Learn Japanese Today

Today we’ll be taking a look at one of the internet’s largest and most popular Japanese dictionaries, WWWJDIC . This dictionary was created by Jim Breen of Australia’s Monash University, and is the web’s authority for Japanese word look-up. Without furthur ado, let’s go to the review.

Ease of Use: 6

This dictionary has easily twice as much info as any other on the web, but getting to it is another story. I tried to find the word 楽しい(tanoshii), by typing in its definition of ‘fun’. These were some of the results I got:

興味索然 【きょうみさくぜん】 (adj-t,adv-to) uninteresting; tending to spoil the fun (pleasure) (of); throwing a wet blanket (on)
茶化す 【ちゃかす】 (v5s) to poke fun at; to make fun of 
ファンファール(P); ファンファーレ (n) (1) fanfare (ger:); flourish of trumpets; (2) fun fair;

The list goes on, but the target word, tanoshii, does not appear until the twentieth entry. Checking the box marked ‘Common words’ brings it up to the 9th entry, and only by also checking the ‘Exact word-match’ box does it become the second entry. You would think they would put the most common and exact matches at the top, but that’s just not how this dictionary rolls. Typing in a Japanese word and searching for its english definition is much more effective than the other direction, but I find myself looking for a Japanese word much more often. Also, the kanji-finder seems needlessly complex and always takes me a while to use. The Japanese reading tool and hand-written kanji finder are pretty efficient, but they aren’t the main focus of the dictionary.

Authenticity: 6

This dictionary will always have the right word somewhere, but it won’t tell you which one it is, leaving you to find it yourself. Let’s look back at the example of tanoshii, even after I checked the boxes for ‘Common words’ and ‘exact word-match’ it was still only the second entry, the first was this:

ファン (n) (1) fan; (2) fun;

If there’s one surefire way to have a Japanese person think you don’t know Japanese, its to speak in katakana phonetic conversions like the one above aka (dog = ドッグ(doggu)、cat = カット(katto)). ファン is an acceptable word for ‘fan’, as in ’sports fan.’ It is not really an acceptable word for fun, and certainly not if you’re trying to convince people you know Japanese. Finding the right word in this dictionary basically requires you to know the right word.

Quantity of Knowledge: 10

You just can’t argue with this one. There are so many entries, most of which are equipped with example sentences and conjigations. On top of that is a reading tool, kanji dictionary, and even a dictionary you can use from your cell phone. If you can’t find a word in a smaller dictionary, odds are it will be here. This is a good last resort.

Price: 10 (free)

Yes, it’s free, but the 10 score is assuming you don’t put a price on your time. It takes a while to get what you want out of this beast.

Fun: 2

I know dictionaries aren’t supposed to be fun, but using WWWJDIC frequently puts me in a bad mood. Sometimes I find what I’m looking for right  away, but other times it makes me wish for a less thorough dictionary. Again, most of the other tools aren’t as frustrating as the English-Japanese, but that’s the one I usually use.

Overall: 6.5

I have to give credit where credit is due because of the ridiculous amount of stuff you can find at WWWJDIC, but because its so difficult to use, I’d really recommend it only for obscure words that you know aren’t commonly used.

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