Monolingual dictionary corner

Ah, indeed :man_facepalming: As I said, was checking things really quickly (but honestly, should have realized, was quite perplexed they didn’t show up so often :sweat_smile: )

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The first ten you looked for are kanji only, so it makes sense that kanji dictionaries will feature them, but I don’t expect kanji dictionaries to be richer in idioms than regular dictionaries generally.

If and when you have the time, could you run a search for these two (one is kanji only again, I’m afraid):
上命下服
とても濡れたる袖

Not sure if they’re classified as idioms or expressions or what, but I couldn’t find them in my regular dictionary and had to google them. Curious which dictionaries feature them, if any.

I’m sure I’ve seen more that I couldn’t easily find their definitions, but I don’t know how easily I can find them again…

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Really quick in between getting ready to leave for work :stuck_out_tongue:

Both show up just in one dictionary (上命下服 showed up in both the 7th and 8th edition of 三省堂国語辞典 which is why you see two results)

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Thank you!

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Thanks for the replies to my questions so far. @anon3564849 I look forward to seeing what you find when you do a deeper dive. :smiley:

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I’m still going to be running a few tests later tonight as I have to still tackle slang, but I thought I already had enough here to at least answer your question for idioms / expressions. To compile this test I first grabbed the 60 most searched four kanji idioms from 四字熟語一覧 - goo辞書 and then non intuitively decided to search for 40 expressions from English language sites. Reason? These articles might take really weird ones because they seem deep or something :person_shrugging:

Anyway, below a list with the results of each term searched, as well as totals at the bottom. I also included if they were present as examples separately, as I wouldn’t count that as a proper “definition”, but it’s nice to know it’s at least in the dictionary

Idioms Kanken Shinjigen Kanjikai 4 Daijirin 4 Daijisen Daijiten Shinmeikai Meikyo Sankoku
明鏡止水 x x x x x x x x x
花鳥風月 x x x x x x x x x
反面教師 x x x x x x x
一期一会 x x x x x x x x
因果応報 x x x x x x x x x
風林火山 x x x x x
魑魅魍魎 x x x x x x x x x
温故知新 x x x x x x x x x
温故知新書 (*) x x x
臥薪嘗胆 x x x x x x x x x
十人十色 x x x x x x x
酒池肉林 x x x x x x x x x
三寒四温 x x x x x x x
本末転倒 x x x x x x x
一朝一夕 x x x x x x x x x
一蓮托生 x x x x x x x x
画竜点睛 x x x x x x
諸行無常 x x x x x x x x x
諸行無常偈 (*) x
百花繚乱 x x x x x x E x x
朝三暮四 x x x x x x x x x
唯一無二 x x x x E x E
初志貫徹 x x E E E
四面楚歌 x x x x x x x x x
七転八起 x x x x x
虚心坦懐 x x x x x x x x
天衣無縫 x x x x x x x x x
敬天愛人 x x x x x x
疑心暗鬼 x x x x x x
乾坤一擲 x x x x x x x x x
手前味噌 x x x x x x x
日進月歩 x x x x x x x x x
捲土重来 x x x x x x x x x
切磋琢磨 x x x x x x x x x
慇懃無礼 x x x x x x x
雪中四友 x
唯我独尊 x x x x x x
勇往邁進 x x x x x
泰然自若 x x x x x E x x
試行錯誤 x x x x x x x
森羅万象 x x x x x x x x x
臨機応変 x x x x x x x x x
不撓不屈 x x x x x E x
満身創痍 x x x x E x x
天真爛漫 x x x x x x x x
喜怒哀楽 x x x x x x x x x
一意専心 x x x x E x E
不易流行 x x x x E x x
有象無象 x x x x x x x x x
岡目八目 x x x x x x x
色即是空 x x x x x x E x x
紆余曲折 x x x x x x x x x
呉越同舟 x x x x x x x x x
公明正大 x x x x x x x x
付和雷同 x x x x x x x x
一陽来復 x x x x x x x x x
鶏口牛後 x x
虎視眈眈 x x x x x x x x x
大器晩成 x x x x x x x x x
一生懸命 x x x x x x x
磊磊落落 x x x x x
大義名分 x x x x x x x x x
大義名分論 (*) x x
腹八分に医者いらず E x E E E
七転び八起き x x x x x x
猿も木から落ちる x x x x x
知らぬが仏 x x x x x x
花より団子 x x x x x x
相変わらず x x x x x x
朝飯前 x x x x x x
地獄に仏 x x
見ぬが花 x x x x
氷山の一角 x x x x x x
隣の芝生は青い x x x
必要悪 x x x x x x
時は金なり x x x E x x
武士は食わねど高楊枝 x x x E x x
雨が降ろうと、槍が降ろうと x x
砂を噛むよう x x x
爪の垢を煎じて飲む x x x x x
馬鹿は死ななきゃ治らない E
喉から手が出る x x x x x x
ごまめの歯ぎしり x x x
覆水盆に返らず x x x E x x
猫に小判 x x x x x x
蛙の子は蛙 x x x E x
水に流す x x x x x x
二兎を追う者は一兎をも得ず x x x x x
明日は明日の風が吹く x x x x
口は災いの元 E x
出る杭は打たれる x x x E x x
案ずるより産むが易し x x x x E x
酒は本心を表す
磯の鮑の片思い x x x x
恋とせきとは隠されぬ IS THIS EVEN AN IDIOM?! I ONLY FIND IT ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LISTS AND IN BILINGUAL DICTIONARIES :sweat_smile:
惚れた病に薬なし x
鯛も一人はうまからず x
継続は力なり x x
石の上にも三年 x x x x x x
雨降って地固まる x x x E x x
あほに取り合うばか
相手のない喧嘩はできない
負けるが勝ち x x x E x x
DEFINITIONS 55 32 34 87 92 87 61 77 77
EXAMPLES 0 0 0 2 1 0 13 4 3
TOTAL 55 32 34 89 93 87 74 81 80
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Ooooh, very nice. :smiley: I have no idea how you’d go about doing this for slang. Honestly, this is a lot of work and I appreciate that.


On another note :sweat_smile:, I just looked through the thread to look at your individual entries for the broad dictionaries and realized you haven’t written them up (or I’m blind, which could be it :sweat_smile:). If nothing else, I’d be interested in knowing why you have them in the order you do, like in this post.

Although at this point I’m probably getting Daijisen because it has the broadest coverage of idioms/expressions, although I get Daijirin 4 and Daijiten are almost the same. (So might depend on price.) Also, @GrumpyPanda mentioned I do have access to some of those already, so… Will figure that out more exactly when the back to school sale begins.

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A bit unrelated, but a version of this comes up in 今夜、世界からこの涙が消えても, the second’ish volume of 今夜、世界からこの恋が消えても. If I remember correctly it’s a translation of an english proverb, so perhaps that’s why it doesn’t come up :thinking: (… though I’m doubting my recollection, why would people list that as a Japanese idiom? :rofl: )

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Ah yes, that is correct, I have just finished the small dictionaries at the moment. Still need to tackle the middle-sized ones, which are :

  • Daijirin
  • Daijisen
  • Koujien
  • Daijiten (short or 3rd edition, this is because the 日本国語大辞典 sees quite a difference between 2nd edition (500.000 entries, 1.000.000 examples) and the third edition (300.000 entries, 300.000 examples)

Large dictionaries (only one really :

  • 日本国語大辞典 (2nd edition)

Elementary school dictionaries :

  • 新レインボー小学国語辞典
  • 例解学習国語辞典
  • 光村の辞典
  • チャレンジ小学国語辞典

And a lot of specific dictionaries and the like, still lots of work ahead :sweat_smile: But I need to get a dictionary at least in my hands (and most often this means ending up buying it for myself) and using it for a while to get a feel for it and at least take a brief look at its indexes and the like, reading some reviews, watching some videos if available, … So it always takes a while to do a new batch, write ups for the middle sized ones (except koujien, while this dictionary is available for purchase on the macOs app store, this is only the case if you live in Japan :unamused: . As such I haven’t had the pleasure of working with it myself. If anyone knows a way to bypass this restriction, please let me know, as just using a VPN doesn’t seem to work. I could buy the physical one, but I really don’t use middle sized paper ones, bought the Daijisen a long time back and have had it open maybe three times, so that feels like a lot of money to sit unused :stuck_out_tongue: ) are in the works at least, expect them relatively soon-ish ^^

Yeah, you can just take your time ^^ Normally kotobank.jp has all three of those in their database unless something changed, so you could always just use that one for a bit and see which of the three feels most natural to you :wink:

That’s a hard one to give exact explanations on, it’s mostly how I feel about the difficulty / thoroughness of their definitions, how I like them myself, … It’s more a “gut feeling” than cold hard facts, and the order I’d recommend has changed before, and probably will change again in the future, sorry :bowing_man:

Idea was to look up a key selection of slang from various decades, as well as a few categories, some present day internet slang and the like, to get 10 - 20 entries over around 10 or so categories, and just repeat :stuck_out_tongue: I’ll actually get started on it in a few hours, so just hoping I’ll be able to compile the lists without too much difficulty, we’ll see ^^

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That certainly could be the case! Hadn’t come across the English proverb before, so didn’t think about that possibility. As for why? Probably one site did it for a lark or something, other sites copied without fact-checking, and things snowballed :stuck_out_tongue:

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I assume that this is the best place to find Monokakido users, so I figured I would ask here.

For some reason, my purchases on the iOS app are not syncing with my macOS app, despite using the same Apple ID. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

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Could you try to “restore” your purchases in the app? Mine won’t update if I buy a new dictionary either until I do that, so this might be the same in your case :

First go to your collection page and click store in the upper right corner :

image

The store will open up and on the left upper corner you’ll see “restore”

A screen like this one should pop up, and you’ll see the ability to refresh your purchases should they still not be listed :

Could you let me know if this works? Otherwise I’ll look into things if there might be some known cause for this!

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I have not tried that actually. Technology has spoiled me with auto-syncing. I will try this when I get home and let you know!

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I just realized I hadn’t posted an explanation on why the slang entry isn’t up yet (I thought I had, my apologies :bowing_man: ). This is taking a long time to compile as many slang terms are just other uses for a word, so this means I need to read through the entries, see if the relevant part is noted in the definition and the like. For some words this goes quickly, others means reading through page-long definitions to see if it’s mentioned, and while my reading speed is getting up there, it’s still a far cry from my native reading speed, so this takes a loooong time. No promises on when it will be up, I apologize :bowing_man:

Generally on first impression after just entering some entries from this wiktionary page, the sankoku seems to come out ahead as expected, but this is just a relatively quick look at things, not a thorough analysis :bowing_man:

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It worked :smile: Thanks for the help!

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Hi matskje,

First off all thank you for your continued support with this wonderfull topic.

I have read it with great pleasure!

Some additional information you might want to incorporate.

It might be posted already.

Some usefull links about the monokakido app.

If you could help me out on what they recommend:
In this ytvid that would be cool:

If I could I would make an monokakido master post with all the info I have found and combine that in one single write up.
Hopefully I can return the favor one day!

Thank you for reading and your time.

Another question would be:
Could you provide a quick synopsis of each dict monokakido entails and when you should buy one?

PS: I am totally new to learning Japanese!

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I am now trying to make a wiki that does what I asked of you. I could no sit still.

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Alright after working for some time here is the first release.

I have many more links and pages too add. Time to go to bed.

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Hi there, @danyramdas! You just caught me in a hectic week, so I will need to answer your questions in like a week or so, my apologies :bowing_man:

As for the wiki thing, I took a quick look and it looks great :smile_cat: I’m not too familiar with GitHub I must admit, but I saw in the readme you still need permission you said. If it helps you or other people feel free to use anything I published here, but I saw you also included some posts from others who post here, I can’t give you permission in their names, so please tag users you want to quote before including them :bowing_man:

Would you also mind adding a link to this thread in the readme? If people should have questions, I must admit I will probably not be keeping to close an eye on the GitHub (can they even ask questions on GitHub?), so I would prefer they know they could come here to ask questions if they were so inclined.

I can answer one of your questions though, namely when you should buy one. As you are still quite new to Japanese, honestly kotobank.jp should be able to cater to nearly all your needs, if you do decide to buy one, I’d suggest reading through this post : Monolingual dictionary corner - #86 by matskje It’s still accurate to the information I would currently give. Have fun learning, you got this! (And as always, feel free to post any questions here, my apologies that your other questions will take some time :bowing_man:

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I believe that the Monokakido Dictionaries app sale is live. Now to figure out what to buy…

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