Leopard’s Japanese Dictionary
I wrote a little while back about how I was excited about the new Japanese/English dictionary featured in Mac’s new OSX Leopard. Now that the OS has been released and I got my grubby little hands on a copy, here’s my full review.
First of all this is hands down the fastest dictionary I’ve ever used. That’s because it’s running on a powerful computer and it doesn’t have to go across the internet to fetch the results. So the results to your queries come back instantly. Pretty nice. Also it comes with a good amount of dictionaries built-in.
- English-English dictionary
- English-English Thesaurus
- Japanese-Japanese Dictionary
- Japanese-Japanese Thesaurus
- Japanese-English dictionary
- Apple dictionary (for any technical Apple computing terms)
- Wikipedia (a desktop interface for the website)
Another great feature is that all words and kanji are clickable and will link to any cross references. Many electronic dictionaries have this feature, but point and click with the mouse is much faster and easier. Another nicety is that there are tons of example sentences and phrases, all of which are very good.
Conclusion: For a free dictionary that comes with an OS you really can’t beat it. I think this feature alone is worth the upgrade to Leopard. On the downside, it’s no more portable than your computer**, has fewer dictionaries than most portables, there’s no good way to lookup kanji for which you don’t know the readings**, and there’s no instruction on how to write the Kanji**. I wouldn’t rush out and sell my electronic dictionary just yet, but this is a handy supplement.
**I highly doubt this will ever happen BUT… Apple if you’re reading please please please incorporate the The Kodansha Learner’s Dictionary, and figure out a way to put this app on the iphone and/or ipod touch!!!