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The Kanji Dictionary (English and Japanese Edition) 2nd Edition

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Mark Spahn (Author)
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Mark Spahn (Author), Wolfgang Hadamitzky (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 30 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0804820585
ISBN-10: 0804820589
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 1768 pages
  • Publisher: Tuttle Publishing; 2nd edition (April 15, 1996)
  • Language: English, Japanese
  • ISBN-10: 0804820589
  • ISBN-13: 978-0804820585
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 3 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #354,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 56 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsIndispensable Resource
By C. E. Stevens VINE VOICE on April 9, 2003
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
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!
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsOne big lump of knowledge
By Jose Atria Lemaitre on August 22, 2005
Format: Hardcover
I bought this dictionary just when I was beginning my fourth semester of japanese lessons, to help me with my future translations and with the learning of new kanji (which is always a useful thing, since many tend to get disappointed when they know they have to learn about 2,000 to read the newspaper).

I have always thought that with any given dictionary, there are two main issues you have to keep in mind: how complete it is, and just how easy it is to use.

I have not as of yet searched for any kanji I have not been able to find, so I'd say it is fairly complete. This is an extremely thorough dictionary, covering not only an incredible amount of individual kanji, but a whole lot of compunds (the dictionary claims over 47,000. I'll take their word.), so there is a very good possibility of you too finding the character you are looking for.

As for the second issue, I must say I'm surprised at how easy it is to find kanji. When i first heard of the system kanji dictionaries used for listing them, I was appalled. I was pleased to find, nevertheless, a full two-page-and-a-half brief manual on how to use the dictionary that gave me all the preparation I needed: I was succesfully looking up kanji in now more than 10 minutes.

Basically, there are two ways in which you can find a given kanji in this dictionary: by their readings (either the on-yomi, or the kun-yomi), and by their stroke count. The 79-radical system can be a little confusing at first, but is fairly simple to get used and not at all as illogical as one might think.

The only complaint I have so far is the lack of internal references made in the dictionary.Read more ›
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsHighly Helpful and Useable Kanji Dictionary
By Scott David Foutz on July 30, 2005
Format: Hardcover
This has been my primary Kanji Dictionary for several years. It is impressively comprehensive, covering over 7,500 single kanji characters (compare this to the Japanese Ministry of Education's list of 1850 "standard" Kanji) and almost 47,000 multi-character compounds. The dictionary itself is about 1700 pages. Unlike "Japanese-English" dictionaries which are ordered according to the Hiragana/Katakana (alphabet) sequence, this is a Kanji dictionary and thus is based primarily on ideogram (kanji) construct. Since a single kanji character can have a wide breadth of pronunciations given the context, strokes or stroke composites hold the key to unlocking the kanji universe. Greater minds have determined that all Kanji characters are (nearly) comprised of 79 "radicals". Using the analogy of chemistry, if a Kanji character were the chemical compound, the list of 79 "radicals" is the periodic table representing the core components from which the entire system is built. Thus once you become familiar with the 79 radicals, the massive world of Kanji becomes all that less intimidating.
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsIf you will have only one kanji dictionary, get this.
By A Customer on December 7, 1998
Format: Hardcover
I have used many Japanese dictionaries over the years, and this is by far the single most useful one for kanji. This is largely because many kanji that are frequently-used don't often occur at the beginning of a compound. So to get a picture of the usage of one of these, you need a dictionary that gives lists of compounds with the kanji in positions other than first. This is the only dictionary to do that.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsuseful, but not portable
By hettar7 on July 20, 2003
Format: Hardcover
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat learner's guide

This Kanji dDctionary is a great way to start learning this inscrutable form of Japanese orthography. Read more

Published 6 months ago by A Furry Bear
5.0 out of 5 starswonderful resource for every level.

Thanks to the seller's great description, even as a very beginner, I decided this book would be helpful and interesting. It is amazing! Read more

Published 7 months ago by p315
4.0 out of 5 starsExceptional dictionary, but hold your nose...

This is an extremely good dictionary and I use it to back up my Nelson Kanji Dictionary whenever I can't find something (the radical system has just enough difference that when I... Read more

Published 15 months ago by Jane b.
4.0 out of 5 starsKanji ditionary review

For each radical it gives a full list of Kanji listed. For each Kanji there are several words list with the subject Kanji in the lead and then words where the subject is second and... Read more

Published 22 months ago by james
5.0 out of 5 starsKanji

Oh my Amaterasu! This book is huge, it's like the grand lexicon of kanji. Like really, this thing is like a big yellow cinder block, it's thickness is longer than my fingers. Read more

Published on January 10, 2014 by Stigmatarsis
4.0 out of 5 starsAn excellent dictionary, but terrible binding

This is an excellent dictionary, but it is badly let down by the poor quality of the paper and the binding. Read more

Published on June 27, 2013 by gman48
5.0 out of 5 starsPerfect

Even novices will find this expertly organized dictionary is easy to use.

Kanji can be found by reading (on/kun) or radical but not directly by stroke count. Read more

Published on May 11, 2013 by ILM
5.0 out of 5 starsComprehensive and very usable.

The 2 - 9 stroke radicals are listed on the front and back binding cover sheets with their location in the dictionary. Read more

Published on May 5, 2013 by The Bear
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Kanji Dictionary

If you are a student of Japanese, you know how difficult it can be to identify Kanji and how many combinations they appear in. This dictionary is exactly what you need. Read more

Published on March 3, 2013 by Ralph N. Baergen
4.0 out of 5 starsIts really great!

I have a very good time using the Kanji dictionary.
it can ba hard to use if you dont know how it works, im still trying to learn but i really like using it

Published on February 25, 2013 by Michella Beck

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