Looking Up Kanji

Harvey over at JapanNewbie posted recently on the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, which reminded me that I myself had recently picked it up again after buying it and never really using it.

A year ago, when I started studying kanji seriously at San Francisco State, our sensei told us to go to the Kinokuniya in Japan Town and buy a kanji dictionary. "Just buy the one that seems best to you," she said. So I bought the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary because it was for learners, which is what I was. I got it home, tried to look up something, and was totally mystified. So I put it on the shelf and bought a Canon Wordtank V80 instead.

The Canon Wordtank V80 is an electronic Japanese/English dictionary with the ability to input kanji directly on the screen with an included stylus. Actually, the Wordtank V80 also has Japanese/Japanese, Japanese/Chinese, English/Chinese, and English/English dictionaries, but it's the kanji functionality that attracted me to it.

I use it all the time. I see kanji I don't know, I draw it on the screen, and there it is. Or something close. The nice thing about the dictionary is not only is it forgiving on stroke order, it gives you a number of similar-looking kanji that you can choose from in case your writing was sloppy. You can also do compounds. Write the next kanji in the word and it'll give you the word. You can then jump to the dictionary to see the meaning. What's cool is you can use the stylus to jump. The keyboard is of a good size too.

My problem with the Wordtank V80 is it doesn't have nearly as many compounds as I'd like. Which is why I've gone back to the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary. I've never used a "real" kanji dictionary so I don't know how the Learner's Dictionary differs, but looking up characters isn't all that difficult once you know a little about how kanji works. As long as you understand how many strokes there are per radical, you can look up any character quickly. And it gives you lots of compounds and meanings. Very nice. I'll definitely be using this more from now on. Now if it were only more portable...

Oh, a lot of people in my kanji class use the Nintendo DS and the Sono Mama program to look up kanji. I've never used it, but there's a comparison between my Wordtank V80 and the DS here. Apparently it's pretty useful. I was watching a guy looking up characters for what I guessed was a business Japanese class (the book cover said ビジネス, "business" rendered in katakana). If it has what he needs, I'm sure it has most of the important kanji.

Comments

[rupan777]

I have the two titles of the "Sono Mama" series if you want to check them out before you leave. There's also a kanji practice software available for the DS but its name escapes me at the moment.