Most Important Japanese Learning Resource #1

 



 JISHO.ORG  is perhaps one of the most important resources on the internet for studying Japanese.

Jisho.org homepage

     It is a very intuitive online dictionary with tons of functionality (most functions I still don't even know).  You can type in English words, you can search in Japanese, you can modify result lists with special tags, if you don't quite know what to type in Japanese you can try drawing it out...  It's depth is amazingly useful and it's my go-to site to look up words.

     However, I have noticed that sometimes when looking up a word, it seems that the pronunciations written above kanji sometimes don't match what I think it should be or what I know I've heard.  For instance when I look up the word "East" the pronunciation above tells me it is "higashi", but it is definite fact that when I listen to Japanese weather reports they will say "East" as "tou".

Left arrow:  the result          Right arrow: what I've heard commonly used 

    So when you use Jisho, just be aware that what you find makes an excellent guideline, but the results aren't the end-all-be-all of the use of the language.  Keep an open mind to be able to expand upon later what you learn now.

By the way, vocabulary word for the day,

Jisho (じしょ)  means "dictionary"  

Learning.... It's happening~