Electronic dictionaries

Version française

An electronic dictionary is almost mandatory when you get to a high level of Japanese but it can also become an hindrance for beginners.

To begin with, what's in an electronic dictionary? There's around 100 dictionaries, manuals and guides (on how to write letters or use keigo...). For example in mine (it's a Casio EX-word XD-D7200) there are bilingual and monolingual dictionaries in French, English and Japanese.  There's also the Britannica Encyclopedia (English and Japanese versions). And a lot of other stuff but it'll take too much time to name them all.

All the recent ones have a touch pad and a touch screen to directly write the kanjis and an audio system (that way you can listen to example sentences and pronunciation of Japanese accents like in the NHK accent dictionary). I can use up to 2 microSD cards and there's an USB cable to transfer files from your PC. It usually works on LR6 batteries.

All in all, a denshi jisho can be very useful. But it isn't free either, the average price is around 200 euros/ 300 dollars.

Also, not only having an electronic dictionary isn't always useful, it can even hamper your progress. If you start using an electronic dictionary too soon, you'll rely too much on it and you won't remember the kanjis and vocabulary on your own. That's why I strongly advise you against buying one before the JLPT N3/ you know 1000 kanjis. If you're learning Japanese just for fun and your own knowledge, don't bother buying one: your smartphone dictionary applications will do just fine. Electronic dictionaries are most useful for people who use Japanese in their main activity (work or studies).

Besides most of the time they are in Japanese so if you don't already know a bit of Japanese, you won't be able to read the menu.

As for brands and models, I can't really recommend one in particular. Everyone around me has a Casio EX-Word (XD models most of the time) but since I haven't had the occasion to use other models, I can't say much about the other brands. To buy an electronic dictionary, the website that's often recommended is denshi-jisho.com (it's also the one I used). Recently I've heard that buying one via Korea is cheaper.