A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese (original) (raw)
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Based on a 20-million-word corpus evenly divided between spoken, fiction and non-fiction texts from both Portugal and Brazil, the dictionary provides the user with a detailed frequency-based list, as well as alphabetical and part of speech indexes.
Springer eBooks, 2022
Japanese lexicography has more than 1300 years of history. First, dictionaries of Chinese characters (kanji) were compiled, followed by general monolingual dictionaries, reflecting the development of hiragana, a syllabary used for writing Japanese. These two types of dictionaries are still the main products in the dictionary market. Japanese lexicography is one of the most sophisticated in terms of the number and types of dictionaries published, ranging from multi-volume dictionaries on historical principles to more than 20,000 specialized dictionaries. Advanced NLP technologies and the availability of corpora are changing the way dictionary information is compiled and presented in Japan. Now various lexical resources including balanced corpora of Japanese are available, and dictionary portals have been quite successful. Actual application of corpora to Japanese lexicography is still slow to be adopted in printed dictionary projects, but rapid change is taking place among electronic lexical resources on the Internet. jiten 国語辞典). It is common to give as gifts a beginner's Japanese dictionary to primary school children and an English-Japanese dictionary to first-year students at secondary school. Upper secondary school students usually have several different kinds of dictionaries, e.g. Japanese kokugo, Japanese kogo (古語, classic or archaic words), Japanese kanwa (漢和, Chinese characters), and eiwa (英和, English-Japanese) by way of preparation for university entrance examinations. The National Diet Library has copies of all the books and periodicals in print in Japan, and the number of dictionaries listed in its catalogue as published between 1980 and 2014 is 23,589 titles, including all kinds of specialized dictionaries. This bears witness to the coverage and popularity of dictionaries as publications in Japan. Gally (1999) mentioned that "While all have shortcomings, the best kokugo dictionaries are probably among the best reference works in existence in any language." Another specifically Japanese development is the integrated electronic hand-held dictionary, a product that contains various electronic dictionaries all in one device. Table 1 shows a list of dictionaries and books available in the 2015 professional user's model by CASIO. Manufacturers include CASIO, SEIKO Instruments, SHARP, and CANON among others. They have been very popular, especially among high-school students preparing for entrance examinations. These pocket e-dictionaries usually contain more than 100 titles, including the full volumes of major Japanese kokugo dictionaries, Japanese kogo dictionaries, English-Japanese / Japanese-English dictionaries, among numerous other subject-specific dictionaries. Table 1. A list of dictionaries in CASIO XD-K18000 (2015) Language Type of dictionary No. of titles Japanese Kokugo (monolingual) dictionary (unabridged; multi-volume) 1 Kokugo (monolingual) dictionaries (general readers/learners) 2 Kanji (Chinese character) dictionary 1 Kogo (old/archaic words) dictionaries 2 Specialized (thesaurus / collocation / synonym / idiom / proverb / pronunciation) 7 Future prospects Although Japanese has a quite complex orthographical system, sophisticated electronic resources have been developed to deal with it: including morphological analysis tools (e.g. ChaSen, MeCab), dependency parsers (e.g. EDA parser, cabocha), machine-readable dictionaries (e.g. Japanese basic verb dictionary IPAL, Iwanami Japanese Dictionary, EDR Electronic Dictionary, Japanese WordNet), and lexical resources including corpora (JWeb-1T, BCCWJ, CSJ, JpTenTen, JpWac). This indicates that Japanese lexicography enjoys one of the most advanced environments in terms of electronic resources. This has been testified in several significant e-lexicography projects such as dictionary portal sites (e.g. Weblio or Japan Knowledge Lib) and hand-held electronic dictionary devices (e.g. CASIO, SEIKO Instruments, SHARP). The use of corpora for dictionary making has started with bilingual dictionaries (e.g.
Putting Frequencies in the Dictionary
1996
A central fact about a word is how common it is. The information is particularly valuable for language learners, as it immediately indicates how important it is to learn a word. With the advent of large computerised language corpora, it is for the rst time possible to meet the demand. Both Longman Dictionaries and Collins COBUILD decided to present frequency information explicitly in new editions of their learners' dictionaries. The paper describes how this was done at Longman, and the various issues encountered along the way. It also compares the Longman and Collins COBUILD lists.
Online study of frequency list vocabulary with the WordChamp website
The intentional study of vocabulary is an effective way for learners to increase their vocabulary in the target language. Word frequency lists help learners determine the most useful words to study. In order to systematically study vocabulary, learners may first take a test to determine their vocabulary knowledge, then drill the appropriate words. However, to date, classroom teachers and researchers have focused on traditional methods of intentional study, i.e., non-computer. The worldwide web offers numerous ways to help students study systematically by providing various vocabulary level tests, word frequency lists, and opportunities for language learners to study frequency word vocabulary intentionally. A preliminary study checked the effectiveness and viability of WordChamp study in Japanese university English Communication courses, then a follow-up study compared the usefulness of WordChamp drilling with paper study of frequency word vocabulary. Finally, the way each method was viewed by learners, evidenced by an attitudinal survey, was noted.
Compilation of Japanese learners’ dictionaries
Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 2017
The number of Japanese language learners outside Japan, especially of advanced level learners, is increasing yearly. From the intermediate level onwards, they could profit from bilingual Japanese learners’ dictionaries in their native language, but in most linguistic areas of the world only very simple dictionaries for beginners and for tourists are available. Our project therefore aims at supporting the compilation of Japanese language learners’ dictionaries for intermediate and advanced learners by building a database of contents needed when editing a Japanese language learners’ dictionary, and offering it online. This 4 year project is going to be running from 2011 to 2014. Two surveys were conducted: a survey of the vocabulary used in textbooks of Japanese as a foreign language and a quantitative survey on the targeted area of the Japanese language in a large-scale corpus, in order to select the list of words to be included in the database, and a general list of basic vocabulary...
The Construction of a Database to Support the Compilation of Japanese Learners’ Dictionaries
Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 2012
The number of Japanese language learners outside Japan, especially of advanced level learners, is increasing yearly. From the intermediate level onwards, they could profit from bilingual Japanese learners’ dictionaries in their native language, but in most linguistic areas of the world only very simple dictionaries for beginners and for tourists are available. Our project therefore aims at supporting the compilation of Japanese language learners’ dictionaries for intermediate and advanced learners by building a database of contents needed when editing a Japanese language learners’ dictionary, and offering it online. This 4 year project is going to be running from 2011 to 2014. Two surveys were conducted: a survey of the vocabulary used in textbooks of Japanese as a foreign language and a quantitative survey on the targeted area of the Japanese language in a large-scale corpus, in order to select the list of words to be included in the database, and a general list of basic vocabulary...
Frontier of foreign language education (外国語教育のフロンティア), 2020
The present paper reports a survey conducted among 250 learners of Japanese language in Iran. The aim of the survey was to study the Iranian users of Japanese dictionaries and their preferences, behaviors and habits concerning dictionaries. The participants of the study were from various groups with different backgrounds, and the results revealed that most Japanese learners in Iran are frequent users of dictionaries. The most frequently used dictionaries are Japanese-English bilingual dictionaries, although a large group of users are using them only because they do not have access to appropriate Japanese-Persian dictionaries. Besides, it seems that many learners do not use Japanese-Persian dictionaries because they provide inaccurate and inadequate meanings and equivalents, they do not have electronic versions and they are out of date. The findings of the survey also showed that most learners are highly dependent on their smartphones and some of them would not use any other dictionaries if they do not have smartphone application versions. The results of the study also revealed that a large group of learners do not have enough knowledge and skills about dictionary use and need explicit training on dictionaries as a part of their language learning process.
Behavior Research Methods, 2004
On the basis of the lexical corpus created by Amano and Kondo (2000), using theAsahi newspaper, the present study provides frequencies of occurrence for units of Japanese phonemes, morae, and syllables. Among the five vowels, /a/ (23.42%), /i/ (21.54%), /u/ (23.47%), and /o/ (20.63%) showed similar frequency rates, whereas /e/ (10.94%) was less frequent. Among the 12 consonants, /k/ (17.24%), /t/ (15.53%), and /r/ (13.11%) were used often, whereas /p/ (0.60%) and /b/ (2.43%) appeared far less frequently. Among the contracted sounds, /sj/ (36.44%) showed the highest frequency, whereas /mj/ (0.27%) rarely appeared. Among the five long vowels, /ar/ (34.4%) was used most frequently, whereas /ur/ (12.11%) was not used so often. The special sound /n/ appeared very frequently in Japanese. The syllable combination /k/+V+/n/ (19.91%) appeared most frequently among syllabic combinations with the nasal /n/. The geminate (or voiceless obstruent) /q/, when placed before the four consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, and /s/, appeared 98.87% of the time, but the remaining 1.13% did not follow the definition. The special sounds /r/, /n/, and /q/ seem to appear very frequently in Japanese, suggesting that they are notspecial in terms of frequency counts. The present study further calculated frequencies for the 33 newly and officially listed morae/syllables, which are used particularly for describing alphabetic loanwords. In addition, the top 20 bi-mora frequency combinations are reported. Files of frequency indexes may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive athttp://www.psychonomic.org/archive/.
How many high frequency words of English do Japanese university freshmen
Knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary is essential to language fluency. However, there is more to knowing a word than simply knowing its meaning. Full vocabulary depth knowledge includes not only semantics, but also knowledge of a word's phonology, orthography, collocations, word parts, grammar, constraints on use, concepts and referents, and associations.