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KyleGoetz (Offline)
Attorney at Flaw
 
Posts: 2,965
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Texas
08-05-2009, 05:24 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by popster View Post
As somebody who just started learning Japanese, I wanted to throw this question out there.

A few of you mentioned Canon G50 and Casio Ex-word. I visited Bic Camera shop and a few local retailers and notice electronic dictionaries in Japan are geared for Japanese to learn English, not the other way around.

For those with electronic dictionaries, I'd love your feedback.
Pretty much all are as you described. Obviously a store in Japan isn't going to make many products intended for students of Japanese when it's such a nonexistent market there.

There was one dictionary that had just come out when I was there that was specifically made for students of Japanese, but I can't remember what it was. However, while my G50 was made for Japanese learning English, I think this is a misleading characterization. It has a huge JP->JP dictionary and kanji dictionary (both of which are tremendously useful for an advanced learner who doesn't want a single-word English translation, but a more nuanced explanation of words), and the JP->EN and EN->JP are not lacking.

My dictionary is almost as useful, IMO, as SpaceALC. SpaceALC just (obviously) has a larger number of sample sentences.
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