Shopping for a new Electronic Dictionary

By Oli
At 2:30 PM · Tuesday, 19 August · 2003
To Japan · Life

Miwa and I are trying to decide what to buy to replace our aging Canon Wordtank IDX9500 with a new denshi jisho・電子辞書. Here’s what we’re looking for:

  • E/J, J/E, J/J and Kanji dictionaries (of course)
  • “Jump” feature - lets you select a kanji and look up it’s meaning or pronunciation in a different dictionary for example
  • live results listing - the search starts as soon as you start to type a query
  • kanji lookup by radical - this lets you enter a radical kanji in kana to see what kanji contain that radical
  • adjustable font size - so I can read detailed kanji
  • bilingual instructions and manual (not so important)
  • an English-English dictionary (and thesaurus too)
  • large screen (I hope!)

The present contenders include:

Canon Wordtanks have a very strong following among foreign people learning Japanese, and I’ve been happy with my one. However seeing the Sharp PW-9800’s screen (50% better resolution) makes me wonder. I guess we’ll have to go to a local electronics shop and try them all before using Kakaku.com to find a good price. I’d be happy to buy locally, if only there was a shop whose staff were able to do more than tell me the price and speak keigo・敬語. I did manage to get one to read the pamphlets, but this just doesn’t qualify as knowledgeable advice for me. I’m also half wondering if maybe there’s a good dictionary program for a PDA, considering these things are quite expensive.

I did find a few websites with advice in English, including:

Of course nobody makes the dictionary I actually want to buy - the one that has a furigana・ふりがな button (“toggle furigana for all Kanji on or off”) and contains the excellent Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary. Other reference works like the Japan Times Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese Grammar and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Specifications would also be a bonus. I guess that market segment is a little … small ;-)

Discussion...

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1. Comment by Alyanora  · 22 Nov, 2003 · 5:27 PM

I am in the same boat. I am looking to replace my old Canon wordtank and have done the trudge around all the electrical stores looking at all the new models. But I, too, am still looking for the elusive furigana button. Why, oh why, Canon, Seiko, Casio, Sony fail to see that every foreign student would love a denshi jisho which offers this function is beyond me.

Good luck!

2. Comment by zi  · 10 Dec, 2004 · 8:36 AM

i thought about going the wordtank route, and settled on a Sony Clie with kanji writing input. my main problem is the yomikata. i can’t be assed to count strokes or look up by radical. it’s just easier for me to write it into the Clie and have Decuma (the pre-installed software) recognize it.

go to the store and demo the thing. i’m glad i bought it. the built in dictionary is crap and minimalist, but it lists the yomikata, a definition, and some examples, if it’s a common enough grammar structure