fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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 Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:28 am Post subject: Kanji look-up in bilingual pocket dictionaries |
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Are there any other bilingual pocket dictionaries besides the Langenscheidt which allow one to look up kanji? (The Langenscheidt apparently allows one to look up at least the Joyo kanji).
I'm not talking about dedicated J-E kanji dictionaries (such as the Nelson; Hadamitzky & Spahn; NTC/Halpern; etc), but bilingual "language" (about speech just as much as writing/exact orthography) dictionaries that have the main body of the text arranged more "phonetically", by romaji and/or kana.
My second question then would be (if indeed only the Langenscheidt allows kanji look-up, and then, of a seemingly limited amount): What are the absolute reasons for this apparent general division between bilingual dictionaries and kanji dictionaries? In bilingual Chinese dictionaries (those that are more 'cidian' than 'zidian') it is the norm to have a character index, but then, Chinese characters are more morphologically complete in themselves (despite the increase in bi- and multi-syllabic compounding in the development of the spoken language versus terse Classical writings) and usually have only one reading/pronunciation; still, are the various Japanese readings of characters so numerous and all so frequent that any sort of comprehensive and sophisticated character > reading(s) index couldn't be supplied beyond a certain cachet of characters (e.g. the Joyo kanji) and/or size of dictionary? |
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