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Title: The Kanji Dictionary by Mark Spahn, Wolfgang Hadamitzky, Kumiko Fujie-Winter ISBN: 0-8048-2058-9 Publisher: Charles E Tuttle Co Pub. Date: April, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.9 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: useful, but not portable
Comment: I checked this book out of my local library, and kept renewing it until I couldn't renew it anymore. understanding how to look the kanji up is a little confusing at first, since the method is completly different from english dictionaries. instead of looking up kanji phonetically, you look the characters up by the base strokes used to create them. I have to admit, the first thing i started to translate was not from a textbook. it was a doujinshi, or japanese fan comic. i was able to find almost all of the kanji i looked for. it is a very comprehensive list of all the kanji you're likely to encounter. i highly recommend it to help you in translations and so forth. a drawback to this book is its size though. it's gargantuan. unless you have a very strong back or are slightly masochistic this is a reference book for home use only. it is also time consuming to search through all the entries to find the kanji you need to know. despite that, this is still a great kanji dictionary.
Rating: 5
Summary: Indispensable Resource
Comment: I've studied Japanese for 5 or so years now, and bought "The Kanji Dictionary" after I began to outgrow my first, smaller kanji dictionary. Even though I consider myself an advanced learner of Japanese, I have not felt the need to buy a "Japanese" Kanji dictionary yet: this one by Spahn and Hadamitzky has more than met my needs. Here are some of this dictionary's plusses:
-Just about every kanji or kanji compound you can think of is included (they claim 47,000+ compounds which sounds about right).
-The look-up system is easy to use, and the index is similarly helpful
-The appendices are surprisingly interesting and informative, including information ranging from the reigns of the emperors to geography to even a list of the most frequent Japanese surnames.
My only possible complaints are:
-not enough radicals: they chose to categorize the kanji using 79 radicals instead of the 214 historical radicals. This resulted in almost 300 kanji that are "without" a radical, all lumped together at the beginning of the dictionary by the number of strokes. Many of these are very common kanji, which can cause frustrations if you're trying to figure out which radical to look up only to find that it's in the "no radical" section.
-it would have been great if they'd had accent markings to show how the characters are pronounced. In Japanese, context and an accent shift are the only difference between saying "Let's have success!" and "Let's have sex!" (sex and success are both romanized "seikoo"). Native Japanese presumably know the difference in pronunciation, but learners of a second language are not as likely. This can result in awkward situations. Knowing the correct accent in general makes you much more understandable, and it is a shame that most dictionaries don't include this information.
Overall though, this is a great dictionary. I highly recommend it for beginners, experts, and everyone in between!
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent choice especially for a beginner
Comment: This is my only Kamji dictionary, so I don't really have a comparison for it, but I find it extremely useful. The option to look up compounds by any of the kanji is of immense utility to me. I have a more divided opinion on the simplified radical system they use. I don't know how much more difficult it would be to search through all 214 radicals rather than the 79 that Hadamitzky and Spahn use, but i do have occasional problems deciding which radical to use when none seem to match exactly. They do include a feature to help in this regard. Similar looking kanji are listed in the chart under the wrong radical with a pointer to the correct entry. All in all a worthy tome and one which sees great usage in my hands.
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Title: Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary: Japanese-English English-Japanese by Kodansha ISBN: 4770024800 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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Title: All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words by Naoko Chino ISBN: 4770027818 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary by Jack Halpern ISBN: 4770028555 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary by Seigo Nakao ISBN: 0679780017 Publisher: Random House Reference & Pub. Date: 07 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Kanji Pict-o-Graphix : Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics by Michael Rowley ISBN: 0962813702 Publisher: Stone Bridge Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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