Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Qinella]

My coworker has one of the large, red Iriver ones. It's an awesome dictionary, with Chinese, Korean, and English cross-dictionaries, and English/English, Korean/Korean, as well as idioms. Each page has a ton of examples. I've only seen one or two obscure phrasologies that it doesn't have, but some of the things it does contain are suprising. It also plays mp3s. When she bought it earlier this year, she paid 340,000 won, but I've seen it recently in Yongsan at around 250,000.

Is this the best dictionary around? Is there a better one at a better price? I know, I can just go to a store and look at one, but I'd never be able to sit there and think of all the words or idioms I might possibly need to look up.

I don't need the mp3 function, and I would like to go a bit cheaper if possible. Anyone got some super special info they can impart?

Cheers,
Qinella

[little mixed girl]

i think sharp has some pretty good ones.
http://www.sharp-korea.co.kr/19realdic/

i got one for jpn-eng, and it's got a lot of entries.
my friend in korea uses casio and says it's pretty good too....(except for the takeshima definition )

[coffeeman]

Why do you want to copy your students by investing in an electronic dictionary? I don't understand the foreigners who do this. Is your goal to become ultra-fluent in Korean? Are you going to live here the rest of your life? Do you want to be a translator? If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, then you should fork over a couple of hundred bucks to buy an electronic dictionary.

If your goal is more modest (like mine) and you just want to be able to hold a basic conversation, go with a perfectly fine paper dictionary for $30.

Generally, it a sound investment for Korean students to buy electronic dictionaries because they actually need English for their careers and traveling. The majority of us don't need to be fluent in Korean, so what's the point of spending so much money? Maybe some people think they "look" cool typing away on those things.

[thursdays child]

They're handy if you can't remember the alphabet

[Son Deureo!]

I own a Sharp RD-6700, and I'm pretty happy with it. It doesn't play MP3s, but it does have an excellent Korean-English, English-Korean dictionary, plus a hanja dictionary, (mediocre) Korean-Korean dictionary, (mediocre) English-English dictionary, and very extensive idioms dicitonaries for both Korean and English. It also has Korean-Japanese, and Korean-Chinese dictionaries (I'm not trying to learn these languages but they have come in handy a few times), and a lot of other features that I have no particular use for (e.g. TOEIC/TOEFL nonsense geared towards Korean students of English). I got it for W195,000.

My only complaints about it are the fact that the sound files it plays are only the English vocabulary words, not the Korean words, and also the fact that it eats batteries very quickly.

In spite of the extra cost, if you are serious about learning Korean, I highly recommend using it over a paper dictionary. You can look up words much faster, and the advantages of the portability are obvious. It fits in your pocket, but it would take several books to hold all of the information it contains. I have lost track of the number of times I have found it useful to have an electronic dictionary with me at all times, in the classroom, on the streets, and in conversations with Koreans.

[little mixed girl]