It’s not the dictionary, stupid!
A lot of people say “don’t use the dictionary at all when learning a language”. This is bollocks to the nth degree. For one thing, how are you supposed to find out what words actually mean?
The problem isn’t whether you use a dictionary, but how. If you use it for looking up words one by one as you attempt to write a document, then you’re going to be in a world of hurt. You’ll end up with things like “Apparence was given me that he had proceeded too great a distance”, rather than “It was obvious that he’d gone too far”…or worse.
As far as the learner of a language is concerned, the purpose of a dictionary is not merely to throw a word or two back in your face (that’s like giving a baby a firearm; it may end well, but more likely than not, there will be injuries), but to give you some direction as to how to use that word. The way it does that is through usage examples and any other guidance (like “this word is usually used in a negative form or followed by a negated verb”; “this word usually carries a bad connotation”, and so on). In the absence of a native speaker with oodles of time on her hands and an encyplopedic knowledge of her language, a good dictionary will take you far, far, far.
So, use a dictionary. But use it properly; use it to make progress; use it as a ladder and not a crutch — learn the example sentences in it (memorizing the meaning of the sentence and of the words it contains, such that when presented with the same example sentece again, you can correctly determine its meaning and pronunciation); that is, use the dictionary itself to break your dependence on dictionaries. After all, the more of the dictionary is in your head, the less you’ll need to refer to the dictionary. What will eventually happen is that you’ll be able to figure out the working of words just like you do in your native language — from context. In the past few months preceding this writing, I have finally reached this level in Japanese. Now I mostly look up new words out of curiosity rather than need; it’s become obvious to me what a new word means in a sentence, even without kanji. But it took a lot of dictionary-use to get to this stage. My dictionary became an extension of my skin, just as my headphones were of my ears. Now I leave the old Wordtank at home.
My 2 yen on that debate.
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JDog said,
April 29, 2007 @ 2:15 am
Hey, there’s a great free dictionary called PADict for Palm. I have it on my Z22 and even though the Z22 has pretty bad resolution compared to its more pricey competitors, PADict is the only program I have found that displays kanji big enough to be able to read! Khatzumoto: would you consider it a crutch to have a dictionary that allows you to write in a kanji to look it up? You have to know the exact stroke order or it won’t work, but I think it’s really neat. It’s another great thing about this program. It also has little videos (some impressive programming in this thing) that show the correct stroke order for almost all the kanji in its database. And the whole thing is based off of Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC (I think that’s what it’s called), so it’s pretty comprehensive.
khatzumoto said,
April 29, 2007 @ 2:35 am
>Khatzumoto: would you consider it a crutch to have a dictionary that allows you to write in a kanji to look it up?
Definitely not, JDog. My dictionary (Canon Wordtank V90) has handwriting recognition. Of course it’s important to “know yer kanjis” in terms of the basic 2000 odd, but a good dictionary is always your friend, and of course there are always new kanji to learn.
james said,
April 29, 2007 @ 2:54 am
Hello, I completely agree with this. I’m listening to the news as I type this and I just heard the sentence ゴールデンウィークの初日の二十八日関東地方は午後になって天気が急変した。I have never heard 急変 before but instantly I knew what it meant.
つまり、漢字能力とカツモトの文章方法の組合せのおかげで自然な日本語に一歩近付くことができた！
でも最近気になることは，カツモトの方法を日本の友人に説明したいけど完全に理解されないのかもしれない。だからカツモトは日本語で書いた簡単な説明を載せればどうでしょうか？
james
All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to Learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency » アホッか、問題は辞書なんかじゃないぞ said,
June 8, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
[…] だから辞書は、「絶対使うな」なんて言葉に耳を貸さず、喜んで正しく使おう。何故かと言うと、永遠に頼る物ではなく寧ろ我々を解放する道具になる。辞書を座右の友にし頻繁に引き、引いた語の用例の意味を覚えよう。その用例をSRSに入力し復習しよう。すると、辞書に頼っていたからこそ徐々に頼る（引く）必要が減って行く。確かに時間が掛かるが、この手法の経験者として「価値はある」と確証する。辞書が無いと生きていけなかった私が、今では初めて見る単語の意味を調べず文脈から正確に推定できる様になったし、辞書を引く理由は殆どが好奇心からである。「絶対使うな」とのアドバイスに従っていれば恐らくここまで成長しなかっただろう。 Click here for English version. […]
All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to Learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency » アホッか、問題は辞書なんかじゃないぞ said,
June 9, 2007 @ 8:50 pm
[…] Click here for English version […]
Potemayo said,
October 10, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
Wonderful site! I’ve just started my sentence ripping today, from Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC! ^_^