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Tim
12:30 AM
@gibbon The main benefit of a 電子辞書 is that you can use it when you are not connected to the internet. Now that I have dictionary on my desk top (not connected to the internet) I don't really use my 電子辞書 any more.
If you look at the 電子辞書 then these days the main extra benefits they seem to have are (1) you can write the kanji to look it up, (2) It contains a huge number of dictionaries (ie more information) (3) pronounciation
However the only functions that I miss are (1) looking up kanji via a combination of radical / number of strokes / reading (I still have not found all this online) (2) Getting the list of common words that contain a kanji I have looked up
Actually the last time I looked at 電子辞書 I could not find one that gave a list of words that contained a kanji as the 1st or 2nd character (just the first) so since then I have stuck with the one I bought 10 years ago. To be quite honest for day to day general use (as opposed to 専門 specific) I can get by with just 大辞線 and プログレシッブ英和和英中辞典, the marginal benefit of lots of dictionaries declines fairly quickly.
But that is just me - others may have different views.
 
 
3 hours later…
Anonymous
3:24 AM
Actually, I think a big advantage of a 電子辞書 is that you get a variety of good dictionaries cheaper than what they'd cost individually, with tons of searchable examples and a nice interface. I tend to use it whether I'm at my computer or not
 
Anonymous
Pronunciation and handwritten kanji input are nice too
 
Anonymous
I'm really glad I got mine, although they probably aren't for everyone
 
Anonymous
In English too I tend to check multiple dictionaries and use multi-dictionary searches, but in English there's a better variety of free online dictionaries. There are a few good ones in Japanese too but not as many
 
Anonymous
But I really love dictionaries :-) I may be a little weird…
 
Tim
3:45 AM
The jump function added a lot of value for me but I have that on my desktop too. The small 電子辞書s that fit in your pocket but are also very convenient.
 
 
6 hours later…
9:34 AM
Yay, two downvotes on my question.
I know that Sawa downvotes without providing any comments on Japanese.SE. But what about the other downvoters?
Do they provide comments about any of the questions they downvote? Are they still contributing questions, answers, comments, or chat messages to Japanese.SE nowadays?
 
 
1 hour later…
Anonymous
11:04 AM
I like my 電子辞書 because (1) it has lots of good dictionaries that aren't freely available, cheaper than you could buy them electronically individually, including some I had on paper but was too lazy to search by hand; (2) it has a very good (not perfect) interface; (3) it has good handwriting recognition; (4) it's little and I can use it quickly whether I'm at my computer or not; (5) it has pronunciation; (6) it does have the jump feature Tim mentioned
 
Anonymous
The dictionaries I use most on it are 明鏡国語辞典 and 研究社 新和英大辞典, and if you only wanted a couple dictionaries like that I think you could get them much cheaper buying them individually on your phone
 
Anonymous
My EX-WORD was something like $350
 
Anonymous
But I use maybe 10 or so dictionaries on it on a regular basis
 
Anonymous
If you're looking at it from that perspective, I think it has relatively more value when you get a higher-end model
 
Anonymous
I think that jisho.org (which is an interface to Jim Breen's EDICT and such) can't really be compared to professionally edited dictionaries, so when I compare it to freely available dictionaries, I'm considering:
1. 大辞林 and 大辞泉 (monolingual dictionaries)
2. 研究社 新和英中辞典 and プログレッシブ和英中辞典 (bilingual dictionaries), and ウィズダム英和和英辞典 (included with newer Apple OSs)
3. 学研全訳古語辞典 (monolingual dictionary of Classical Japanese)
 
Anonymous
11:19 AM
With all those dictionaries being freely available, you do have a lot of resources without buying anything :-)
 
@snailboat too bad 明鏡 isn't one of them (freely available)
 
Anonymous
It's relatively cheap and comes in app form
 
That is true
 
Anonymous
2600¥
 
Anonymous
Looks like it's cheaper for some platforms
 
Anonymous
11:23 AM
One of the reasons I was excited to get my 電子辞書 was 日本国語大辞典 精選版
 
Anonymous
Although if all you want is 日本国語大辞典 (the whole 14-volume thing, even, not the 3-volume 精選版 edition), you can get it for $15/month from JapanKnowledge online
 
Anonymous
12:43 PM
Kanji of the day: 牽引
 
Anonymous
1:17 PM
@AndrewGrimm I don't think I can answer that, since doing so might indirectly expose non-public information
 
Anonymous
I gave you an upvote, though :-)
 
I flagged this answer
-2
A: Are there any Japanese words as versatile as "fuck" in English?

yasmin-chanelWhat of 立つ? At first the word was very vague to me, I was thinking it meant only 'stand', but was used for many other things. It generally is used for any sort of standing, moving outward, a generally vague word; slightly different that 'fuck' because the context can be told by where the word is ...

Should I flag answers like this?
(It has one delete vote (not from me) and the poster sort of agreed that his/her answer doesn't really answer the question well.)
 
I don't think that's a good question
for this site
You can pretty much answer it with any word that has a lot of meanings
like 掛ける
 
Well, you can downvote the question. I flagged the answer for low quality and am wondering whether I should have.
@3to5businessdays Did you read the comments on the question?
 
Anonymous
@3to5businessdays Which makes the answer "yes", so it's answerable… I'm not sure it's a great question, but I'd be reluctant to close it
 
1:26 PM
no i have not
 
Anonymous
@Earthliŋ It seems like a reasonable thing to do. I was waiting to see how people reacted to the flag
 
@snailboat answerable is but one of the requirements for a question
 
OK. I don't want to be nagging anyone. I just don't think this particular answer contributes anything to the question (or to the site).
Oh, I see. It goes to the review queue?
I didn't know that. I thought that only moderators would handle the flag, but I guess for questions it's different.
 
too open-ended
 
1:31 PM
@3to5businessdays The question has an accepted answer of a pretty high score, though...
 
All "fun" questions do
Stackoverflow has some highly voted questions which are currently considered off-topic
3161
Q: How do I "think in AngularJS" if I have a jQuery background?

Mark RajcokHow do I “think in AngularJS” if I have a jQuery background? Suppose I'm familiar with developing client-side applications in jQuery, but now I'd like to start using AngularJS. Can you describe the paradigm shift that is necessary? Here are a few questions that might help you frame an answer: ...

 
You can vote to close and the question will go into the close review queue
I would probably vote to "leave open", though.
 
@snailboat けんいん
読める!
書けないけど
@EiríkrÚtlendi 中国語の教科書(初級)を持ってるけど
詳しく発音のことを書いてないので
舌の位置とかの図は載ってないなあ
食べてください、は
请吃
とかかな
qing chi
違いが・・・
ちん・ちー になってしまう
どうして四はsi で、「しー」じゃなくて「すー」みたいに読むんですか
四のsi の i は 是とか十のshiのi 違いますよね。なんででしょうか
 
Anonymous
2:11 PM
@Choko I just learned how to write it :-) I don't know if I'll remember it tomorrow! 玄 冖 牛
 
Anonymous
But when I practice writing, I remember how to read them better, so I do it anyway :-)
 
Anonymous
@3to5businessdays Well, you can certainly vote to close if you like
 
Anonymous
(Assuming you've gathered enough reputations from the forest where reputations grow)
 
Anonymous
7:31 PM
I switched computers and sadly noticed how badly a recent table I made was formatted on the other computer, so I replaced it with an image… 仕方ない
 
9:21 PM
Hi, I created printable versions of the JLPT vocabulary lists (source: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:JLPT/N5), this is the version for N5: dropbox.com/sh/n9i1szjwj118mdg/AAA88Vavab4hZCeiifeg68Mca
Not sure if it's useful enough to add to the resources thread on meta though
I thought it would be useful to print Japanese/English in two different colours. In addition, there is a little check-box in front of each word (e.g. to keep track of your progress, only go over the words without a check-mark)
The font is Ume P Mincho, main reason for choosing this one is because I like the style of the hiragana characters
Any suggestions for improvement are most welcome, and I'd be happy to create similar files for N4...N1
 

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