しあわせ

PAdict is the dictionary of choice to run on a Palm system. It’s very useful; a full dictionary that will fit in your pocket. It has a small memory footprint for such a large database, 19907 entries version running in about 2MB or 49000 in 6MB, and version 0.9 now allows you to install the full EDICT of 109329 in 12MB. If English isn’t your first language there are also French-Japanese and German-Japanese dictionaries. It’s really fast at searching and has a variety of input options, English, romaji (converts to kana), kana (using a keypad), by radical and interestingly using kanji writing recognition but your writing and stroke order has to be good. English and romaji are probably the fastest ways to input. kana input needs to be tapped out on a chart which isn’t very fast and getting ” or ° is fiddly. It uses a high res font which looks stunning on a 320×320 screen. Kanji input is reasonably good. There are animated kanji stroke order diagrams which makes the dictionary even more useful. It also has a built in multi choice quiz to build vocabulary and you can set up custom lists to store searches and build up vocab lists. And it’s all free.

The Drawbacks. The way JEdict is formatted means that you can get multiple entries with the same English definitions but different kanji. And there are no clues as to which one is correct. You can’t do wildcard searches. Also it indexes on the character order in a word which means you can’t look up kanji compounds very well unless the kanji appears as the first character. The results are limited to 50 and I’m not sure how they are ranked. This means that sometimes the definition you need doesn’t appear in the results even though it is in the dictionary. There are no usage notes.

Canon seem to have the best reputation for denshijisyo. Probably because the menus can be set to English and at one time you could get English manuals. (Now there is only a single sheet get started guide.) There are 3 types. The V series (deluxe) which is aimed at Chinese learners, The G series (general) aimed at English learners, The C series (compact) aimed at high school students and tourists.
I felt that having Chinese features I didn’t need would only confuse me and it wasn’t worth paying the extra for the more advanced features of the V series. (Although the ability to write kanji on the screen was tempting.) The C series was interesting. It is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. And when I was looking Amazon.jp had an end of series C30 for about 8000円. But I felt the extra money for a G series (also a good price at 50% off on Amazon for 23000円) was worth it.

The G55 is about the size of a slim A6 notebook. It fits a jacket pocket and is easy to put in a backpack. It has a good size screen and QWERTY keyboard. Input is similar to on a computer where you use a modified version of Hepburn notation and it is converted to kana on the fly. The device also “knows” when to use kana and when to use English. The main dictionaries for a student of Japanese are the Readers plus English to Japanese, the Japanese to English dictionary, a katakana dictionary and the Kanjigen. There are also Japanese Dictionary and Thesaurus (too advanced for me yet), and Oxford English Dictionary, Thesaurus and Colocations (useful but not the main point here).

The main difficulty with using a dictionary aimed at Japanese people is … it’s written in Japanese! やばい！ So more often than not there are no furigana and The entries aren’t a straightforward word to translated word list. You need to get a feel for what are explanations of a word. Also unfortunately the kanjigen doesn’t give English core meanings. This means you have to look up words in an entry to find out pronunciation and English meaning. This is the Jump feature which is very important to understand. With this feature you can select any word in an entry and look that word up in all the dictionaries on the WordTank. This is essential. Once you have mastered this looking words up starts to get easy. Looking up kanji is slightly harder as it helps if you know the reading. If not you find the character by stroke count and radical. For compounds you find the first character then you can get a list of words starting with that character.

Other useful features are a history of words you have looked up and the ability to add words to a custom list. There are 3 font sizes so you can make characters bigger and easier to read. Many kanji in the kanjigen also have animated stroke order diagrams.

At the time of writing this I have just gotten the WordTank. I expect that it will completely supersede my Clie with PADict as a portable device. I already feel it’s improving my kanji ability by making me read them without furigana and having to remember the characters for the various dictionary types and buttons.

–update 13Mar08–
It is now possible to buy Canon Wordtanks in JP Books in London. They might demo one for you as well if you ask. I would imagine the price is high however. (100 円 = £1 conversion is usual)

Also I find I use my computer most of the time rather than my Wordtank. even in Japan when i don’t have my laptop handy I tended to use my Nintendo DS as being more convenient.
I’m sure I’ll go back to the canon again as I become more literate.
I still have dreams of an iPod touch with proper input-output handwriting recognition maybe and a Wi-Fi network everywhere!

Oxford University Press

This is a good first dictionary. It does use kana to list Japanese entries which can be difficult at first but the sooner you learn kana the better. It also gives the kanji if you want to try using them. The biggest feature of this dictionary are the usage notes. In English to Japanese it will give pointers on idioms and phrases so that you can avoid a word for word un-natural translation. Most entries also have example sentences. There are additional usage notes and basic grammar in a central section. The latest edition also has a new phrases section.
A very useful dictionary.

Jack Halpern, (Kondansha International)

Although I prefer an electronic dictionary, a paper version can sometimes be more useful; not least in that it’s easier to search for something that you’re not quite sure about and more satisfying to browse.

This dictionary has several methods of searching. The traditional Radical lookup method; an On Kun index, so if you know the pronunciation you can find the kanji (of course the number of homonyms is amazing); and the method by which the dictionary is organised — the SKIP method. The SKIP method classifies Kanji by pattern and stroke count of the subpatterns. So its fairly easy to break down an unknown kanji and find it. Common mistakes are listed at the end of some entries to point you at the correct entry. There’s also an interesting listing of characters based on their frequency of use in newspapers.

The entries all have a stroke by stroke order diagram to help you learn to write it. The pronunciation entries are in romaji not kana. Meanings are in English. With each kanji there are several compounds with the kanji entry in different positions in the compound not just as the first character.