A JET alum e-mailed me with an interesting question about electronic dictionaries. Please post responses below for the benefit of others (or feel free to e-mail your response to jetwit /atto/ jetwit /dotto/ com.)
My trusty stand-by for 5 years died. I had a Cannon IDX-9700. Do you know of any place [in the U.S.] where I can buy one and what model to recommend now? I’m looking for something originally in Japanese- I’ve found that was better for Kanji, but maybe things have changed now.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
8 comments so far...
You can find pretty much any electronic dictionary from the Japanese Amazon, at amazon.co.jp.
(Also in English, http://www.amazon.co.jp/In-English/b/ref=topnav_switchLang_gw?ie=UTF8&node=1094656)
I bought my third electronic dictionary two years ago, the Canon Wordtank V30, and have generally been happy with it. The kanji dictionary is excellent, allowing you to look up kanji by entering more than one radical. I used to have a Sharp as well, which generally provided better definitions, but the kanji lookup wasn’t as good.
Perhaps it’s not what you’re really looking for, but what I have been thrilled with as an electronic dictionary is my Nintendo DS Lite and the software called “Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten.” Occasionally it has not had advanced words that I’ve tried to look up, but the feature that I find particularly helpful is the input screen on which you can draw kanji that you don’t know with a stylus. It’s much faster than using the stroke and radical method of looking up unfamiliar kanji (at least for me), and it gives you both the hiragana and the English definition. This software has 3 dictionaries: Japanese-English, English-Japanese, and Japanese-Japanese. I’ve found it to be sufficient for an advanced level Japanese class in which I’m studying business-level Japanese with typical vocab that you’d hear on NHK’s nightly news. You can get the DS Lite console at any game shop, and I found the software on Amazon.
Good luck!
Montana
I too recommend the Nintendo DS ($130) and Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten. Often I don’t know the yomikata, so romaji lookup is out. Counting strokes and radical hunting is quite tedious when you have to do it often. It’s a lot faster for me to just write out the kanji.
The DS software includes 3 full dictionaries (Genius J/E, E/J, and Meikyou J/J), making it one of the cheapest and most cost-effective handwriting-input electronic dictionaries on the market.
The added benefit of the DS is that there are several dictionaries available, and you can also play Japanese word quiz games and other software. I have “Mojipittan” (the Sony PSP version is a lot better). I learned a lot of Japanese by trying to understand what people in the games were saying.
The last electronic dictionary I had was a Seiko Japanese-English-Chinese one. I tend to like Seikos in general, for no particularly good reason. Anything that has Kōjien and Kanjigen are pretty much good enough in my book.
But when that Seiko inexplicably died after only 2 years and I was out \30,000 and left with no dictionary, I vowed never to buy another electronic dictionary again. I don’t need portability—pretty much the only time I need dictionaries these days is when I’m sitting at my computer. So I bought the PC version of Kōjien and called it a day. Between Kōjien and the various other dictionaries available online, I find that I just don’t need a portable electronic dictionary.
Major dictionaries available online:
Eijirō EJ/JE: http://eow.alc.co.jp/
Daijirin and Daijisen JJ, Progressive EJ/JE, New Global EJ, New Century JE: http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
EDICT EJ/JE: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
[…] Japanese-English dictionaries are very popular among Japanese language learners, and the subject of which to buy is a perennial classic as there are constantly newer and better models coming out. Having been […]
A Florida JET alum shares:
http://www.thejapanshop.com
They are based out of Florida actually
If you already have an iPhone/iPod touch, there are some good dictionaries available in the Apps store. I tried a few free ones, which is sufficient for basic lookups (based on Jim Breen’s JEDICT). There are also professional produced ones. Head over and check it out.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/
write with your fingers on the touch screen.
A JET alum from South Carolina had this suggestion:
J-E e-dictionaries can be purchased online for residents of the US.
http://www.fujisan.com/online/elistup?category=113~s344-01004755119-e~