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Looking for a good, large English-Japanese Japanese-English dictionary!!
Hi,
I am an intermediate learner of Japanese, and it has been very frustrating to find out that large publishing houses like Oxford and Longman have never come out with a large, physical (i.e. not electronic) English-Japanese, Japanese-English dictionary. My Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary is very good, but it has too few words for me to express a full range of emotions and thoughts in Japanese. On the other hand, excellent resources like http://www.jisho.org literally yield thousands of translations. Many of these translations are outdated or not in common use, and I cannot find this out unless I speak to a nihonjin. I need something like the Kenkyusha's New Japanese - English Dictionary http://www.amazon.com/Kenkyushas-New...5505046&sr=1-1, but not for $500!!! Can anyone please shed some light on this situation?! Thanks, -- Mike |
I have a suggestion.
There is a software for the Nintendo DS called 漢字そのままds楽引辞典 (kanji sono mama DS rakubiki jiten). It is essentially a kanji dictionary for Japanese people. It has many kanji quizes and functions that will not be useful for you. However, as almost a side function it has a very useful dictionary. The dictonary has various features like jumping and different uses of words in actual sentences. On top of that, due to the DSs touch panel, you can write kanji that you see-- it may be challenging sometimes because if your stroke order is not right, you will get a different kanji... however, there is a feature that reveals similar kanji, which is very useful. It also stores all of your searches until you turn off your DS. You can also save different words and even make flash card collections. I got this brand new while I was in college for about $50. I already had a DS, so it was a VERY good buy. I got years of use out of it. In fact, I still use it from time to time. My wife sometimes uses it to practice kanji! I can't recommend this software enough. However, I have to warn you that the interface might be overwhelming. The features might not all pop out at you or be obvious from the get go. I managed to figure most of it out during my intermediate years at college. There might be a guide/menu translation online somewhere. The dictionary is not as expansive as electronic dictionaries-- it might compete with the older ones, but definitely no with new ones. I never really had any big problems though. The touch screen bein as big as it is is a huge thing though. To get that function on an electronic dictionary raises the price quite a bit as far as I know. Needless to say, I used to carry it around everywhere with me in college. I used my original DS so much (because of this software... I considered selling it until I found out that this software existed!!) that a lot of the grey paint has worn off to reveal the white plastic underneath. If you already have a DS, this is a must buy. If you don't have a DS, I can still recommend it. Just get a cheap used DS and have at it. I'd bet you could get both the hardware and the software for under $100. One more warning- I recently got my wife a DSL, which has built in software. One of the built in softwares is a version of this software without any English dictionaries. I didn't realize this and was caught by surprise. But I still have my original software so it's just a matter of taking that out whenever we want to look something up with it. |
Steven,
Speaking as a teacher, nothing can really replace a good paper dictionary during the learning process. Yes, I have access to many very good 電子辞書, both on my iPhone and my DS, but this is not what I need. I need a comprehensive and up-to-date paper reference. Tonight, I have searched on Amazon Japan and found the Lighthouse English-Japanese (5th ed.) for ¥3045 and the Lighthouse Japanese-English (5th ed.) for ¥2,730. The price is decent enough, but shipping to Canada is about ¥3,000, which means that I have to pay about CAD $70 per book. Now I have to ask one of my Japanese friends (or an expat) to buy it for me and send it to me using the cheapest means possible (or I might just order the damn thing). |
I'm not trying to be offensive, but why do you think that a paper dictionary will be better than an electronic one? One of my favorite features of an electronic dictionary is the fact that they show a lot of words in context. I personally have never found a paper dictionary with that aspect. I've found a lot of paper dictionaries to be outdated-- that or they have very limited or misleading translations (this could just be that I've had bad luck with paper dictionaries though haha). That's not to say those same problems wont ever occur in an electornic dictionary. I guess some people might be more comfortable with paper dictionaries though.
Personally speaking, an electronic dictionary is way more useful. But that's just me-- is there something specific you want to accomplish with a new dictionary? That might help people make some suggestions. By the way, when you say 'intermediate', what do you mean? Does that mean that you have gone through intermediate textbooks? Or are you at a more 'advanced-intermediate' level? Are you better at speaking or writing? I bought a lot of stuff during my 'intermediate' years and didn't find it useful until recently. I personally found grammar dictionaries to be more useful than dictionaries up through my so-called 'advanced' textbooks in college. At any rate, I hope you can find what you're looking for. By the way, when I was searching for info on one of the dictionaries you found, I found this article-- http://ijl.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/4/295.full.pdf I didn't get all the way through it yet but what I read was quite interesting. It's a little outdated (1989) though. Here's the abstract if you're interested: The aim of this paper is to impart the recent efforts of dictionary making in Japan, focusing attention on English-Japanese learners' dictionaries currently used in secondary schools. A brief historical note on bilingual dictionaries leads to a discussion of some of the problems involved in their compilation. Lexicographical devices concerning entry words, arrangement and explanation of meanings, grammatical information are appraised. In respect of arrangement of meanings, two recent achievements are presented. As for meaning description, several examples are examined to support the belief that the translation complement is a useful device that makes a translation of the source word accurate and complete. The importance of grammatical information, namely U and C in nouns, and verb patterns, is discussed from the viewpoint of Japanese users. In the concluding remarks, grading the information into usable levels according to its degree of importance is proposed as a means of promoting effective usage of the dictionary. |
Speaking as someone who has studied for a decade and tried countless tools: electronic dictionary or bust.
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Well, with all due respect, you guys may be the ultimate experts, but when I taught *English* to hundreds of Japanese students, I have seen first hand what it means to take thousands of words out of context. As far as I am concerned, jisho.org and the WWWDict project are the best electronic resources out there, but, time and again they have failed to guide me to a precise meaning in terms of mood, formality, or common usage. Not so with paper dictionaries--not even with Oxford's Pocket Kenkyusha. Although this may be lost on most people of my generation, paper dictionaries allow the following:
Anyway, this is probably a slow lead-on to a flame war, so I'll stop here. TO each his own. I suppose I need to look for my answers elsewhere. |
I honestly prefer to have both. My paper dictionary has more ways to use the expression and how to use it in context, and my electronic dictionary has more words and expressions in general. There is no need for conflict here - it's good to have both if you have the resources to do so.
My paper dictionary is the Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary, so unfortunately my recommendation won't be of any use to you. - As a side note, you can make Denshi Jisho only show common words, which is what I do when using it unless I'm looking for something obscure. |
How about this?
“dictionary”の検索結果（283 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク You can erase the word “dictionary” in the box and write both an English or Japanese word you want to know. And then, click 「英和・和英」button. This is very useful. |
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For me, a combination of the DS electronic dictonary, WWWJDIC, Seichi Makino & Michio Tsutsui's Japanese Grammar book series, some linguistic books, some Japanese grammar books written for Japanese people, a handful of "communicative styles of Japanese"-type books, and a whole lot of real life interaction have gotten me past that "intermediate" hump. I think that is the nature of language to be honest. It's a multi-dimensional thing, especially when considering two languages as culturally different as English and Japanese. From my perspective as a native English speaker, I see the spoken/written forms of Japanese as being only half the battle. I think the DS dictionary is not as overwhelming as a lot of the more expensive and more advanced electronic dictionaries go. The option to narrow search results that MissMisa talked about sounds like something would be interested in, Mike. That's something that I'd never heard about before actually... I always did feel a little overwhelmed whenever I borrwed a friend's or colleague's electronic dictionary. To be honest though, judging by what MissMisa and you have said about paper dictionaries I'm beginning to think I've just encountered a lot of shitty dictionaries. I've had a few pocket dictonaries, a few novel sized paper back dictionaries, a fairly large sized paper back dictionary, and some small phrase books. I didn't buy all of them, some of them were given to me or kind of just ended up in my possession. I think I have a dictionary for every decade since the 70's (my earliest one being '73). I've also seen a lot of dictionaries used by Japanese schools and those might be some of the worst ones I've encountered (which is rather unfortunate). The more I advance, the less I trust dictionaries. I would never trust one as a companion to produce Japanese with... I think they're fine for interpretation though. I've used a couple of Random House dictionaries and felt like they were kind of lacking-- is that a characteristic of them? I feel like maybe I just don't know a good dictionary when I see one. |
A fair evaluation indeed, Steven, and perhaps an indication for the big publishing houses to get off their butts and write a comprehensive dictionary. Hey, my first language is Russian and we've got some pretty comprehensive English-Russian Russian-English dictionaries (and in many ways the two languages are as different as night and day). How come the best thing that Oxford could come up with for Russian is a 500,000-word, 1,344-page behemoth (last published in 2007), but the best thing they have for Japanese is a measly 45,000-word Kenkyusha with English headwords? ...and then there's that Japanese-published $500 J-E Kenkyusha, again. Argh.
Look, I don't know. I'd say that I've surpassed most native speakers of English in terms of usage and variety of vocabulary, and English is my fourth language (after Russian, Hebrew, and French--though my French isn't as good anymore). Very often, the only way for me to figure things out was to burrow into my large Webster and research definitions and *their* definitions. I cannot do this with Japanese. Meanings fragment and multiply, and even if I do get a great example sentence database, I have to learn the context or the vocab of the whole sentence to get to the nuance of a single word. I cannot express in words how frustrating this has been. Anyway, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and order the two J-E and E-J Lighthouse dictionaries I'd linked up earlier. That should set me back at most CDN $140 (shipping from Japan included)...so it's not USD $450, at the very least. If anyone cares about this situation, I will keep your guys posted. (BTW, yes, I agree, the Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary *is* very well written...it's just that I have exceeded many of the things it has to offer, in terms of thoughts, opinions, and emotions). To be continued? |
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It is hands down better than any dictionary I've ever seen in any two languages. Now, obviously a purely Japanese dictionary will be best (just like the OED is the gold standard for 100% English inquiries), but Eijiro is as good as it gets for English to any other langauge and back. The equivalent of the OED for Japanese is the Kojien, which has 240K words in it. Now, the Kojien will run you about 8400 yen (Amazon.co.jp: , but then again the OED will run you US$1300 (Amazon.com: Oxford English Dictionary: 20 vol. print set & CD ROM (9780199573158): J. Simpson, E. Weiner: Books. |
It merits another look, then. Sorry, all of this has bee written between seminars.
Now, I understand your views on paper dictionaries. Having said that, I have discovered that 新和英大辞典 is available for the iPhone on iTunes for only CAD $109.99; the 新英和大辞典 counterpart is also $109.99), while Amazon Japan carries a J-E Kenkyusha for ￥22,050 and an E-J Kenkyusha for ￥22,050. Now, this is very interesting, if we follow your logic that digital=better. Whereas I'd have to pay ￥44,100.00 (CAD $529.379) to have a set of the most comprehensive paper E-J and J-E dictionaries on earth, I can pay a mere CAD $219.98 for a set of both, right on my iPhone (or iPod Touch, or iPad!) This is it! This is the answer I have been looking for! |
That is very interesting. I'm always feel very humbled when I talk to people who know multiple languages. I've only got English and a bit of Japanese so that's as far as my personal experience goes. From what I've heard though, languages like French and Englsh are quite similiar. Basically European languages all have similar roots (especially when compared to languages like Eng vs Jp). I think the fact that the cultures are somewhat similar lends a lot to this idea.
I can see that you are looking for very specific nuances in words and phrasing. If I understand correctly, you're looking for an almost firm definition of a word enabling you to utilize it in as many contexts as possible. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought of things this way, but I'll say it anyways (as best I can). If this is obvious to you I apologize (which it may very well be as you have studied so many languages). At some point in my studies, I realized that I was looking at words from English and Japanese as though they were on some kind of venn diagram. That was a huge epiphany to me as this was a concept I think I really would have benefited from earlier on. To give you an idea of what I mean, think of the words "はい" and "Yes". Now if you made a venn diagram of those two words you would certainly see a lot of overlapping area. However, you would also find areas that don't overlap... as well as some areas were one word might even overlap with the opposite of the other! For example, はい can be used as ”あいづち” in areas were "yes" wouldn't be appropriate. Getting into the realm of culture, you could say "はい" (as あいづち) when it might be appropriate to say "No" in English. For another example, think of a color. "Blue" vs ”青い”. I can think of many situations where 青い would overlap with my (American) English concept of "green" (like certain types of grass or tea or street lights... also the idea of "being green (like a rookie)" is "青" in Japanese. These are two seemingly elementary words-- something you might learn within the first couple of chapters of any Japanese textbook. I find it interesting to note that you could write a chapter or maybe even a whole book on either one of those examples. That kind of deep contextual meaning doesn't really have a place in a dictionary... furthermore, I can't even imagine trying to document this phenomenon for all kinds of words! I'm sure the writers and editers of dictionaries are aware of this concept, but I highly doubt that anyone could have such a thorough understanding of this concept as to be able to express it in the shorthandedness of a dictionary entry. I have to ask you Mike, do you see the 'venn diagram' thing I was talking about as applicable to Russian-English or Russian-French, or any of the possible combinations of the languages you've learned? If you do see it, do the dictionaries you've had experience with compensate appropriately for it in your opinion? In my experience this is one area where ENG-JP, JP-ENG dictonaries are really lacking. The examples in-context that electronic dictionaries sometimes supply can make up for this a little bit though. I mean, I agree with you-- a $500 dictionary is steep. You might as well invest that money into a plane ticket to Japan. I'd imagine you'd get your money's worth that way ;) . By the way you have me interested in the Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary-- I'm gonna be looking at some reviews of it. I'm curious as to what it has to offer that other dictionaries lack in. I'm also curious if the dictionaries you end up getting are a continuation of what you found useful in the Beginner's books. EDIT* "Now, this is very interesting, if we follow your logic that digital=better. Whereas I'd have to pay ￥44,100.00 (CAD $529.379) to have a set of the most comprehensive paper E-J and J-E dictionaries on earth, I can pay a mere CAD $219.98 for a set of both, right on my iPhone (or iPod Touch, or iPad!) This is it! This is the answer I have been looking for!" That sounds pretty cool. One of the things that interests me about the "digitalization" of books like this is the possible ability to do a "ctrl-f"-like search to jump around and find what I'm looking for in seconds rather than hours! God I wish I had that ability in college while writing essays-- I could've been even lazier about it all. |
Steven, I wish this knowledge stayed as effortlessly as it came to me. I think by now I have lost a lot of my Hebrew conversation ability, but back in 1996 I could talk fluently. Practice makes perfect.
Indeed, French and English are cognates, and it should be noted that Japanese is a SOV language, English is an SVO language, and Russian (though SVO) allows a whole lot of word order recombinations. It's interesting that when I ponder some Russian words, it eventually hits me that it is actually a French word. Damn the 17th century aristocracy. ;) Yes, you are correct in your assumption. Just yesterday I was looking for the common word for "body shop" or "auto repair shop." jisho.org finally yielded 修繕工場 (damn the British-American differences, by the way). Sure enough, my Japanese friend has just told me that this is the wrong word to use. How would I know otherwise? Keep performing random Google searches? I think you are also absolutely correct with regard to precise meaning. I actually never learned the grammar of the English language--that is, before I became an ESL/EFL teacher in Japan and later in Vancouver. The different senses and conditions you mention came to me naturally. Likewise, the あいづち you're talking about (by the way, laughably translated as "sounds given during a conversation to indicate comprehension; back-channeling") had bewildered me quite a bit too, at first. Now it just seems natural to intone a long ええ～！ in surprise, or a short え in agreement, etc. Context and body language...but, then again, that's just like the difference between word stress: WHOM did you meet at the store? Whom DID you meet at the store? Whom did YOU meet at the store? Whom did you MEET at the store? Whom did you meet at THE store? Whom did you meet at the STORE? You get the idea. ;) Oh, yeah, and idioms for colours. This has always been a favourite with my students. In Japan, pink is the colour of エロ, but in the West pink is the colour of innocence and *blue* is the colour of sexuality (blue movie)...but then again, you could be feeling blue, or be green with envy, or seeing red. Good times. Well, to answer your question, do keep in mind that I am an emigre. Having arrived in Canada when I was about fourteen, I became detached from a fully-immersive Russian-speaking environment, so my Russian is probably 85-90% "authentic" by the standards of a "native Russian." Having said that, I certainly see the problem with false cognates, false friends, and just plain dumb assumptions that, I think, describe something akin to your venn-diagram problem. For instance, revisiting some of my earliest poetry in English I found both awkward or totally inappropriate word usage or word usage that *could* fit the sentence--in general--but never in the specific context it was used. In this regard, I suppose I had to abandon English-Russian-English translation and go full force into English-English definitions (definitions of definitions), which is the natural step for all advanced learners. ...but let's make an objective study of this. I'm going to pick a word at random. Let's say..."anger." The Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary very helpfully states: anger noun = いかり・怒り angry adjective to get angry = おこる・怒る to be angry with someone = だれかにおこっている・誰かに怒っている There you go. No complicated conjugations, no part-of-speech confusion (because the sense in which I'm writing may pertain to the action, which would have to be formed from the adjective, unlike from the verb in English). You can just start building sentences! Now, let's enter "anger" into jisho.org. The first word is はらだち, then どき...いかり comes up 19th! How would I have known to look there? They're *all* "anger"! Ah, but you say, click "Common words only"...well, it still comes third, and it is still the wrong word. On WWWJDIC, the word doesn't even come up on the first page. Although I have almost outgrown it, I love the Oxford still, because it also has 35 pages of usage notes, 34 pages of the "Learning and Lifestyle Kit" and a grammar bit at the beginning. The editors at Oxford obviously knew what they were doing. ;) Finally, in answer to your question regarding the marvel of technology I have found on iTunes...allow me to tantalize you a bit:   Oh, I do wish it were $50 cheaper! |
By the way, Kyle is right. I like the definitions that http://www.alc.co.jp/ gives out. It might be just the solution for those not wishing to shell out $200 for the iPhone apps. ;)
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Wow Mike, you have posted some interesting stuff. By the way, how in the hell did you know about "blue" being one of those colors in western/American culture? The "blue movie" thing you talked about made me think of the song called Peg, by Steely Dan-- there is a line that goes, "done up in blue print blue". I had to look up what that meant and that's how I found out what you're talking about. Maybe it's just me, but I was under the impression that a lot of people didn't know about that!
That Iphone thing looks like it might be neat-- I don't know much about iphones, but couldn't you use online dictionaries with it for the time being (like alc.co.jp)? (although you pointed out a pretty big weakness of online dictionaries!). I think things like iphones are fantastic-- all that data on such a small device is awesome. I always wished they'd come out with something like an ipad where i could store all my textbooks when I was in high school. Too bad it was like a decade late. The word stress thing is huge too. From what I can tell that seems to be the most illusive part of English for ESL students. I've only met a handful of people who actually know how it works. I think there could possibly be a day when iphone-like dictionaries have audio clips and examples of these concepts (if they don't already!). Something else about technology-- I just thought of this now, but what with youtube being able to... somewhat figure out what people are saying and transcribe it, there might be some really sweet data to come from it. Once that becomes more reliable and powerful it could prove to be a huge tool for linguistics. That might be 10-20 years down the road though. I feel like I'm getting off topic, but I think if the technology that is available is taken advantage of we'll see some really cool new 'dictionaries' in the near future. |
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It will run on Windows 7 and OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Also, it apparently has 1.5 million words in it. |
Weird how every dictionary gives different result :) Like many I have started using 漢字そのまま楽引辞典. Might not be the best like the one you are looking for, but it was made by Japanese people for Japanese people...thus I trust it more than many other dictionary. Moreover I quit using it as Japanese-English dictionary, but I use it as a Japanese monolingual dictionary.
It won't give long explanations, but I that satisfies my needs. I just give you an example for the research "body shop". 車体工場；（（米俗））売春宿；（デモ要員などの）人 員供給会社。 I think it teaches more seeing the way Japanese people write for themselves than seeing how we write about them...just my opinion. |
@Steven I'm really not quite sure. Reading, I suppose--that's where most nuances come out of the woodwork. However, consider that the same idiom exists in modern Hebrew: סרת כחול. Perhaps the entire "blue" concept has some deeper sexual underpinning in the Western imagination, but it's different in some places. In Russian, for instance, голубой (baby blue) means "homosexual." I could go on and on.
Yep, I can sure use online databases, and I *do*, but, like I mentioned before, this has been like poking blindly in the dark, up until now. By the way--and I hate to do this to an "old timer"--but I think you meant to write "elusive," not "illusive" there. ;) Anyway, I agree with many of the things you said, and I only hope that the various makers of 電子辞書 realize these problems as well and bring us some fantastic (and reasonably-priced) reference resources. @KyleGoetz This is interesting. But even more interesting is the fact that Eijiro appears to be available as an iPhone/iPad app! The good news is that i英辞郎 is available for only CAD $8.99 on iTunes. The bad news is that its makers were a little bit greedy, so instead of providing their users with free updates, they get them to pay for each increment (I'm seeing i英辞郎 120, i英辞郎 121, i英辞郎 122 in iTunes).  Pig Tail Software appears to have yet another incremental version of Eijiro, also offered for CAD $8.99.  Mhumm... At second glance, they may not be as greedy as I thought, because there is another app, called Handy英辞郎 (currently version 127), available for free. This is beginning to look promising! I wish there also were a J-E dictionary like this.  @chryuop I couldn't agree more, but I don't think I'm at that advanced level--where I can use J-J definitions--yet. It may be valuable to me in the future. |
Argh! There are no free breakfasts! I've just installed Handy英辞郎 and it's asking me to buy the database for $8.99. It's not *that* bad, I suppose (and it's definitely not $450 or $200!) but I wish they would advertise this up-front (unless I am totally blind today). Anyway, the good news is that Handy英辞郎 appears to be both E-J and J-E. I need to investigate this further...
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I think I'm in love! Well, first comes the bitter part...
  ...but then comes the sweet part:    Next, I turned on the ひらがな readings:   *I'd* say this is a worthy successor for my little Oxford, wouldn't you, gents? Not only is this a huge-ass database, but the interface is also in English, which means that this is great for learners of all levels. True, for some particularly difficult 漢字, one *may* need to visit jisho.org or one of these places for some stroke order guidance, but this is a pretty good solution for $8.99, wouldn't you agree? P.S. Holy shit, these iPhone 4 screenshots are gargantuan! |
As I said I want to avoid English at all levels...I want to start seeing a Japanese word for what it means and not what it translates into (after all that's what I HAD to do when I moved to the USA). But yes for 9 bucks I would say it is a great tool. I payed mine 50 bucks and it doesn't seem to provide the same amount of choices.
ANGER: [「悲しみ」が原義]派 angry （形） 名 （Uncountable) [or an ~](...への/...についての）怒り、立腹 (at,for,against /about,over) (類 indignation, rage, fury, wrath) -----follow some examples------ 動 （（正式）） 他 ＜人・物＞を怒らせる、立腹さ せる. 自 腹をたてる、立腹する (get angry) However I have learnt something new... I didn't know 炎症 meant also anger. I knew it only as medical terminology. LOL I used it alot writing to a friend to tell her about my bad chronic inflammation in my lower back..I hope she didn't think I was mad LOL. |
No, I think it's a great policy--for the advanced learner. I'm still struggling with some rather basic concepts.
Anyway, what is this $50 dictionary that you have been using? |
漢字そのまま楽引辞典 for Nintendo DS. I bought it because I needed something to practice writing my kanji and I found out I like it as a dictionary.
Of course being it for Japanese people there are no furigana. You are supposed to know how to read the kanji :) P.S. I am not that advanced trust me...I wish I was LOL |
Well, then you're more dedicated than me, because J-J *is* the ultimate way to go. ;)
As for 漢字そのまま楽引辞典, I should give it another shot, perhaps, since I now know more kanji than before. |
Haha, I totally agree with the idea that going "J-J" is the best policy. Unfortunately, as you have pointed out about me Mike, my English grammar/word usage has gone down the toilet over the last couple of years. This website is pretty much the only place I use English any more. During my last year college I could type an improvised 5 page essay (in English of course) in 30 minutes without a single grammar/spelling/word usage mistake... now I don't stand a chance. It's very weird to feel your native language slowly deteriorate.
Another problem with exclusive "J-J" is that if you get into an interpretation gig or if you are asked what something means in English you can literally have NO idea even though you know exactly what the word means and what it is. Inspite of all this, I still try to stick mostly to "J-J". About 漢字そのまま楽引辞典, I don't know how it would compare to your iphone software. Maybe one advantage would be the writing ability-- if you see a kanji you don't know you can always try to input it with the stylus. I don't know if the iphone (or iphone touch or whatever they have now) is capable of this... if it is then it might render 漢字そのまま楽引辞典 useless for a non-native. |
I couldn't agree more, Steve. So I guess you are living in Japan right now? Whereabouts are you? How long have you been there?
As for your iPhone question, you've got to give this miracle of technology a little more credit. There's a reason why I paid a cool grand for a factory-unlocked iPhone 4 from Hong Kong. Is there anything it doesn't do? (Oh, and if anyone wants to joke about the antenna problems--that has been fixed ages ago. Even a millimetre-thick Gelaskin fixes the problem.)  To wit: yes, there *is* built-in handwriting recognition for kanji entry, for both simplified and traditional Chinese characters (and the good news is that you don't have to have 100% perfect stroke order, from what it seems).  Moreover, the freely-available Kotoba! (based on the aforementioned databases) has a plethora of kanji entering methods. This is the SKIP-pattern method:  This is the radical-matching method:  |
Does it make coffee?
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HAHAHA. You got me there. It'll tell you where to find the coffee, though. ;)
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To be honest, if the interface is easy for you to use, then I think you've found what you are looking for and more (and at a good price I might add). Also, it's extremely portable so you can take that thing anywhere. The ability to take "notes" seems like a really nice feature. You could almost work out a schedule to review your notes once a week to practice the stuff that you've learned.
Can the iphone use Skype? I'd love to be able to skype internationally with a portable phone like that-- especially if it had a camera to allow for the video phone thing. And to answer your question (albiet a vague answer), yes I live in the Hokuriku region of Japan. I've been here for a few years now. |
Oh yeah. I couldn't agree more. Now, if I weren't so damn lazy... ;)
Yes, the iPhone has Skype, of course, as well as Fring and any other messenger/VoIP solution you might need. The only caveat is that unlimited 3G is still rare in many places, so most of these solutions are used when you're on WiFi. The iPhone 4 has a front-facing camera, and it has been used for FaceTime. I think they got it to work on Fring, but not on Skype, yet. Hokuriku, eh? What's that like? I've lived in Nagoya (Aichi Pref.), Gifu (Gifu Pref.), and Matsumoto (Nagano Pref.). Matsumoto (despite the alpine snow and cold) was, by far, my most favourite place to live in. I really can't stand Asian humidity. Tokyo and Singapore can be on par in this regard, in my experience...but you can't get away from it, because the alternative is the dry heat you get in Israel (let along the whole situation with the hamsin). Right now, I'm holed up in snowy Ontario, doing my grad school stuff here, but let me tell you--I do miss Matsumoto. |
I heard Matsumoto is really nice (isn't that like the center of Japan on google maps?)-- I have to admit that I turned down a trip to there a couple of years ago... I'd like to check it out someday though. As far as big cities go in Japan, I think I could live in Nagoya without going crazy (which I don't feel would be the case in any other big city). I actually did a homestay near Nagoya before and I liked it very much.
I've been to Gifu quite a few times-- I went to an Onsen there on Christmas actually. It was so beautiful. I've been to Gero Onsen as well, too. All I can say is that if you don't like Asian humidity then you wouldn't like it around where I am. I actually don't like it either, but all the great things kind of balance that out. We do get a lot of rain though (and crazy ass weather). You should try southern California for some good weather! It's fun learning all the crazy weather words around here-- does your dictionary have 雷雪 in it? I had to look up what the English word for it was! |
Matsumoto *is* very nice. There's a castle and everything (in fact, I heard that the black "raven" of Matsumoto-jo has some some of contrasting relationship with the white "heron" of Himeji-jo). I wish I'd stayed in Nagoya more, because the circumstances of my life there were quite...difficult. Having said this, it's one of the most green urban centres I'd visited--and it's much more comfortable than Tokyo climate-wise. Now, are we talking about the same Gifu over here?! The way I remember it, it was kind of a dilapidated dump of a city. Mhumm...
SoCal, eh? Nah, I'll take the "cool and rainy" Vancouver weather any day over any of this. You should try Vancouver. You'll never leave! ;) As for 雷雪, all of the dictionaries I have give me two separate kanji ("thunder" and "snow"--so I'm guessing "thunderstorm"?) These kanji are really pretty. I like the symmetrical ones, or the ones with straightforward meanings: 詩 is my favourite. "Voice temple"--what can be more beautiful? |
らいせつ
When u can't find it, go to yahoo jp 辞書. 90% you will find it there...now, I know what it translates to, but I can't say I know what it is like LOL I must be in the wrong area of the USA since I have never seen it. The dictionary says there is many here in the USA and in the Artic. I live in tornado alley tho so I can say I have surely seen plenty of 雷雹 (if the word exists LOL) :) |
Weird. None of my dictionaries have this word. To be honest, though, I have never even heard of a "thundersnow" in English, either. ;) There's an interesting Wikipedia article on it, though...
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