Re: [Lingo] Re: Kanji tools [Re: rhetorical form ]

["Kim Ahlström" <kim.ahlstrom@example.com>]

2007/6/27, steve smith <sjs@example.com>:

> Does anyone have an electronic dictionary they'd recommend.
>  Is there anything that comes anywhere near the
> functionality of WWWJDIC?

In my opinion, the ones to look out for right now are from Casio or
Sharp. Casio has a very good system for adding contents, where you can
buy individual books instead of sets, which the other makers force you
to do. Noteworthy is that you can buy the Kodansha Kanji Learner's
Dictionary as an add-on, which to my knowledge is the first time a
Japanese-English kanji dictionary is available in an electronic
dictionary, although I haven't tried it myself yet. If you're not
looking for amazing Japanese-English and English-Japanese
dictionaries, then Casio's XD-GW6800 and XD-SW6400 are pretty good
value right now at BIC, 27900 yen and 29900 yen each (if I remember
correctly), with a campagin (that was current as of the day before
yesterday) of 20% points on an electronic dictionary purchase.

Sharp has a very good pen input system that let's you draw the kanji
directly on a second screen. While Casio also has this on many of
their models, I found Sharps to be a tad better, although it varies
between the models. A friend recently bought the PW-AT750, and he
seems to be very happy with it.

If you have a Nintendo DS and want something simple with pen input,
then i recommend taking a look at the "Nintendo sono mama DS rakubiki
jiten". It uses Genious as Japanese-English and English-Japanese and
Meikyou for kokugo. Meikyo is in my opinion especially good for
students of Japanese who want to move onto using a kokugojiten, since
it features more modern usage and usage examples than say Kojien.
Although the downside with using the DS as a dictionary is that you
can't use it to look stuf up while playing games of course :)

As a last note I'd like to add a warning for Seiko's current models,
as most of them use Kangorin instead of Kanjigen as their kanji
dictionary. Kangorin does not include the Buhin-search, where you can
search for a kanji by the names of parts it consists of, but instead
forces you to a one-radical search.

I just handed in a 14 page paper at the university yesterday on the
current state of electronic dictionaries, so your question came at
just the right time :)

But models and features can change pretty rapidly, so I'd always take
a good look at the pamphlets from each maker and try them out before
buying one.

--
Regards,
Kim Ahlström