The Kodansha Kanji Dictionary
Product ID: 15440713
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The Kodansha Kanji Dictionary —a revised, expanded edition of Jack Halpern’s groundbreaking New Japanese-English Character Dictionary—is the most complete, linguistically accurate, and up-to-date dictionary of its kind. The culmination of more than twenty years of labor—some one hundred man-years—this authoritative and easy-to-use dictionary has been celebrated the world over by students and teachers of the Japanese language for its wealth of detailed information on the meanings and usages of Sino-Japanese characters. One of the unique features that has made this dictionary so popular is the core meaning, a concise keyword that facilitates an instant grasp of the fundamental concept of each kanji. Along with detailed character meanings, the core meaning helps learners decode unfamiliar compound words from the meanings of their components. Another unique feature is the System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns (SKIP), a revolutionary indexing system that makes it possible to locate entries as quickly and as accurately as in alphabetical dictionaries. With SKIP, all you need to do to find a kanji is identify the geometrical pattern to which it belongs, then count the strokes in each part of that pattern—a much speedier process than searching by traditional methods such as by radical. Updates include the integration of 5,458 entry characters—almost 20 percent more than in the first edition. This includes all the government-prescribed Joyo and Jinmei Kanji, as well as extensive coverage of old and alternative character forms. The new edition also features more readings, meanings, synonym articles, usage notes, and vocabulary items than before. And, in keeping with modern Japanese-language curricula, character and compound readings are shown in kana instead of romanized Japanese. With its wealth of detailed and up-to-date information on kanji meanings, readings, and usages, its accessible new design, its convenient lookup methods (six including SKIP), and its added content, this dictionary is certain to satisfy the needs of students, teachers, scholars, translators—anyone who uses the Japanese language. Review: Japanese Kanji dictionary - Perfect, thank you Review: It is massive - I dont normally write product reviews but I had to with this book. It is a massive dictionary and it looks stunning on my book shelf. It is worth every penny and it has so much kanji so if you are on a budget and you can only buy 1 kanji dictionary definitely pick this because you won't regret it.
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,009,917 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,646 in Foreign Dictionaries & Thesauruses |
| Customer Reviews | 4.9 out of 5 stars 103 Reviews |
B**A
Japanese Kanji dictionary
Perfect, thank you
E**E
It is massive
I dont normally write product reviews but I had to with this book. It is a massive dictionary and it looks stunning on my book shelf. It is worth every penny and it has so much kanji so if you are on a budget and you can only buy 1 kanji dictionary definitely pick this because you won't regret it.
J**S
You've got the "kanji bible" in your hands!
This book is awesome, it's got all the kanji you need to read and write today's Japanese; it shows stroke order for every character from the Joyo list (2,136 updated) except for the name kanji wich have got no stroke order. If that isn't enough the entries have Chinese reading for simplified hanzi (useful for those of us who study Chinese too can compare both languages inmediately!) and you must remember Chinese created the characters and Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese just imported them, well if someday I met Jack Halpern I'd shake his hand for sure because he simplified everything to us.
J**I
This is quite an extensive reference.
I'm very pleased with this purchase. It was a bit expensive but it's worth every penny. The amount of detail and number of characters covered is amazing. It is a serious must have reference.
K**E
It's gigantic and extremely useful.
This massive tome contains every kanji that you would normally find in Japanese literature. It also contains a lookup system for identifying kanji by the radicals, which allows you to very quickly identify any kanji that you encounter while reading. This dictionary would be an asset to anyone who who wants to be able to read Japanese texts, whether they're an advanced level student, an intermediate level student, a hobbyist, or a professional. There are many online dictionaries available for Japanese-to-English translation, but in many cases I find this more useful.
V**E
An absolute treasure!
I used to own the paper version of this dictionary, years ago. I had forgotten all about it until I recently re discovered the dictionary on kindle. As soon as I had downloaded the free sample, I instantly recognised my favourite old kanji dictionary from the unique SKIP pattern/stroke count system that allows one to locate a character diectly in the dictionary, without having refer to a seperate index. After a very quick bit of testing, to make sure that the e-book worked OK on my Android device - ( not always the case), it didn't take me very long at all to make the decission to fork out for the full dictionary. Well worth every penny. I feel like I have been re united with an old friend!
K**R
Not able to set as kindle dictionary.
I bought this dictionary since I have the physical copy and wanted some continuity in the kindle app. However this version does not appear to be able to be used as word look up in kindle app. Otherwise it is a great resource and well worth it.
K**M
This is definitely the kanji dictionary every japanese learner should ...
This is definitely the kanji dictionary every japanese learner should get. It will help not only with the joyo kanji but also with an additional 1900 other kanji and will increase your vocabulary a lot. When I first read the cover it said 5349 entries but then I found it had only 4408 kanji entries. I thought I had been cheated but very soon I found out that the difference in entries was thanks to the cross-reference kanji's which help you throughout the book to find their correct place in the SKIP system Loving this book. Definitely.
H**.
Uma Referência Já Conhecida
Superou, e muito, minhas expectativas...
P**M
Exhaustive and Ingenious
I bought it as a next step book after I made the purchase for the smaller yet extremely useful volume of The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary Revised and Expanded Edition by Jack Halpern. It is just as useful as the aforementioned book, but it has more characters, slightly, 4,500 to be precise. Follows similar pattern of finding a Kanji character as in KKLD. It has a few extra additions in the appendices, which can be seen in the images I have attached within the review. Satisfaction =100%
D**O
Hermoso
Simplemente hermoso, kanji ordenado de una forma sencilla, encuentras lo que buscas de forma rápida y con muchísimos ejemplos. Muy bueno también para ampliar tu vocabulario. No lo recomiendo para quienes están empezando el estudio del japones. Solo para estudiantes Intermedio Alto o Avanzados.
A**M
Good
Good quality
J**N
Maybe the last great paper Japanese Kanji dictionary
I have studied Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and this is the best character dictionary I have seen in any language. It is designed in a very thoughtful way, with many different features to help you understand and learn characters. It gives you comprehensive information in depth for everything. I love that it gives the traditional and simplified Chinese character equivalents and pronunciation. This can be helpful to make the link between characters which are fundamentally radical + common phonetic component, instead of some made up random mnemonic. The dictionary has lots of examples of usage to help you narrow in on what the character means. It has compounds which use the character as something other than the first character, something that's very frustrating about Chinese dictionaries. It has stroke orders so you can see how to write the characters properly. There are many great indexes to help find characters, e.g. lists of characters by frequency or by the joyo kanji list, so you could do a lot worse than just starting with the characters that everyone in Japan learns in first grade and learning them in order. It has cross references throughout to help you look up characters where e.g. the radical is unclear. In an age where electronic dictionaries are the norm, this is maybe the last great paper dictionary. It is clearly a labor of love. While it's expensive, it's great for any serious student of characters. You won't regret it. And if you love characters, you will love it.
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