Organic Japanese

The Canon Wordtank V823 and Wordtank V923 were released in the spring of 2009 and didn’t generate much of a buzz in the foreign Japanese language study community. But they are quite worthy of note!

Both the Canon Wordtank V823 and V923 contain a Japanese dictionary (Shin Meikai) with 75,000 words that all have Japanese audio pronunciation by a native speaker (not a computerized voice or something). This is actually really helpful. Can you hear the difference between こんにゃく　(the food) and こんやく　（婚約 – engagement)? What about the accenting on the different forms of はし (bridge, chopsticks, etc.)? It’s a very useful function indeed, and one not found in any other Japanese dictionary to date. (Many models have audio for 10,000 Japanese words in the Meikyo dictionary, but it’s sort of hit and miss one if the word you’re looking for includes audio.)

Here are the main points of note in the Canon Wordtank V823 and V923:

• Handwritten Kanji Input (on screen – Japanese and Chinese kanji recognition)
• Back-lit
• MP3 Player
• Full audio for 75,000 Japanese words
• Text viewer for .txt files inputed through SD card slot. – Search words in dictionary from the text files.
• Charges through USB in addition to batteries
• Includes Japanese/English as well as Chinese/Japanese and Chinese English dictionaries
• Menus display in English, Japanese, and Chinese
• English manual (abbreviated) included

The only difference that I can see between the Canon Wordtank V823 and V923 is that the V923 contains a significantly expanded Aichi University Japanese/Chinese dictionary and a Japanese thesaurus not found in the cheaper V823.

Source: Tokyo Tsure Zure Gusa.