Dictionary
The dictionary is one of JWPce's most powerful features. This online dictionary will function as a Japanese->English, or English->Japanese dictionary. Further, the dictionary search engine allows you to add any number of supplemental dictionaries to the system. Finally, JWPce allows you to create your own dictionary for entries that are not in the dictionaries provided.
The main dictionaries used by JWPce (EDICT and ENAMDICT) were developed primarily by James William Breen who holds their copyrights. He has my thanks and appreciation for all his work and for making them available for use in JWPce.
Basic Dictionary Searches
A basic dictionary search is performed by executing the Utilities/Dictionary... menu command, the Dictionary... command from the popup menu, selecting the Dictionary button on the toolbar, or the Ctrl+D or F6 keyboard commands. Any of these commands will open the Dictionary dialog (below).
Tip: If you select the text to search for before opening the Dictionary dialog, JWPce will automatically load the Word to Lookup edit box with the selected text. Further, if the Auto-Search option is selected (on by default), JWPce will automatically search for the selected text. This is really convenient!Remember, the dictionary dialog is dynamic. If you increase the size of the dialog additional controls will be added. All of these controls are on the Dictionary Options dialog, and include Classical, Full ASCII, JASCII = ASCII, Track Clipboard, Sort Priority, and all of the advanced search options (Always Search, Show All, i-Adjective, and Mark). .
After executing a search the list control will automatically be activated. If you want to execute another search, you do not need to select the Word to Lookup edit box. You can simply start typing another word (or press the cursor controls), and JWPce will automatically transfer control to the edit control.
What you can Search for
The Word to Lookup edit box and input mode control are used to specify what you want to search for. If the string you enter in the Word to Lookup edit box is in English, the dictionary will function as an English->Japanese dictionary. If the string is in Japanese the dictionary will function as a Japanese->English dictionary. If the string contains both English and Japanese characters an error will occur and the search will fail.
Tip: Tip: Remember the dictionary keeps track of the last several searches you have executed. You can recall these using the history function.In order to make searching the dictionaries efficient and keep the index files to a reasonable size, JWPce requires that you enter a certain number of characters before you can search the dictionary. The search requirements are as follows:
character type number required English (ASCII) 3 kana 2 kanji 1 In a dictionary search, no distinction is made between hiragana and katakana; consequently, the search on
or
will yield the same results.
WARNING! You must be careful when searching for a combination of kanji and kana. For example, you can search on eitheror
, and find that this is the word for school. If, however, you search on
or
the search will fail. This is because these half kana and half kanji combinations are unusual spellings for this word. In comparison, searches for
and
will indicate that this is the same word, meaning, "to return home".
Searching for Verbs
When using the dictionary as an English->Japanese dictionary, you can search for verbs by prefixing the search word with “to “.
For example if you were to search for swim, you would get 62 matches. Searching for to swim, would result in the following matches:
Pattern Searches
You can search for words using patterns. Pattern searches must contain at least one kanji, but may contain any number of the following special characters (which may be entered in ASCII or JASCII), and any kana you want.
Character Meaning * Any number of characters, including zero. ? Any single characters. [ Matches only the beginning of a word (same as setting the Begin With option). ] Matches only the end of a word (same as setting the End With option). Pattern searches can be very useful for locating a word when you cannot clearly read or do not know one kanji amongst some others.
As an example of pattern searches, searching for
would result in:
Where searching for
would result in:
Special Searches
JWPce allows a special search for the combination of
(must be in JASCII, but can be entered in kanji mode). This search will display the ID for many of the dictionaries installed on your system. This can be used to check the dictionary versions.
Limiting the Search
There are three check boxes on the Dictionary dialog box that can be used to limit the search and make using the dictionary easier. For example, if you simply search for
, you will get 606 matches!. If you select all three check boxes and search again, you will get only 4 entries!
The check boxes have the following effects:
Begin With Requires that the search string be located at the beginning of the word. End With Requires that the search sting be located at the end of the word. No Names Excludes personal and place names from the search (except for some very common place names such a Tokyo). Continuing the example above, selecting Begin With would allow the search for
to match
and
, but not match
. Selecting End With would allow the same search to match
and
, but not match
(see warning below). Combining both the Begin With and End With options would only match
.
WARNING! Because of the way the dictionaries are currently indexed, searches on kana strings always behave as if the Begin With option is checked (not as in the example above). Searches on kanji or English text do behave as described above.Selecting both the No Names option will cause the dictionary not to search any name dictionaries. This can significantly speed up dictionary searches on slower systems.
There are additional dictionary search limits that can be enabled in the Dictionary Options dialog.
Related Topics
* Some very common places such as Tokyo are still included in the search.
Searching and Results
You can start a search by selecting the Search button or pressing Enter, and abort the search by pressing the ESC key.
As the search executes, you will see messages in the area located directly under the Word to Lookup text. The most common messages are a simple status messages - the message "No Matches!" (indicating that the search yielded no results), or a count.
The count displays the number of matches found, and the number of rejected entries. The rejected count indicates the number of matches that were rejected because they did not match the limits you set (also see).*
The results of the search will be displayed in the Results Japanese list box, where you can use all of the list box manipulations to work with the results.
A number of special codes are contained in the dictionary entries. These codes indicate grammatical or other characteristics of the entry. The exact codes are particular to the dictionary. The dominant codes are defined by EDICT and ENAMDICT (most other dictionaries use the same or similar codes).
Dictionary entry codes for EDICT (main dictionary).
Code Interpretation abbr abbreviation adj adjective (keiyoushi) adv adverb (fukushi) adj-na adjectival nouns or quasi-adjectives (keiyodoshi) adj-no nouns which may take the genitive case particle "no" adj-pn pre-noun adjectival (rentaishi) adj-s special adjective (e.g. ookii) adj-t "taru" adjective arch archaism aux auxiliary word or phrase aux-v auxiliary verb conj conjunction col colloquialism exp Expressions (phrases, clauses, etc.) ek exclusively kanji, rarely just in kana fam familiar language fem female term or language gikun gikun (meaning) reading gram grammatical term hon honorific or respectful (sonkeigo) language hum humble (kenjougo) language id idiomatic expression int interjection (kandoushi) iK word containing irregular kanji usage ik word containing irregular kana usage io irregular okurigana usage MA martial arts term Male male term or language m-sl manga slang n noun (common) (futsuumeishi) n-adv adverbial noun (fukushitekimeishi) n-t noun (temporal) (jisoumeishi) n-suf noun, used as a suffix neg negative (in a negative sentence, or with negative verb) neg-v negative verb (when used with) obs obsolete term obsc obscure term oK word containing out-dated kanji ok out-dated or obsolete kana usage pol polite (teineigo) language pref prefix qv quod vide (see another entry) sl slang suf suffix uK word usually written using kanji alone uk word usually written using kana alone v1 Ichidan verb v5 Godan verb (not completely classified) v5u Godan verb with `u' ending v5k Godan verb with `ku' ending v5g Godan verb with `gu' ending v5s Godan verb with `su' ending v5t Godan verb with `tsu' ending v5n Godan verb with `nu' ending v5b Godan verb with `bu' ending v5m Godan verb with `mu' ending v5r Godan verb with `ru' ending v5k-s Godan verb - Iku/Yuku special class v5z Godan verb - -zuru special class (alternative form of -jiru verbs) v5aru Godan verb - -aru special class v5uru Godan verb - Uru old class verb (old form of Eru) vi intransitive verb vs noun or participle which takes the aux. verb suru vs-s suru verb - special class vk Kuru verb - special class vt transitive verb vulg vulgar expression or word X rude or X-rated term (not displayed in educational software) Dictionary entry codes used by ENAMDICT (name dictionary).
code interpretation f female given name g given name, as yet not classified by sex m male given name p place-name s surname u person name, as yet unclassified Related Topics
* The number of rejected entries may not be quite accurate. If you have selected No Names, or No Personal Names and No Place Names, name dictionaries (such as ENAMDICT) will not even be searched, and thus will not be counted in the rejected entries.Filtered entries are not indicated in the count in order to make searches run faster. The dictionaries may contain more than one meaning for an entry, and it is possible that JWPce may exclude part of an entry because it conflicts with the search limits that you set. Such an entry is said to have been filtered.
Advanced Dictionary Searches
If the Advanced check box is selected JWPce will execute an advanced dictionary search. This type of search causes JWPce to automatically check for conjugation of verbs and additives and to find the best match to the search string you have provided.
It is actually easier to understand what the search is doing by following some examples. In the first case lets assume you are reading text and come across the following text
(reading). If you didn't know this word and simply selected the entire text into the dictionary, no matches would be found. If you enabled the Advanced search, the following match would be found:
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Here, the dictionary has realized that this is simply the te-form of a verb.
As a second example, consider the case where you encounter a long string of hiragana and you are unsure of where the words break. If you take the search pattern
, a simple search will yield no matches, but an advanced search will yield the following results:
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(the first one is actually correct).
Advanced Search Results
The advanced search can yield many false matches (particularly if End With is disabled). To make best use of the results it is important to know that generally the more probable matches will be placed earlier in the list. Also remember that normal search limit options work with the advanced search.
Normally the advanced search algorithm processes the search pattern you provided in stages, looking for matches to successively shorter pieces of the search string. The search will normally stop at the longest search string that can be found. Various options that determine how the advanced search will be conducted are located in the Dictionary Options dialog.
User Dictionary
No matter how big or how good or how many dictionaries you have, you will encounter words that are not in them, and words that are not translated quite correctly. To assist in these cases, JWPce allows you to generate a user dictionary, containing entries that you define.
The User Dictionary dialog box can be entered from the Dictionary dialog box or from the Dictionary Options dialog box (see below).
This dialog box consists of a Japanese edit-list set of controls for manipulating the user dictionary. You can use these controls to arrange entries in the dictionary, delete entries, edit entries, add entries, sort entries in kana order, and import entries.*
When user dictionary entries are displayed as the result of a dictionary search, they are displayed in the highlight color to set them apart.
* You can import another user dictionary into your user dictionary by selecting the Import button or by dragging the dictionary file (user.dct) onto the User Dictionary dialog.
Adding or Editing Entries
If you edit or add a user entry to the dictionary, you will see a dialog box containing three edit boxes, and a control for setting the input mode.
The Kana edit box should contain the kana representation for the entry. This edit box must contain a kana string.
The Kanji edit box should contain the kanji representation of the entry. If the entry does not have a kanji representation, this box should be empty. Further, remember to include the okurigana (part of the word written in kana) in this box.
The Meaning edit box is an English-only edit box and should contain the meaning(s) for the entry. Multiple meanings should be separated by the "/" (slash) character. Further, you should attempt to use the codes that are appropriate for the entry. (Codes should be entered in parentheses, and separated by commas.)
Tip: If you select text (either in the Dictionary dialog, in your file, or in an edit control), JWPce will automatically place this text in the Kana or Kanji control. This can make generating user entries much easier.
WARNING! JWPce will allow you to use extended ASCII in the meaning field for the user dictionary (this allows use of accented characters as defined by the code page used by your system). This ability deviates from the EDICT specifications as defined by Jim Breen. If you use this feature, your dictionary files may not be interpreted appropriately by other software!
Adding Entries to EDICT
EDICT is a cooperative effort, built upon the contributions of many different people. If you accumulate dictionary entries in your user dictionary, they can be sent to Jim Breen, who can add them to EDICT. They will eventually be included in the indexed dictionary, allowing faster searching. The combined contributions of many different users will work to enhance the quality of the dictionary for everyone.
Contributing to EDICT
You can send your JWPce user dictionary file to Jim Breen to have it included in EDICT. Before sending contributions, please make sure you have the newest version of EDICT (http://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/00INDEX.html) so you do not suggest additions that have already been made.
Users intending to make submissions to EDICT should follow the following simple rules:*
- All verbs in plain form. The English must begin with "to ....". Add (vi) or (vt) to the first translation if the nature of the verb is not implicit in the translation(s).
- Add (an) or (a-no) or (vs) as appropriate to nouns. Do not enter the "na" or "no" particles in the Japanese, or the "suru" auxiliary verb. Entries that are (vs) should not be entered as verb infinitives (e.g. "to cook"); instead enter them as gerunds/participles/whatever (e.g. cooking (vs)).
- Indicate prefixes and suffixes by "(pref)" and "(suf)" in the first English entry, not by using "-" in the kanji or kana.
- Do not add definite or indefinite articles (e.g., "a", "an", "the", etc) to English nouns unless they are necessary to distinguish the word from another usage type or homonym.
- Do not guess the kanji. One of the most persistent problems in editing EDICT is finding and eliminating incorrect kanji.
- Do not use the "/", "[" or "]" characters.
- If you are using a reference in romaji form, make sure you have the correct kana for "too/tou" and "zu", where the Hepburn romaji is often ambiguous.
- Make sure your kana are correct. A persistent problem is the submission of words like "honyaku" as ho+nya+ku instead of the correct ho+n'+ya+ku.
- Do not include words formed by common Japanese suffixes, such as "-teki", unless they cannot be deduced from the root.
- Please do not contribute entries to EDICT which have come directly from copyrightable sources. It is hard to check these, and you may be jeopardizing EDICT's status.
Actually Contributing to EDICT
You can contributed to EDICT by sending your user dictionary (user.dic) to:
Jim Breen
(jwb@csse.monash.edu.au)
School of Computer Science & Software Engineering
Monash University
Clayton 3168
AUSTRALIA
Additional Information
If you would like to make additional suggestions concerning EDICT, please read the EDICT.doc file included with the distribution of EDICT for instructions.
* These were simplified from Jim Breen's EDICT.doc file. I have removed rules that JWPce enforces.
Dictionary Options
The Dictionary Options dialog box allows you to control a number of options used in searching the dictionaries. The dialog box can be entered by choosing the Options button from the Dictionary dialog.
The Dictionary Options dialog box contains a number of controls:
- Auto-Search: If this control is checked every time you enter the dictionary with selected text, the dictionary will automatically search for the selected text (checked by default).
- Compressed: Normally JWPce displays dictionary entries using a two line (minimum) format that looks something like:
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If this check box is selected, a compressed format is used that attempts to place the data for each entry on a single line:
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This has the advantage of displaying more information at the expense of making the display somewhat more cluttered.
- Track Clipboard: Selecting this option causes JWPce to lookup (in the dictionary) anything you copy to the clipboard from another application (not this version of JWPce). For example, when reading a web page, you could select some text in Japanese and copy to the clipboard. JWPce will automatically search for this text in the dictionary. This removes the step of pasting the text into the dictionary. Several dictionary error messages will be disabled when responding to the track clipboard function, including mixed kana/ASCII, and too few characters for search.
- Classical: This activates the classical Japanese search mode in the dictionary.
- Sort Priority: The main dictionary contains approximately 100,000 entries. 20,000 of them are marked as priority word. These are the most common 20,000 words in the dictionary. Selecting this option automatically places priority entries at the top of the list.
- Full ASCII Entry: Modifies the operation of the Begin With and End With search options for ASCII searches (English->Japanese dictionary search). With this flag selected, ASCII searches must match the entire entry, not just a word in the entry. With the normal Begin With and End With flags selected, searching for car, would match car horn, and race car. Selecting this flag would require a complete match to car. This can greatly reduce the number of matches.
For example, search for car, without the Begin With and End With flags results in over 1000 matches. Setting these flags reduces the number of matches to about 160. Selecting this flag reduces the matches to 7.- JASCII -> ASCII: This option converts Japanese fixed with ASCII characters to normal ASCII characters. This is on by default, but you may need to disable it if you are searching for entries that contain JASCII characters.
- Exclude Entries: This list box contains a list of types of entries you can exclude from the search. The first four entries in this list correspond to there of the check boxes located in the Dictionary dialog box. The remainder of the entries correspond to various codes used in dictionary entries. Not all codes appear in the Exclude Entries list, because it does not make sense to exclude entries based on some of the dictionary codes.
Clicking on entries in this list highlights them and excludes them from the search.
Advanced Search Options
These options allow you to modify the operation of the advanced search. To understand these options it is important to understand how the advanced search operates and how it determines when to stop searching.
With the Advanced Search option selected, the search procedure attempts to match the current search string, then applies a number of grammatical rules to it and tries to match the results. If no matches are generated, the end character is removed from the search string and the whole process is tried again. Normally this repeats until either there are no more characters in the search string, or a number of possible matches have been found.
- Advanced Search: This is identical to the Advanced check box on the Dictionary dialog, and simply enables or disables the advanced search.
The following options are effect the advanced search:
- Always Search: If this check box is selected, an advanced search is always performed, even if the search string was matched directly. If this is cleared, and the actual search string is found, the advanced search is disabled.
- Show all: If this box is checked all possible matches are shown. This will cause the advanced search to continue until no more characters remain in the search string. This can generate a lot of extra matches, but can sometimes find the result you are looking for.
- i-adjectives: Following the grammatical rules for matching I-adjectives can lead to a large number of false matches in some cases. Clearing this check box will prevent i-adjective matching.
- Mark: This option separates direct search matches from advanced search matches (as shown below). If the Sort Priority option is also selected, this option will sort direct match entries to the top of the first part of the list and advanced matched entries to the top of the advanced list.
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Dictionaries
JWPce has the ability to search any number of dictionaries. Exactly which dictionaries JWPce knows about and searches is determined by the Searched Dictionaries dialog. You get to this dialog box by clicking on the Dictionaries button in the Dictionary Options dialog.
To understand how to work with dictionaries, it is helpful first to understand how JWPce deals with dictionaries*. A dictionary to JWPce, consists of a file with a format specified by Jim Breen. Dictionaries come in two varieties, indexed and unindexed dictionaries. An indexed dictionary comes with an index file (which has the extension .jdx). The index file allows JWPce to jump to specific points in the dictionary. This is important in allowing a large dictionary to be searched quickly.
An unindexed dictionary does not contain an index file. JWPce must search through the entire dictionary to find an entry. This type of search is slower, but it is easier to add and remove entries from the dictionary (since the index does not need to be updated).
By default JWPce has four dictionaries in the list:
dictionary description CLASSICAL Classical Japanese dictionary. This dictionary is optional (unindexed). EDICT This is the main dictionary, it contains around 65,000 general usage words (indexed). ENAMDICT This is the main name dictionary, it contains around 168,000 Japanese place and personal names. This dictionary is optional (indexed). user.dct This is the user dictionary. It will be generated if you store an entry in the user dictionary (unindexed).
* Jim Breen specifies the format of the dictionary files in the EDICT.DOC file. This file can usually be obtained from the same place you got EDICT.Searched Dictionaries List
The list in the Searched Dictionaries dialog box lists contains all the dictionaries that JWPce knows about. The order of the dictionaries in the list determines the order that dictionaries will be searched. The dialog box provides controls for moving dictionaries up or down in the list, removing, adding, modifying entries, or resetting the list back to the default values.
Only dictionaries that have a check in front of them can be searched. Thus you can disable a dictionary without removing it from the list by removing the checkmark. Just because a dictionary is checked does not mean it will be searched. For example, classical dictionaries are only searched if Classical is selected, and name dictionaries are not searched is you have selected No Names.
The dictionary list displays a lot of information about each dictionary. This includes:
Format: The dictionary encoding format. EUC Dictionary is encoding using EUC (Extended Unix Code). This is the traditional EDICT format. This is a fast searching format, but cannot represent all language systems. Generally it is suitable for English and western European languages. Mixed Special format used by JWPce. The Japanese part of the dictionary is encoded in EUC, but the meaning part is encoded using the current Windows codepage. This format is convenient, and is used by JWPce for the USER dictionary, but the format is dependent on the local machine codepage, so may not be best for distribution. UTF-8 The entire dictionary is encoded in UTF-8. This supports all languages of the world. UTF-8 dictionaries are slightly bigger and search slightly slower, but this is a generally not a problem. . Type: Indicates how the dictionary is to be searched. Idx Dictionary is indexed and should be searched using the index. This is the fastest search system, but requires an index files and thus makes changing the dictionary complicated. Buf Buffered dictionaries are a variant on memory dictionaries. These dictionaries are searched without using an index, but instead of loading the entire dictionary into memory at one time part of the dictionary is loaded at a time. This saves on system resources at the cost of a slightly slower search. Mem Dictionary is searched in memory. This does not require an index, and thus provides the most flexibility. Further, searches in this type of dictionary are not limited by the indexing of the dictionary. . Names: Indicates if the dictionary contains names. JWPce can optimize some searches by knowing if the dictionary contains names. Only Dictionary only contains names. This type of dictionary will not be searched if you select No Names. No Dictionary does not contain name. Currently this is not used, but may be used in the future. Yes Dictionary does contain names. Currently this is not used, but may be used in the future. . Special: Indicates any special characteristics of the dictionary. --- Indicates nothing special. Classical Indicates a classical Japanese dictionary. This type of dictionary has a slightly different format, and will only be searched when Classical is selected. USER This is the user dictionary. You cannot delete this dictionary, nor can you adjust some of the characteristics of this dictionary. You can, however, change the location. . Keep: Stands for Keep Open. This instructs JWPce to keep the dictionary open instead of opening and closing it for each search. This can save time, but can lock access to dictionary files. --- Don’t keep the dictionary open. Yes Do keep the dictionary open. . Quiet: Stands for quiet handling of errors. Generally you should not turn this on. JWPce does for certain dictionaries to handle the way different people install JWPce. Setting this option will prevent JWPce from generating error messages if the dictionary is missing or cannot be accessed. Generally, this is not what you want to do. --- Handle errors normally. Yes Suppress missing file and access errors. . File Name: Actual file name associate with the dictionary. Note the index file (if it exists), has the same name, but with the extension .jdx.
Adding or Editing a Dictionary
You can add dictionaries to the dictionary list by selecting the Add button on the Searched Dictionaries dialog, or by dragging and dropping the dictionary files onto the dialog. You can modify a dictionary by selecting the Edit button. Unless you drag-and-drop, JWPce will open the Edit Supplemental Dictionary dialog. In the case of drag-and-drop the Edit Supplemental Dictionary dialog will only be open if JWPce detects a problem with the dictionary.
This dialog box allows you to control the parameters for the dictionary. The top set of controls provide basic characteristics of the dictionary.
Name Name used for the dictionary. This is for your reference and has nothing to do with anything else. In Auto mode JWPce will initialize this with the meaning field of the first entry in the dictionary. Auto Selecting this button causes JWPce to automatically fill in as many fields as possible. File Indicates the file location of the dictionary. Index files must be in the same location as the dictionary and have the extension .jdx. Browse* Opens an open file dialog and allows you to locate the dictionary file. (no name) This Japanese edit control displays the meaning field of the first entry in the dictionary. For many dictionaries, this contains the version ID of the dictionary, for others, this is just the first entry. Refresh Updates the Japanese edit control. The next group of controls are a set of radio buttons, that determine the basic characteristics of the dictionary.
Format: The dictionary encoding format. EUC Dictionary is encoding using EUC (Extended Unix Code). This is the traditional EDICT format. This is a fast searching format, but cannot represent all language systems. Generally it is suitable for English and western European languages. UTF-8 The entire dictionary is encoded in UTF-8. This supports all languages of the world. UTF-8 dictionaries are slightly bigger and search slightly slower, but this is a generally not a problem. Mixed Special format used by JWPce. The Japanese part of the dictionary is encoded in EUC, but the meaning part is encoded using the current Windows codepage. This format is convenient, and is used by JWPce for the USER dictionary, but the format is dependent on the local machine codepage, so may not be best for distribution. . Type: Indicates how the dictionary is to be searched. Indexed Dictionary is indexed and should be searched using the index. This is the fastest search system, but requires an index files and thus makes changing the dictionary complicated. Memory Dictionary is searched in memory. This does not require an index, and thus provides the most flexibility. Further, searches in this type of dictionary are not limited by the indexing of the dictionary. Buffered Buffered dictionaries are a variant on memory dictionaries. These dictionaries are searched without using an index, but instead of loading the entire dictionary into memory at one time part of the dictionary is loaded at a time. This saves on system resources at the cost of a slightly slower search. . Names: Indicates if the dictionary contains names. JWPce can optimize some searches by knowing if the dictionary contains names. No Names Dictionary does not contain name. Currently this is not used, but may be used in the future. Has Names Dictionary does contain names. Current;y this is not used, but may be used in the future. Names Only Dictionary only contains names. This type of dictionary will not be searched if you select No Names. Next are a series of checkboxes that control some options for each dictionary:
Search this Dictionary If checked, this dictionary can be search. Remember that this does not necessarily mean the dictionary will be searched. For example, classical dictionaries are only searched if Classical is set. Quiet Handling of Errors Generally you should not turn this on. JWPce does for certain dictionaries to handle the way different people install JWPce. Setting this option will prevent JWPce from generating error messages if the dictionary is missing or cannot be accessed. Generally, this is not what you want to do. Keep Dictionary Open This instructs JWPce to keep the dictionary open instead of opening and closing it for each search. This can save time, but can lock access to dictionary files. Classical Dictionary Indicates a classical Japanese dictionary. This type of dictionary has a slightly different format, and will only be searched when Classical is selected. User Dictionary This indicates the user dictionary. You can add entries to this dictionary while in JWPce. You cannot delete this dictionary, nor can you control most of the settings used by it. You cannot change the state of this control. It is provided only for information. After you select OK, JWPce will check the dictionary for consistency, and report any errors.
* Due to limitations on Windows CE PPC machines, you can use the Browse button to locate a dictionary only if it has been placed in the /My Documents directory (or a subdirectory of /My Documents). You can still put a supplemental dictionary somewhere else, but if you, do you must enter the full path yourself.
The Classical Japanese Dictionary
CLASSICAL is an electronic dictionary for classical Japanese. The development of CLASSICAL is very much a work in progress.
WARNING! This section deals an electronic dictionary for classical Japanese. The discussion here assumes that your are familiar with classical Japanese, and makes no attempt to introduce the basic concepts of the field. If you are just learning modern Japanese, it is highly suggested that you skip this section!This section contains only an introduction to the classical Japanese dictionary. For additional information please see the CLASSICAL.EUC file. This is an EUC encoded file (you can read it by loading it into JWPce) that describes CLASSICAL in detail, and includes many more examples that could be included here.
Enabling the Classical Dictionary
Selecting the Classical checkbox on the Dictionary Options dialog enables the classical dictionary and the classical search options. When the classical dictionary is enabled two major changes occur. First, the order in which the dictionaries are searched changes. Second, some classical searching options are enabled to allow special searching modes for jodoushi.
When the classical dictionary is enabled it is always the first dictionary search. Further, to differentiate entries from the classical dictionary they are shown in the highlight color. Normally, this would be followed by a search of EDICT, ENAMDICT, any supplemental dictionaries, and finally the user dictionary (which is also shown in the highlight color).
Understanding the results from CLASSICAL
With the exception of searching for searching for jodoushi (and other parts of grammar), the results of a CLASSICAL search are basically identical to normal searches, except there are some additional dictionary entry codes:
code Interpretation adv-part Adverbial particle case-part Case particle comb-part Combination particle conj-part Conjunctive particle emo-part Emotive particle exc-part Exclamative particle fin-part Final particle kamiichi Kami-ichi-dan verb kamini Kami-ni-dan verb ku Ku-adjective makura Makura kotoba (kind of set phrase used in poetry) nahen Irregular na-verb pre Prefix post Postfix rahen Irregular ra-verb sahen Irregular sa-verb set phrase A set phrase shiku Shiku-adjective shimoichi Shimo-ichi-dan verb shimoni Shimo-ni-dan verb yo Yo-dan verb
Searching for jodoushi, particles and other pieces of grammar
The classical Japanese dictionary contains an extensive collection of grammatical entries, as well as complete entries for particles and jodoushi, with conjugations, and usage rules.
Generally, to search for a part of grammar one only has to place a
character in front of it. For example, to search for the jodoushi
one would search for
. The results of this search would be:
This is actually quite a complicated result that indicates many of the characteristics of the classical dictionary. First, we notice that there are two separate entries for the jodoushi
. The first entry indicates how
would be conjugated when following the rentaikei of a rahen verb. Similarly, the second entry shows how
would be conjugated following the shuushikei of any other verb.
If we look at the individual entries above we will notice within the square brackets there are six entries separated by slashes. These correspond to the conjugations of
under the six classical bases (mizenkei, renyoukei, shuushikei, rentaikei, izenkei, and meireikei).
The final thing we can see in the entries above is a modern Japanese equivalent contained in curly braces {}. These are included, because sometimes an actual Japanese equivalent can convey the meaning much better than a description in English.
Searching for particles, prefixes, postfixes, etc. is basically the same. Prefix what you want to search for with a
character and search. For example, searching on
will yield the following results:
These are both usages of the particle of the particle
.
The real power of the system comes when you don't know the exact grammatical from you are looking for. For example, if you are reading along and come to a
at the end of a word and you don't know what it is, you could search for
. This will give the results:
From examining this list we can see that
could be a case particle, a conjunctive particle, the renyoukei of the jodoushi nu, or the, the renyoukei of the jodoushi nari. It then becomes your job to try to determine which of the meanings is the correct one based on the context.
Adding Entries to CLASSICAL
CLASSICAL is a cooperative effort, built upon the contributions of many different people. If you accumulate dictionary entries in your user dictionary, these entries can be sent to me, and I will add them to CLASSICAL. This will eventually include them in the dictionary. The combined contributions of many different users will work to enhance the quality of the dictionary for everyone.
You can send your JWPce user dictionary file me for inclusion in CLASSICAL. Before sending contributions, please make sure you have the newest version of CLASSICAL ( http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html) so you do not suggest additions that have already been made.
Users intending to make submissions to CLASSICAL should follow the following simple rules (I borrowed most of these suggestions from Jim Breen's EDICT.doc file):
- All verbs in plain form. The English must begin with "to ....". Add verb type to all verbs.
- If you make grammatical entries make sure they are consistent with the rules used by CLASSICAL.
- Indicate prefixes and suffixes by "(pref)" and "(suf)" in the first English entry, not by using "-" in the kanji or kana.
- Do not add definite or indefinite articles (e.g. "a", "an", "the", etc) to English nouns unless they are necessary to distinguish the word from another usage type or homonym.
- Do not guess the kanji!
- Do not use the "/", "[" or "]" characters.
- If you are using a reference in romaji form, make sure you have the correct kana for "too/tou" and "zu", where the Hepburn romaji is often ambiguous.
- Make sure your kana is correct. Make sure to use
and
correctly.
- Do not include words formed by common Japanese suffixes, such as "-teki", unless they cannot be deduced from the root.
- Please do not contribute entries to CLASSICAL which have come directly from copyrightable sources. It is hard to check these, and you may be jeopardizing CLASSICAL's status.
You can contribute to CLASSICAL by sending your user dictionary (user.dic) to:
Glenn Rosenthal
(grosenthal@physics.ucla.edu)
Next Chapter: Working with Files