Hi all
I am looking for a kanji dictionary (not English-Japanese, just kanji), but there are several, and I am not interested in a beginner’s kanji dictionary, I only want to buy one that covers most kanji.
Which one can you good people here reccommend?
I bought the official Kanji Kentei one when I went to the Kanji Museum in Kyoto.
Looks like it’s on Amazon too.
It covers everything through level 1 of the Kanji Kentei… so over 6300 kanji, but whether that is “most” in your estimate or not is up to you.
Also, if having the book is super important to you, go for it (I like physical books), but basically all of the information in there is already on the Kanji Kentei’s official site, Kanjipedia, for free. So, keep that in mind.
It has 2000 pages and covers “only” 6300 kanji? That is pretty impressive. What do they provide for every kanji?
I’ll take a picture when I get home in a couple hours.
Here’s a sample of the page for 女
It starts with all the facts. Stroke order, count, readings, joyo or not joyo, radical, etc
Then there’s just every word that could appear on the Kanken that starts with that kanji.
Oh my now I want it even if I do not really need it
As an alternative, if you are not in a hurry, you van wait for a cheap high-end electronic dictionary to appear in eBay or so. I bought a Casio XD-D10000 for 100€ some years ago, it is a pretty asesome device.
The Casio Ex Word are awesome and has a lot of dictionaries inside: on the kanji side, I believe all of them contains the 大修館 四字熟語辞典 (I checked the casio Spec for XD-D10000 and XD-7400 which is the Italian oriented model) which contain 2136 Joyo kanji and 861 kanji used in names.
It is not as completed as the one posted from Leebo, but could be enought, depending on your needs.
I don’t have mine at hand right now, but I’m pretty sure that it includes a kanji dictionary with waaaaay more entries than that.
We don’t know exactly kanji the OP wanted when they said “most.” Though it’s probably reasonable to think they meant “most of the ones that will appear in everyday life” than “most of the kanji that exist.” Unless they really do want something with 50,000 entries. I think they just wanted to be clear that they didn’t want a beginners resource, with like 400 kanji or something.
Got home. The kanji dictionary in my denshi jisho is this one: 全面改訂 新漢語林第二版
It also have a kanji stroke order one.
How can I check stroke order on Kanjipedia? I checked on kaku-navi though not sure which is better between kaku-navi and jisho.
You’re right that it looks like that info isn’t on Kanjipedia. I tend to use kakijun when I check, but it’s not like I have strong feelings about it.
Thank you for the information and good advice everybody.
I quickly found out that what I wanted was in fact an English-Japanese dictionary (after seeing the photo of the other dictionary in the thread).
So now I have ordered “The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary”, as I believe this a good place to start, then I can shift to real Japanese dictionaries later on, when I know more kanji - but thanks anyway!
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