Quote:
Originally Posted by clintjm
Canon Wordtanks are usually the best as they also design their product for usage by foreigners of the Japanese Language. They were the first brand to do this. Also they are built like tanks literally... they last a long time. I have one over about a decade old now and its still kicking. A good one (most all do today) will let you lookup kanji combinations such as 大人. For example, I lookup the left most kanji and I want to find the other kanji without knowing how to pronounce (input) the right most. With handwriting technology recognition with IME functionality built into most these days this feature is kind of mute. But the point is that the "Adult" test (both basic kanji) and a combination that almost all Japanese would know used to be exempt from the "kanji dictionary portion" of dictionaries and you could not "jump" to it; because the designers of the dictionary didn't have the foreign student of Japanese in mind.
PDAs are also awesome tools. Palm pilots have a lot of good software to assists in Japanese. Other PDAs also have some good software. Your average Palm M515 cost is pocket change and will last forever without a charge. Newer palms cost a little more, but they do more too and they can run more apps.
These days phones do too. Symbian based phones also has some great software including IMEs etc.
I've so tempted to get a new electronic dictionary with a colour screen and HD-TV tuner built into it ^^/
what better way to learn than from Japanese TV streamed all the time.
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Hi,
thanks for the reply and the +1 for the wordtanks.
I am leaning toward the PDA system.
i tried an older Sharp Papyrus yesterday, and by etension, whilst I think I could work out how to use a Casio ex-word with Japanese menus, and become comfortable, I feel I might be spending a good portion of my time working out it all out initially.
The Jump function is essential for me, that is look up unknown kanji and jump to the english description (even if it means going through Kanji to Hiragana, hiragana to English. I think all of the more expensive models will do this.
cheers.