Chapter 3

Using Dokusha as a Japanese-English dictionary

If you have installed the Japanese-English dictionary files (jdic1.pdb through jdic6.pdb), you can use Dokusha to lookup up Japanese words to find their English meanings, kanji/kana spelling, and pronounciations.

From the main reader screen (appearing as shown below if you have not opened a Japanese text file for viewing), you can use the Dictionary/Manual Search menu option to initiate a dictionary lookup.

There are two different ways of inputting Japanese text for searches: Kana and Romaji. You can changed between them in the Preferences screen.

After entering your search text, press Find Any to find all words starting with the text you entered, or press Find Exact to find all words that exactly match what you entered.

Using Kana input mode

In Kana input mode, a simple kana keyboard is displayed. Tapping on kana characters inserts them into the rack at the top of the dialog box. Once your search string is input, you can use the Find Any or Find Exact buttons to initiate the search.

Alongside the kana keyboard is a column of 5 icons. These are used in conjunction with the kana keyboard to help you enter your search string. From top to bottom, they are as follows:

Nigori toggle. Tapping this icon after entering a kana character toggles it between unvoiced (e.g., ka) and voiced (e.g., ga).
Maru toggle. Tapping this icon after entering a ha-row kana character toggles the small circle (maru) over the character (for example, changing ha to pa).
Large-Small toggle. Tapping this icon after entering a kana character toggles it between small and large versions. For example, you can use this to input small-tsu and small-ya.
Kana toggle. Tapping this icon toggles between hiragana and katakana keyboards. Dictionary searches are not sensitive to kana syllabaries, however, so this option is mostly for cosmetic purposes.
Backspace. Tapping this icon deletes the most recently entered kana character.

Using Romaji input mode

Romaji input mode uses fairly standard Japanese romanization rules. The romaji recognized is basically "wa-puro-" romaji with the following considerations:

Voiced 'tsu' is written 'dzu' or 'tzu'; voiced 'chi' is written 'dji'
'shi' can also be written 'si'
"Twisted" moras are written consonant + y + vowel, e.g., 'kya'
"Twisted" 'chi' moras are written 'cha', 'chu' and 'cho'
'jya', 'jyu', 'jyo' can be written 'ja', 'ju', and 'jo', respectively
Small-tsu can be written with a double consonant ('yappari') or with 't-' ('yat-pari')
The katakana lengthening stroke is written as a hyphen -
The consonant n can be written with a following apostrophe ' to prevent it from being interpreted as part of a twisted mora (nya vs n'ya)
The object particle 'o' is written 'wo'
Long vowels must follow kana orthography; Tokyo is toukyou, not tookyoo

Looking up words from the text

If you are viewing a Japanese text document, you can select one or more characters in the text and use the Lookup menu to lookup the selected word:

Find Initial Match: Find words beginning with the selected characters.
Find Exact Match: Find words that match the selected characters exactly.
Find Any Match: Find words that contain the selected characters within them (only works for all-kanji searches; kana searches work as if you selected Find Initial Match).
Find Longest Match: Probably the most useful command for general searching. Starting at the first selected character, finds the words that match the longest possible string of characters from the text.

You can also tap the Find button to perform a search. The function of the Find button can be set via the Preferences page.

Using the Dictionary

Here is an example of the results of a search for gakusei:

As you can see, each matching dictionary entry is displayed showing the Kanji spelling, the pronounciation (in kana or romaji, depending on the selected output mode), and the English meanings.

The number of matching entries is shown in the bottom-right corner of the screen. In this case it is [1/2], meaning that entry #1 of a total of 2 is currently displayed at the top of the screen. The entry at the top of the screen is considered the "selected" entry. You can use the Next and Prev buttons at the bottom of the screen to scroll through the displayed entries, if there are more matches than can fit on your screen at once.

In the dictionary lookup screen, you can tap on any displayed Kanji character to immediately jump to the details for that Kanji. See the chapter on the Kanji Dictionary to read how to interpret this display.

Using the Display menu, you can change how dictionary entries are displayed. You can choose not to display certain parts of dictionary entries (for example, No Definitions omits the English definitions). You can also choose Large Font or Small Font to select which font Kanji characters are to be displayed in.

The Tools menu contains several useful options which operate on the selected (top) dictionary entry:

Flashcard - toggles the entry between being a flashcard or not. See the chapter on flashcards for more information. Note that if the current entry is in your flashcard list, a small diamond symbol appears in the top-right corner of the screen. Tapping in this corner also toggles whether the entry is a flashcard, the same as selecting this menu option.
Find Homonyms - Many Japanese words are pronounced the same. This menu option automatically searches for other words with the same pronounciation as the selected word.
Copy Definition - Copy the English meaning of the selected entry to the clipboard. You can later paste it into another application (for example, the Memo Pad).
EDICT Tags - Dokusha uses the EDICT dictionary, which uses parenthesized codes in the English meanings indicating the kind of word (suru verb, humble word, etc). This option brings up a quick references to these codes.
Restrict Search - Sometimes a dictionary search may yield too many results. If you have a general idea of the form of the word you are looking for, you can use this menu option to narrow your search criteria. See the Advanced Searching chapter for more information.
Copy Kanji (SJIS) - Copies the current word to the clipboard in Shift-JIS format. You can then paste it into a text field if you are using a Japanese OS.
Search History - Invokes the Search History screen. See Advanced Searching for more information.

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