The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary [Hardcover]

Andrew N. Nelson (Author), John H. Haig (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804820368 | ISBN-13: 978-0804820363 | Publication Date: September 15, 1997 | Edition: Hardcover with Jacket

ôThis reigning authority on Japanese character definitions is based on missionary-scholar Nelson's first 1962 edition of The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary. Essential for all Japanese and East Asian studies collections.ö - Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese

About the Author

Andrew Nathaniel Nelson was born in Great Falls, Montana, in 1893. He received his B.A. from Walla Walla Coleg and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. As a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary in Asia between 1918 and 1961, Dr. Nelson played a prominent role in the fields of education and language training. Throughout his life, Dr. Nelson remained devoted to the study of the Japanese language and the fundamentals of Chinese.

John H. Haig is an associate professor of Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, one of the largest departments of its kind in the U.S.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1616 pages
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing; Hardcover with Jacket edition (September 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804820368
• ISBN-13: 978-0804820363
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Japanese

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Significantly Improved though not Perfect, May 13, 2000

By 

"radagasty" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (Hardcover)

The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary is based on the classic Nelson edition, but has undergone significant thorough revision, although whether the changes be improvements or otherwise is debateable, insofar that this new edition little resembles its older counterpart save in content. In any case, neither editions of this dictionary are suitable for beginners in the language, offering scant help in point of usage and composition.

This edition of the dictionary has a totally new system of arranging characters, discarding the strange algorithmic system in favour of the much better traditional arrangement based on the arrangement by semantic components, known as radicals, used in Chinese dictionaries following the famous and authoritative 42-volume Kangxi Character Dictionary of the Chinese Ch'ing dynasty which sets out over 40,000 characters classified under 214 radicals. This is an improvement only insofar that the idiosyncratic algorithmic system of Nelson was replace by the traditional system. However, this transition was not completed, and, instead of the full traditional system being implement, only the veneer of using the traditional arrangement is present. Upon closer examination, one finds that certain characters have been classified under different radicals than that under the traditional system fixed by the Kangxi dictionary. Granted that the Kangxi dictionary is a Chinese work that would not contain kokuji, characters invented in Japan, but these characters are very few in number compared to those borrowed from China, and, in any case, were made up according to the principles of Chinese characters, thereby having a natural place in the Kangxi classification anyway. This half-hearted implementation of the traditional system is a great misfortune, for it is at once irritating and disconcerting, making the finding of certain characters a wild-goose chase indeed. Despite the deficiencies of this method of arrangement, it is yet a significant improvement on the ridiculous mathematical arrangement used in the classic peculiar to that book, making it difficult to move to the traditional arrangement used by most Japanese dictionaries.

This new edition is very much larger and heavier, and cumbersome to use, due to the inclusion of the Universal Radical Index. This URI would seem to be an attempt to repair the shortcoming in the arrangement of characters outline above. It lists each character under every radical that could possibly be the character's radical. This makes for a very big index, substantially increasing the book's bulk without adding functionality that could have been more easily achieved by proper traditional arrangement of characters. However, the arrangement being what it is, and the cross-references in the dictionary being almost eliminated altogether, the URI is more-or-less essential.

All, however, does not bode ill for the dictionary. The quality of the entries themselves are what they always have been: clear, concise and comprehensible. They have been thoroughly revised to make the definitions more up-to-date and more copious, a number of new words having been added. In terms of content, there is indeed a noticeable improvement. Note, though, that this is not a writer's dictionary, for it gives no indication of how a particular character or word might be used. Rather, it is for the reader who encounters unknown words in a text he reads, and desires to seek its meaning in the dictionary. For this latter use, the dictionary serves its purpose admirably, having such a comprehensive vocabulary that one seldom notices its omissions.

Physically, the dictionary is well produced, giving allowances for its large size. The print is sharp, clear and not too small; the liberal use of white space gives the page a much more appealing look. This book is also well bound and generally handsome in appearance, the weighty tome it is.

Whilst I would not dissuade a potential buyer from this book, I would advise him to consider carefully whether the classic edition, despite its awkward algorithmic arrangement and silghtly dated entries, might not better suit his needs than this new edition. I would not hesitate to recommend this edition to any advanced student of the language, the two main detracting factors being the arrangement of characters, which is no worse than in the classic edition and its size. Nonetheless, if size is no consideration, then this is indeed an improvement on the classic edition, albeit not perfect, but nonetheless having a better arrangement of characters, a more copious vocabulary and more up-to-date entries. In short, this new dictionary is certainly better than the classic, and surpassed by few other Japanese-English character dictionaries on the market, and flawed though it is, nonetheless indispensable for the serious reader of Japanese.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So near, and yet so far., July 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (Hardcover)

(The following contains a few Japanese characters. If possible, set your browser to read Shift-JIS encoding.)

- The book is now 1600 pages (the previous was about 1100). The paper seems to be a slightly whiter, heavier, and more opaque grade. The binding is dark blue and sort of plasticky (not sure exactly what it is), as opposed to the maroon cloth weave of the old one.

- The pages have an airier appearance than before, but are the same size. The gutter between columns is distinctly wider, there seems to be more whitespace in general, and the type is bigger. The typography is still high quality, as before. Entries now include JIS numbers when available.

- The useful appendices in back are pretty much as before, perhaps expanded a bit. Pinyin is now given along with Wade-Giles for place names.

- The cover claims to have 1200 new characters. I'm not sure about this, but the new characters that I noticed look like PRC-style simplified characters.

- There is now a "Universal Radical Index" (URI) that allows you to look up a character by any of its component radicals, and even includes a few of what they call "nonce radicals", that is, frequently-recurring shapes that aren't radicals, like the three dots on top of "íP".

- Sadly, nothing resembling Spahn & Hadamitzky's lookup by any character.

- There does seem to be more vocabulary. As a rough-and-ready measure of new vocabulary, I looked under "ìd" and found a number of new words, like ìdéqâªé'èë (denshi-ka jisho). Unfortunately this is not itself an electronic dictionary, and the new terms didn't go as far as they might: no "ìdãCéËíÝ"

- Here's the bad part: Nelson's has (sort of) returned to traditional radical indexing, as opposed to the algorithmic style pioneered in previous editions. Furthermore, it has pretty much eliminated cross-referencing from the "wrong" radical in the main body of the text, relying instead on the URI in the back. This may make the thing nearly unusable for previous Nelson's owners.

Even though they are mostly using the traditional radical system, they haven't gone all the way. All the characters that should be classified under tsuki-hen are instead classified under niku-hen. So the editors have managed to offend both their existing clientele who like the algorithmic system *and* traditionalists who don't.

This is a huge mistake. If they wanted to, they could have released two editions: one based on traditional indexing, and one based on Nelsonian indexing. And if they had more imagination, they would have included a CD-ROM.

Bottom line: This is like a beautifully-made clock that doesn't keep time accurately. The indexing system provides the central structure of any kanji dictionary, so it damned well better be a good one. This one isn't. If you are an existing Nelson's user like me, you'll be frustrated. If you are a classicist, you'll be irritated. If you are a first-time buyer, you'll be mystified. Apart from that, this is a very nice dictionary.

Nelson's users should stick with the older edition (which is evidently still being printed). First-time buyers should get the older edition or S&H's Kanji Dictionary.

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Classic Nelson has been totally ruined, April 17, 2003

By 

"randd2003" (Kanagawa, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (Hardcover)

I purchased the original Nelson in Japan in 1962, the year it was first published. Over the last 41 years, I have worn out at least 2 copies, and presently own three.

The original Nelson was a masterpiece and for many years has been considered 'the kanji bible' for those interested in mastering Japanese characters. Unfortunately, the new version (The New Nelson, as it is inappropriately called) is a disaster... for several reasons:

1. Nelson's original 12 Step system, though still shown inside the front cover, is now unusable. For example, if a beginner wants to look up the character 'wa' (meaning peace or harmony) which is comprised of 'nogi hen' (Radical 115) plus 'kuchi' (3 additional strokes), following Nelson's 12-Step system will lead to failure--the character is not listed under Radical 115. WHY? (See reason number 2)

2. The New Nelson lists the characters under the old traditional Chinese system based on the K'ang-Hsi Dictionary of 1716. Under that archaic system, the character in question 'wa' was listed under Radical 30 ('kuchi-hen') for some reason even the Chinese could not explain. Guess what?!? This is PRECISELY what Mr. Andrew Nathaniel Nelson, PhD, most wanted to avoid in his original dictionary because in the old traditional Chinese system there was too much that was illogical and unfathomable about the ordering of the characters. So the New Nelson dictionary destroys one of the main advantages of the original Nelson dictionary.

3. The New Nelson adds a bulky, cumbersome 230-page Universal Radical Index. Every character is listed under every possible incorrect radical that any one could possible think of, any more. The end result is a total dumbing-down of the process of learning the radical-stroke character look-up system. It also makes the dictionary much bulkier and heavier and less handy. It is analogous to equipping a car with 5 extra gas tanks and 4 extra engines--in case you run out of gas or have some sort of engine problem.

We need to answer these questions:

Is the New Nelson a better dictionary than the old one? Definitely, NOT! It actually destroys the main advantage of the original Nelson--its handy character look-up system.

Is the New Nelson easier to use? Definitely, NOT! You first have to unlearn Nelson's original system of character look-up, and then try to learn an archaic, cumbersome, illogical Chinese system.

My recommendations:

1. Get a copy of the old Nelson and treat it with the utmost care. It may be a long time before an equivalent dictionary is available again.

2. Write to Charles E. Tuttle, the publisher, and complain about this horrible New Nelson.

3. Write to University of Hawaii at Manoa and complain about what they have done to an outstanding dictionary, which now has become unavailable.

I have done all the above. But what about my copy of the New Nelson that I purchased about 5 years ago?

I gave up on trying to use it and am now thinking of donating it to a needy Japanese fish pond as a form of ballast for growing barnacles or some other form of marine life... somewhere it might be useful. I'm also thinking of the Zen-related ramifications... the sound a New Nelson makes when it splashes into a fish pond on a moonlit night...

Rand Dorsey
Japanese linguist with 41+ years experience studying, researching, listening to, reading, writing, speaking, teaching, and enjoying the Japanese language.