English to japanese dictionary

[Ryu20]

Konnichiwa

Today I have bought a dictionary to help me with some Japanese words and phrases, and would like to know if it's a helpful study tool to help me learn Japanese.

Arigato

[becki_kanou]

What textbook are you using? It's good to have a dictionary along side your textbook, but it shouldn't be your main study tool.

When you use the dictionary make sure that you look at the example sentences and usage notes to be certain that you have the correct sense of the word you want. For example the word "set" in English has hundreds of meanings and there isn't one Japanese word that corresponds to it, so you can't always just look it up and be done with it.

Also, you've listed English as your native language, is it really? If it's not, it can be helpful to forum members to know your native language and there may even be members here who can speak it.

[chikara]

.... you've listed English as your native language, is it really? ...

I haven't been to Plymouth myself but I have rellies on my mother's side that live in Devon and I'm pretty sure they speak English

[becki_kanou]

I wasn't trying to be rude, and I apologize if he is a native speaker, but the OP had quite a few non-native seeming mistakes in this and his original post, so I thought perhaps he was not a native English speaker.

After all my location says Hyogo, but I'm certainly not a native Japanese speaker.

[chikara]

I wasn't trying to be rude, and I apologize if he is a native speaker, but the OP had quite a few non-native seeming mistakes in this and his original post, so I thought perhaps he was not a native English speaker.

After all my location says Hyogo, but I'm certainly not a native Japanese speaker.

True, which is why I put a emoticon in my post. I wasn't having a go at you, just making a jest.

Being from the UK the OP's native language could quite likely be Urdu but English is still far more common. Personally, I didn't find Ryu20-san's original post atypical for a 20 year old native English speaker.

[Ryu20]

At the moment, I am not using any textbook as they are hard to find in bookshops in the UK.

But I am currently still looking around the shops and online to see what's a good textbook to start with.

[furrykef]

Also remember that US and UK english are different on how we spell, pronounce and grammar.

Yes, and "grammar" isn't a verb in either variety of English.

Sorry, but your English is rather awkward. And that's fine, I guess, but if it really is your native language, I have to admit I'm skeptical that you'll have much success with Japanese... it just doesn't reflect very well on your ability to learn and use language.

Now if English weren't your native language, that'd be another story, since such mistakes would be expected. But if it is, I think the first step to learning Japanese would be to improve your English: to appreciate details and not write things like "wonding", "a Oxford", "a good as", or "would appreciated". People do make mistakes like that from time to time (heck, this very post said "I have to admit skeptical" instead of "I have to admit I'm skeptical" the first time I submitted it), but people don't normally make them with such frequency.

I'm not saying this to knock you or anything. It's just that to succeed, you need to pay attention to stuff like that.

- Kef