How to look up a word

[Toby38]

When I studied German, I could just look a word up in the dictionary by simply looking at the spelling and finding the word. This made reading a useful tool for study and learning the language. Japanese presents a different problem and I cannot seem to get a straight answer for how to get around the problem, even though I know thousands have crossed the same bridge.

I have several dictionaries, electronic ones which you can type in the furigana and it will give you some options about which kanji, or kanji combination it might be. The problem is, I don't know the pronunciation of the kanji(nor would most learners), and sometimes there are several.

The only answer I have gotten is "ask someone". Well, that is not useful advice because I cannot have a person sitting by me for hours and hours while I study.

Can you imagine that if English were such that you could not look a word up in the dictionary, without a person there, what you would do to learn the language?


Also, another problem is that I cannot tell where one word ends and another begins. I mean, obviously, if there is a particle, I realize that the word ended. But how about if there are 5 or 6 kanji in a row?? How many words is that? 3, 4?

I can't look it up if I don't know where the jukugo ends.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Jessi]

One tip that might help you when you use your electronic dictionary is to use the Jump function. Your dictionary should have one - when you press it, you can highlight any word on the screen and look it up in one of the dictionaries. In your case, if you look up something in the E-J dictionary but can't read the word it gives you, use the Jump function to highlight it and then press the J-E button key and you'll be able to see the reading and definition. It's an extra step but once you get used to it it's a fast way to look up any words you don't know.

In the case of long compound words, the Jump function lets you select as many characters as you want, so if you're not sure where the word ends you can play around with looking up different combinations until something comes up in the dictionary.

[Toby38]

but, actually, what I want to do is take a book, or newspaper, ora sign, or whatever, and enter the jukugo into the dictionary and find the word. But, I don't know which pronunciation to use.

[QuackingShoe]

On a computer: If you're reading something with furigana, use that. If you're reading something online, copy and paste into a dictionary. If nothing else is possible, use the handwriting part of your IME to enter the word one character at a time. Or if you already know some other word that uses the kanji, type that word in; now you've got the kanji (it's faster than opening up the danged drawing tool).

If a word has multiple pronunciations, they're generally all correct (though some more common than others), unless certain ones are tied to particular meanings. A good dictionary should probably be able to tell you if this is the case or not. But for instance, there's no practical difference between さみしい and さびしい.

It's all a hassle, I admit, but you'll get through it.

As far as knowing where a word ends, that's something that comes pretty quickly with experience. I still get mislead every now and then (largely by incredibly long strings of kana that seem to contain particles but don't), but it's honestly pretty rare. You don't really need to worry about it. But if you're on a computer and using firefox, you could always use rikaichan (dedending on what you're reading, possibly typing it in first) to scroll over each character until a word pops up.

Edit after reading your most recent post: Can you give a specific example of what you mean? I can't really remember having a lot of trouble with pronunciation of words after having looked them up, and the pronunciation is usually somewhat unimportant before you look them up.

[Toby38]

How did they look up words in the old days before cut and paste, and electronic dictionaries?

[QuackingShoe]

By radical or stroke number of the kanji, if you didn't know the reading. It was (and is) essentially the most sadistic practice ever. Your dictionary probably lets you look things up that way as well.

[Toby38]

I am actually using Kotoba, and WA on the Iphone.

[jemstone]

i actually count the number of strokes for kanji that i do not know how to read. subsequently i look up in a japanese dictionary. near the back of my dictionary has almost all the kanji group by the number of strokes, so i just browse to the correct number, and subsequently find the kanji that matches the one that i'm looking for. it will then refer me to a word number which i can find out all the readings.

if you're going to count the strokes, don't worry about the angled stroke whether it is considered two strokes (one horizontal and one vertical) or one. just count every line you see as a stroke. this is because, when i was searching for kanji in my dictionary, i often see a word that is 13 strokes (for example), and then repeated again in the 15 strokes group. that made me count them again and i realize they put the words in both groups because of this.

edit:
for example the word tsuki 月, if it were a chinese word, it has 4 strokes. but i think you'll find it in the 6 stroke group as well.

[Javizy]

I think ultimately the only way around this is to become familiar with at least the everyday use characters. Ideally, you'd know at least one word for each of them, which you can use to enter it, and be able to fall back using handwriting input when you can't remember one.

うま>馬+しか>鹿=馬鹿
ふな>船+そうぞう>創造-造=船倉

After you become familiar with enough words, guessing the reading becomes easier and easier, until you can read pretty much what you want without it being a pain in the butt. I started out with Heisig, which makes the handwriting input doable, and reading lots of things with furigana or convenient dictionaries like 'Breaking into Japanese Literature' or 'Reading Japanese with a Smile', and hundreds of PDF's on this site.

Whatever your level is, I think you'll make the most noticeable progress with remembering readings by using SRS flashcards with something like Anki, which you can sync with your iPhone. There's also Mental Case, and a few others I haven't used. If you know all this already, then just keep at it, because it's only a matter of time after you start the flashcards.

[Belton]

Paper dictionaries are organised by radical and stroke count. It's the equivalent of alphabetical order. Most will have a table of the 214 radicals (organised by stroke count) used to index words. If you use a Mac you can see them in the Character Palette. It's not that hard to identify a radical and count the strokes, maybe just a bit laborious. It's one of those skills that comes with learning about how kanji work. Most Japanese dictionaries will also have On and Kun indices. I learnt about this in pre personal computer days in an enormous Chinese dictionary.

Yes there are now more convenient ways to look up unknown kanji with the latest electronic dictionaries, drawing the kanji for instance or I've seen freeware / shareware readers that can do a multi radical lookup based on identifying multiple components to return a subset you can pick your target kanji out from, without bothering with stroke counting, essentially you are pattern matching. (Using data from the dictionary projects at Monash) I don't use my Wordtank that much these days, preferring my computer, but I'm sure it had a similar system.

If you have net access on your iphone, jisho.org gives multiple ways of looking up words.
http://iphone.jisho.org/#radicals
shows the radical search. (Purists probably won't like that the iphone formatting uses romaji rather than kana, but it's just a tool. )
I'm unfamiliar with the specific dictionaries you mention however.

Reading online is relatively easy with copy and paste or Firefox and Rikachan.

For long runs of kanji. When I see these they tend to be a single concept. (I could be mistaken though) (like those long compounds in German). Sometimes running shorter compounds together, sometimes with a prefix or suffix kanji. looking up the kanji in groups of 2 or more should give you the meaning. Mostly words or concepts are separated by kana. It's the separation of long runs of kana that I found (find) tricky.