There are a handful of online dictionaries out there to help Japanese learners along in their studies. That may not sound like a lot (the idiomatic phrase is “only a handful”, afterall), but there are definitely more options than for a language like Korean.
Each system has its own merits. Jisho.org and Nihongodict.com have multi-radical lookup systems for quick reference to Kanji that you don’t know how to pronounce. On the downside, both of those systems (and the original WWWJDIC) is that they use the often criticized Tanaka Corpus for highlighting the words in context. I’m going to introduce a different option here – Weblio.jp.
- Uses Kenkyusha dictionary
- Example sentences
- Vocabulary by category
- An alternative to user-submitted content at Smart.fm
In cases where I really want to get a sense of the word, I use Weblio.jp. Weblio.jp is a bilingual dictionary that pulls information from multiple sources, the most prominent being the highly-valued, practically worshiped, Kenkyusha, AKA “The Green Goddess”. If you’d like to put a concrete price on that value, it’s $495 USD
Example sentences
What I consider to be the most important part of Weblio.jp is its concise-but-lucid example sentences. Sentences that give a clear image of how the word is used greatly promote language internalization. They also help dispel falsely associated words that result from literal translations from L1 to L2.
For example, take the word “cool” as an adjective. In English it can mean ① the quality of being refreshingly low in temperature, ② marked by calm, self-control, ③ unenthusiastic, or ④ fashionable or attractive in some way. Now take for example the Japanese word 冷静 (れいせい) which can be translated as “cool”. Which cool does it mean? It has the Kanji for “cold” and “quiet”. In which sense of the word “cool” does this specific Kanji compound express?
Looking up 冷静 in Weblio.jp, we get some information to put the pieces together:
- 冷静な calm; cool(‐headed)
- 冷静を保つ keep calm [cool]; keep one’s coolness [presence of mind, 《口語》 cool]; stay [《fml》 remain] unruffled [unperturbed]
- 冷静を失う lose one’s head [presence of mind, 《口語》 cool]; be upset
- 彼は冷静そのものであった. He was completely cool [unperturbed].｜He remained quite unruffled.
The last point is the most important, because it gives learners an actual sentence with transmutable lexical chunks to work with, and we can imagine someone we know in place of “彼” for easy memory retrieval.
Vocabulary by category
Another great feature of Weblio.jp is the Search by category box on the front page. For learners with specific needs in certain disciplines, this can act as a great list of target vocabulary.
Clicking on a specific category takes you into a list of useful words. My area of study is Japan, so I clicked on 日本史 [Japanese History] to see what some of the offerings were. Here’s an example of a word that all students of Japanese history should know:
An alternative to user-submitted content at Smart.fm
The last thing I’d like to introduce is the content as an alternative to user-submitted content at Smart.fm. Some of the comments on the discussion about Smart.fm show that learners consider Smart.fm user-submitted content to be dubious. For learners who want to take control of their own studies, you’ll find a great source of content in Weblio.jp.
As you make your own study decks in Smart.fm, you can supplement example sentences from Weblio.jp in place of user-submitted content (as opposed to official Smart.fm produced content). The only downside to this is that there won’t be any audio available. However, I assume that learners who will get the most out of Weblio.jp will be at least intermediate level, so you should already be familiar with the overall pronunciation and intonation of the language. Japanese is a language that learners need to hear considerably less than, say, learners of English.
Happy studying!
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It looks like a great site, but Jisho.org still has 1 thing that the others all lack:
I can type ‘daijoubu’ in the blank in romaji and it’ll pull up the correct results. This is important because some of my computers and phone don’t do Japanese well. When I’m on the go and need to look up a word, I need to use romaji.
wow, ……just simply wow!!
people have a knack for knowing how to
live without something until they
find that “something”
thanks alot, weblio. looks great
POPjisyo is pretty good too. And has a nifty mobile rss feed reader for studying on the train et all.
Have you tried http://www.alc.co.jp/index.html ? It’s my current favourite online dictionary.
Yeah, of course. It uses the Eijiro dictionary. It has its place, though. I prefer Kenkyusha to get a grasp on frequent vocabulary, and Eijiro (ALC) to look up specific compounds and lexical chunks.