The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary

Description

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary is derived from the New Japanese- English Character Dictionary published in 1990, which has enjoyed a good reputation in Japanese language education circles, both in Japan and overseas. This new work aims to meet the needs that many learners and teachers have for a new edition that is more portable and more concise.Like its parent work, this dictionary offers such advantages as emphasizing the importance of thoroughly understanding the meanings of kanji, helps the reader locate entries rapidly, and offers various features whose goal is to help beginners and intermediate level students truly enjoy the process of learning kanji.A Japanese newspaper page may appear overwhelmingly filled with complex characters, making it seem as if learning to read Japanese is a formidable task requiring many years of patience and perseverance. With the publication of the New Japanese-English Character Dictionary in 1990，and now The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary for beginning and intermediate learners, kanji can be learned more effectively than ever before.The classification system, called SKIP, is based on the recognition of patterns. This is one of the outstanding features of the dictionary. It enables one to look up kanji quickly, much like in alphabetical dictionaries, and does not require familiarity with radicals. Another outstanding feature is that the essential meaning of each kanji is given by a concise keyword, or core meaning, presented in red and repeated in red within the character meanings, which are reinforced by many high-frequency compounds.Another useful feature of this dictionary is that the compounds are classified by meaning, which enables the user to easily grasp the meaning of each kanji within a compound; that is, it makes it clear how the kanji roots are combined to form compounds.