Furthermore the super-jump facility allows you to highlight any word and search all the dictionaries for it. Thus for a really obscure word, you can use the Japanese-Japanese dictionary, then use super-jump to look up any words you don't know in the explanation. Sounds difficult, and it is a bit. However much easier than the other option, which is not being able to look up the word. There are some other nice features, like displaying the stroke order graphically of the more common kanji. You can't look up kanji by drawing them though. Comes with a shortform english manual, which doesn't describe all the functions. I still haven't quite figured out how they all work.

I also considered (but didn't buy) the Canon V80. This is a chinese/japanese/english dictionary. It is really aimed at chinese though and the size of the Japanese->English dictionary is slightly smaller than the G55 and much smaller than the G70. The attraction is than you can draw kanji for lookup.

There's a bunch more dictionaries. Some take extra programmable modules. Casio do a big range. Don't know how accessable they are to english speakers though.

Overall I think the G55 is great value, but the G70 is better, but at a high price.

[Nate]

Very good info Brody-san. I like using my computer as well to do searches for Japanese info. I just loaded the JEDict v4.0 and love it. I also have scads of links for other helpful info on Japanese. Though I have a long way to go I am learning and that makes this whole adventure in Japanese FUN.

Arigatou gozaimasu.

ネイト