Japanese Dictionary + Grammar app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Dependency
First release : 23 Nov 2011
App size: 190.33 Mb
With most dictionaries you need to know the root word before you can find the word youre looking for.
But one of the most frustrating things when you are a beginner is that you don’t know enough grammar to work out what the root word is! So you can’t look up the word.
Japanese Dictionary with Grammar takes care of all that for you. It understands Japanese grammar rules so you only need to enter the word as is and the dictionary works out the root word for you and then looks it up. fast.
For example:
Search for たべられる (taberareru) in most dictionaries and you wont find anything. Search for it using Beginners Japanese Dictionary with Grammar and it will tell you that this is the "Able to Do" form of たべる (taberu), "(v1,vt) to eat".
Go further and search for たべられない (taberarenai) and find it is the "Regular Negative of the Able to Do" form of たべる (taberu).
Or even further and search for たべられなかった (taberarenakatta) and find this is the "Past tense of the Regular Negative of the Able to Do form" of たべる (taberu).
The grammar smarts also understands adjectives, so it knows that おいしくなかった (oishikunakatta) is the past tense of the negative of おいしい (oishii), (adj) delicious.
Of course you can search for romaji, hiragana, katakana, English, kanji...
Its also smart enough to look for katakana if you put in hiragana by mistake (or the other way around). So even though you searched for べっど (beddo) it finds ベッド (beddo), (n) bed.
And if you come across a kanji you dont know, just draw it with your finger and Japanese Dictionary with Grammar will look it up for you.
Or if you remember one or two kanji from a word, but not the whole thing, then just put "?" for the ones you dont know and it will find all the possible words that match.
The dictionary includes over 200,000 words from the famous Monash University EDICT dictionary, and it works out the grammar on the fly, and no internet access required for searching.
Finally, using a Japanese dictionary just got a whole lot easier.
Latest reviews of Japanese Dictionary + Grammar app for iPhone and iPad
Being able to search with verb and adjective endings is great.
I love this app -- as a beginning Japanese student, I cant tell the difference between common and rare words, so a dictionary of common words is incredibly useful, and the quantity of results of a search is much easier to deal with. Its also wonderful that it searches on romaji, kana, or kanji. Not having to constantly switch the keyboard is a blessing. The wildcard kanji search is superb as well. I use it as a tool to discover new kanji compounds based on the kanji I already know. I find I dont use the grammar feature much, but when I do Im glad its there. The additional features are few, though, and would make this the *killer* beginning Japanese app if some or all were present: 1. The ability to browse the dictionary as one might a paper dictionary. 2. The ability to export search results. Even better would be the ability to export individual or groups of search results as flashcards! This in particular would save me hours. (The most beautiful possible export format would be a "3-sided" flash card format: kanji, kana, definition) 3. A search history. Id love to see, and even export, my search history, as this is the equivalent of a vocabulary list for whatever I am reading or writing. All in all, an essential tool in my daily Japanese study. 凄い！