EAS205 HOMEWORK FOR ONLINE DICTIONARIES
All Languages:
Look up the following character/word for your language in three online general
dictionaries of your choice. They can be dictionaries we covered in class, or dictionaries
you have found useful on your own. If they are not covered in class and/or found on the
course index page, you must include the URL in your homework.
Chinese character: 雨
Japanese character: 家
Korean word: 말
For each dictionary, provide a description of the results, including the pros and cons of
the site. Here is an example for Japanese:
Character: 女
Jim Breen’s “Search for Words in the Dictionary” function:
After I input the word I got a list of results that included the word itself and many
compounds that included the character, such as 女主 and 女嫌い. Each term had an
English translation with it. Perhaps most helpful were the links to other dictionaries and
resources after each entry. These include [G]oogle search, [GI] Google images,
[S]anseido dictionary, [A]LC dictionary (Eijiro), [Ex]ample sentences, [V]erb
conjugations, Japanese[W]ikipedia.
The number of compounds was limited to about ten per page, but one could continue to
the next page with one click. The total number of compounds was large, comparable to
good paper dictionaries.
One can select a term or terms and then click on “Examine” to find detailed entries for
each kanji in the compound. These detailed entries included the Unicode encoding and
the readings for the kanji. Clicking on “SOD” provided the stroke order for the character.
Jeffrey's Japanese<->English Dictionary Server
The search results on this page were in Romanization, which was not as useful as Jim
Breen’s dictionary. However, if I clicked on the link I got the kanji for the term. The
results have very simple definitions, with no example sentences and few further links. On
Jeffrey’s Kanji Lookup, I entered the reading in kana under “Reading” and found the
character’s entry, which looked like this:
dictionary search code ``!3D77''
Classification: First Grade, Frequency-of-Use: #151
readings: JO, NYO, NYOU, onna, me, ona, ta, tsuki, na
English tags: `woman', `female'
Radical: 38, Stroke count: 3
Encodings: JIS 3D77, EUC BDF7, Kuten 2987, Shift-JIS 8F97, Unicode 5973
SKIP code: 4-3-4, Four-Corner code: 4040.0
Indices: Halpern #3418, Halpern Learners #2135, S&H Kana & Kanji #102, S&H Kanji
Dictionary #3e0.1, Nelson #1185, New Nelson #1173, Henshall #35, De Roo #1769,
Heisig #98, O'Neill Japanese Names #114, O'Neill Essential Kanji #62, Morohashi
Number #6036, Morohashi Volume & Page #3.0612, Gakken #178, Japanese For Busy
People #2.13, Japanese Language Power #60, Compact Kanji #423, Reading/Writing
Japanese #41, Kanji in Context #68, Sakade #32, Tuttle Kanji Cards #19
Pinyin: nu:3, ru3
Korean readings: nyeo, yeo
Most of this information is not helpful, though, unless one is trying to cross-reference
dictionaries. The definition was terse and simplistic.
Goo (Sanseidō) Online Dictionary
This page gives a search selection of English-Japanese, Japanese-English or JapaneseJapanese. It also gives the choice to search all three. Results for the character 女 included
a long list of compounds. If you choose to search all three dictionaries, you won’t get a
link to further entries beyond the first ten. But, if you specify one dictionary then there is
a link to further entries. The definition in the kokugo jiten had a quotation from the
Man’yōshū. The definition in the Japanese-English dictionary had a few grammatical
variations and looked like this:
《女性》woman; 《集合的》the fair sex; 《婦人》a woman; 《情婦》a mistress.
・～の female; feminine.
・～らしい womanly; ladylike.
・～らしくない unwomanly; unladylike.
～三人よれば姦(かしま)しい Where there are women, there is noise./ When women
gather, gossip spreads.
It seems like there are many compounds in this dictionary, comparable to the other two
above.