I study at a 専門学校 entirely in Japanese. I’m N1 level (passed N2, officially taking N1 in December). I have a few field specific exams coming up too and I’ve been experimenting with being more productive by doing things like trying to not use technology, use a dumb phone etc, but the one thing that I find by far the most difficult is actually looking up words. These are mostly technical words from my textbooks or かたい表現 that you wouldn’t come across in daily life so I constantly need to be looking them up, but this got me thinking, how did people deal with these types of situations 15+ years ago, when smartphones weren’t a thing? Did everyone carry a 電子辞書 or an actual physical dictionary? I can’t even begin to imagine what not being able to instantly look up a word you don’t know must have been like, especially when first starting out.
22 comments
Wait till you hear about what the non-Internet version of Wikipedia looks like.
Yes we had 電子辞書 which we carried around everywhere. And if it didn’t have the word we had to ask a Japanese person to explain the meaning.
I had an electronic dictionary but before that i had a paper dictionary
It’s sorted by radicals and stroke counts so you can look up kanji pretty fast, arguably faster than trying to scrawl them on some of the earlier primitive kanji lookup apps
10-15+ years ago?! That describes me!
Indeed, 電子辞書 was king. My Senpai helped me pick one out in Akiba that specifically had the kanji write-in function. (I guess not all of them had that?) I was on my third electronic dictionary before I finally got a smartphone in 2017 or something.
But instead of a 電子辞書, my friend used an iPod Touch with a dictionary app that you could write in the kanji with. This would probably have been the most ideal thing to use for 英和/和英 searches due to the iPod just being so much more convenient.
Nintendo DS dictionary 😁
I started learning Japanese in 2008, 15 years ago, and I had an iPod Touch with a dictionary app (the same app I use to this day in fact) and looked up words just as I do today. A lot of people had電子辞書 back then but I personally never owned one. When at a computer I used jisho.org just as I do now. Surprisingly little has changed for me.
Like 10-15 years ago… I just studied at home and it was the same? Like I still had the internet and used anki. If I was outside the house and saw a word I didn’t know… I just didn’t know it ha. I did have to ask for help a few times from strangers tho.
I did have a 電子辞書 but I only used that during class. I had friends who used iPod touches just without Wi-Fi.
I just had to do more prep before leaving the house. Like looking up train stations and stuff so I would know my route beforehand.
Doing the legwork to look something up helped me retain, I think. I can look any words or Kanji in a heartbeat now, trying to remember a radical and flipping through a book was more beneficial and rewarding, I think.
Paper dictionary (1993) then an electronic one (1995 or so). I also used to read paper newspapers, have film developed, listen to tapes and watch live TV. Things change.
I used JDic by Jim Bream. It was a software based Japanese/English dictionary that had Mac and Windows versions. It wasn’t perfect, and it was written from an academic perspective so some entries were incorrect or misleading regarding daily usage, but it beat 電子辞書 and paper dictionaries hands down in terms of ease of use.
But by 15 years ago I was already using Google and the paid online dictionary by Alc. I used JDic in the *90s*.
Back in the 90s, I used JWP (Japanese Word Processor), a Windows application. Prior to the release of Windows XP in 2001, non-Japanese versions of Windows had very limited support for Japanese text display. Rather than using the Windows text display API to display Japanese text, it had its own fixed-size font that it would display using regular bit mapping APIs. It also had a custom IME, because English Windows 9x didn’t have one.
So its one killer feature was that it allowed you to read and write Japanese text on English Windows. The other was that it had a built-in dictionary backed by EDICT and KANJIDIC. The latter had its unique component-based lookup, which allowed you to search for characters based on multiple components, rather than just the radical. There was a companion flash-card app, JFC, but it didn’t do spaced repetition.
Anyway, that’s how I looked up words and kanji that I didn’t know. It was a cumbersome process, especially when I started out and only knew a few hundred kanji, but it was so much better than the traditional book-based method where you looked up kanji by radical and stroke count, which I used briefly before I found JWP.
A later version, renamed JWPce, was also compatible with Windows CE, the now-defunct OS used for Pocket PC and Windows Phone, but I never had a Windows CE device, so I had to do all my word lookups on a desktop or notebook PC.
I got my first smartphone 14 years ago, and I’m pretty sure I had a Japanese dictionary application. I think it was JED (Japanese-English Dictionary), but I’ve been using AEDict so long I can’t clearly remember what came before.
For years, I lugged around one or several old school dictionaries. The most frequently used in daily life was the “Kenkyusha’s Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary” since it gave tips on word/kanji pronunciation. I still have a couple of copies.
When I wanted to studied hardcore, I packed a Nelson’s.
Never really used a 電子辞書 because, in my time, they were mainly for Japanese people studying English, but didn’t really serve for foreigners studying Japanese. Kanji lookup was poor or non-existent.
I had several physical dictionaries. A kanji dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary, and a small pocket one I’d carry around.
Like you OP, I was also in a language 専門学校, about 15 years ago. As many have also explained, the 電子辞書 was absolutely indispensable, especially one where you could write in the kanji yourself. I had mine set to JP > JP lookup so that I wasn’t constantly translating in my head.
When I graduated and went on to tailoring school, I largely stopped using it though. The first time my teacher said a technical word that wasn’t in the dictionary, I had that “uh oh” feeling, but eventually I realized that if the dictionary didn’t have it, the other students around me were probably just as confused and figuring it out on the spot, just like I was.
I went to uni in 2005 studying BA Japanese and had a paper kanji dictionary until I went to study on my year abroad in 2006. The electronic dictionary needed the user to look up kanji by radical or stroke number or reading. Later on the stylus electronic dictionaries came out but I did not have one.
My kanji dictionary was massive! But I will say it was great for actually learning and remembering because you’d have to look it up every time otherwise.
My memory went to shit after the electronic dictionary 😂
I worked for 40 years in Japan and bought my first computer at Ginza. Yen400,000 for a Radio Shack one piece something-or-another. I was the first person that I know to own a computer. Floppy discs and all. I studied Japanese at Nichidai, at Osaka gai-dai, and at my university in the US. I carried a handbook. A physical handbook. Is that really so weird? I never took a N1 test but I’d rate my Japanese at about a C plus.
Canon wordtank G70 crew here.
I got a Canon WordTank in 1991(?). It was one of the first things I bought when I first got to Japan. Before that paper dictionaries.
I can’t possibly describe how things are so much easier now.
I carried an electronic dictionary with me, but I rarely used it outside of work. I still have an electronic dictionary because I can write on a pad and look up kanji I don’t know how to read.
My Japanese cell phones had features where you could take a picture of a word and it would link you to a definition in English. And my phones tended to also have English and Japanese dictionaries, even if the phone interface was Japanese only.
Having a smartphone and looking up words on weblio is fine as long as I know how to read the character. But if I can’t pronounce it, and I’m at home, that’s where my physical kanji dictionary and electronic dictionary come in.
Japanese phones could connect to the internet 15+ years ago and were way better than what we had in the US. The biggest issue was websites that were not optimized for 3G internet.
In addition to lack of electronic dictionaries, when I started learning Japanese 30+ years ago, so much more stuff was written by hand. Instead of emails and texts, you’d often get handwritten notes and letters. Learning to read Japanese handwriting was its own challenge, with casual scrawls and beautifully penned letters written with a fude being equally challenging.
I was on the cusp of smartphones etc. when I first came to Japan. I kind of wish I had learned without any machines whatsoever. Rather than just googling directions you’d have to actually (gasp) ask someone.
But at the end of the day your progress learning Japanese will come down to how much you try to get out there and use what you have learned. No amount of Duolingo or other smartphone games will compensate for actual usage.
I studied Japanese formally from 2004-2007, then I moved to Japan and passed N1 in 2008. I never had an electronic dictionary and I felt like a loser whipping out the dictionary game on my DS so I rarely used it. If I was near a computer, I would use Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC. I think I could use the site on my garakei as well but I don’t remember ever doing that.
Most of the time, I just asked (still ask) people to clarify what they mean. If I’m talking, I just explain what I mean using words I know and the person I’m talking to figures out what I mean. My Japanese teacher actually encouraged us to do this instead of looking words up right away. It does wonders for understanding Japanese in context without the crutch of having an approximate but not really correct English meaning stuck in your head.