Dictionary

[mella]

I've ordered from amzon NTC's New Japanese English Character Dictionary, which enlist only kanji... Which dictionary do you use for hiragana and katakana?

[Jessi]

I'm a little confused as to what you're looking for. When it comes to dictionaries there are Japanese-English, English-Japanese (and these two are often combined), and kanji dictionaries. There's no such thing as a dictionary for learning hiragana and katakana, but there are plenty of workbooks that can help you out! I looked up some here. Did that help?

[mella]

Hi Jessi, thank you for your answer. I would clarify my question: I've already learned hiragana and katakana, but I've only a kanji dictionary and I don't know where to search terms like ringo, ano and other terms who aren't written in kanji.
I can recognize the meaning of simpler terms like pan, computeya...
I was asking if there a Japanese-English dictionary which enlist only the non-kanji terms, because I've already a Kanji dictionaries.
Thank you.

[Jessi]

Okay! I see what you mean now.
In that case, you just need a Japanese-English dictionary! There are two different types:
One type is where you look up the words using romaji. Here is one example of a good one. So to look up ringo you'd just go to R and find ringo.

There are also ones where you look up the word using hiragana (and katakana where necessary). Here is an example of one that is really good for beginners/intermediate learners. So in this case, you'd look up りんご、there's no romaji in this one. Please be aware though that the words are in order of the hiragana chart - it helps to really know that order before using a dictionary like this. If you get used to it, though, I think this kiind of dictionary has its advantages over a romaji one!

Hope that helped

[seifip]

I'm using Tagaini Jisho (http://tagaini.net/) both for translation and kanji information (stroke order etc.)