Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary

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Customer Reviews:

Good Dictionary [Posted on 2008-02-25]
All the ones I had where Japanese-English only so with this one it is a great way to look for the words, and it does bring some examples too but for a quick search tool or to look a bit more after know how the word is, it is very useful.

My favorite Japanese / English Dictionary [Posted on 2008-07-22]
This is by far my favorite dictionary for Japanese. And believe me, I went through several trying to find one I liked. The Romanji and Kanji definitions are exactly what I needed as a beginner and now, as an intermediate student, they still prove very useful. I use this everyday.

I would also recommend The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary as a nice compliment to this dictionary. If you're using Japanese in a business environment, I might suggest Cassell's English-Japanese Business Dictionary which may be hard to find but is a good permanent piece for your reference collection.

Fantastic for Entry-Level Students [Posted on 2008-08-31]
This is a perfect dictionary for those who have no experience with the Japanese "alphabets;" it uses Romanized Japanese, and next to each word features the kanji/kana used in its purely Japanese counterpart. It has a pretty decent word-count and I still use it every now and then if a word proves elusive.

However, after I became acquainted with the kana, I found this text a bit annoying. It's easier to misspell the kana version of a word when you're using the Romanized Japanese. The kanji has no furigana; yes, some of them are self-explanatory, but certainly not all. And if you're just starting out with kanji, you're usually not sure which syllable goes where, so it's actually a little bit annoying until you gain more experience. Another negative note: this dictionary is easy to use as a crutch in order to avoid those scary kana -- and of course, learning the kana is the most useful thing you can do!

I think it's a pretty valuable resource, and I am certainly not sorry I bought it. Beginners should find it a breath of fresh air. However, an intermediate or higher level Japanese-language student will find this book more of a hindrance than a help. If you fall into that beginner category, and are a serious student of the language, I encourage you to take the dive into kana... it's way more useful in the long run!

Great reference -- but FALLS APART [Posted on 2008-10-25]
After only a few years, the entire binding is coming apart -- it is almost split in two halves! One page started coming out the first couple months I had it. This is the reason for the lukewarm review.

As a reference, it is great, though not perfect. It has an excellent number of entries, and many entries in the English-Japanese section also give answers for related phrases and a mixture of usages. It also provides answers in various parts of speech, where applicable (adjective, adverb, verb, etc). For examples, it doesn't give entire sentences as in Kodansha's, rather an excerpt just long enough -- this is good because giving many entire sentences wastes space.

However, even though it was published in 1997, after the World Wide Web caught on fire, it doesn't show terms like link, click (verb), email, and webpage (so I didn't know how to properly write the adopted word "e-mail" phonetically in katakana until I got the Langenscheidt dictionary). It is very out-of-date with things like that. This is my other big gripe.

Sometimes words in the English-Japanese section are not in the Japanese-English section, but this doesn't happen too often. Sometimes I can't find a particular usage. Particles are defined in both sections. A minor gripe is the Japanese-English section is alphabetized per English rules, not Japanese rules, and also I would like to see the romaji gone completely from both sections (or at least an alternate version).

This book badly needs to be updated. Because of that and most especially the terrible quality of the binding, I would give it only 2 stars -- except it has more entries than Kodansha's Furigana Dictionary.

You just can't win!

BRIDGE BETWEEN TONGUES [Posted on 2008-10-30]
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN VERY HELPFUL IN LEARNING THE JAPANESE LANGUEGE AND THE SYMBOLS IN THE WORDING.....THIS WILL MAKE IT VERY HELPFUL IS OUR UP AND COMING TRIP THERE...

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