A Review by Quinlan Faris
So What makes the G50 any better than the Canon Wordtank IDF-3000 or
IDF-4600? The main feature that most people were excited about was the
inclusion of the Reader's and Reader's Plus English to Japanese
dictionaries. The Reader's English to Japanese dictionary has an amazing
270,000 entries plus a phrase search and example sentence search function,
and the Reader's Plus piles another 190,000 entries onto that. Remember, the
Canon IDF-4600 had only 95,000 entries in the Genius English to Japanese
dictionary.
One of the most exciting aspects of the G50 is the improved kanji dictionary. With the Kanjigen in the Canon G50 you can still search for kanji by the on or kun reading, the reading of individual components, the radical, and the number of strokes. You can also use any combination of these methods together. What the Canon G50's Kanjigen brings is twice as many compounds and two very significant new functions.
The first is that once you have found the kanji that you were searching for in the Kanjigen, you can hit the related terms button, and kanji compounds starting with that kanji are displayed horizontally just as in the normal dictionaries. The IDF-4600 had about half as many compounds, and they were displayed vertically. Of course this listing is a Kanji to Japanese dictionary, so if you need an English definition you have to use the Jump function. It's just one extra step and is not too inconvenient. Also, there is a jukugo, or kanji compound search function. Just hit shift and then the kanji dictionary button to bring it up. With this all new kanji compound dictionary you can search through all the compounds found in the entire Wordtank. The kanji dictionary also includes an all new kanji name search, where the irregular readings used in peoplefs names are included in the search.
The second new function was not announced, or at least I didn't here about it until I bought the G50. When you are looking at a kanji in the Kanjigen dictionary, you can push the Spelling button and it will animate the drawing of the kanji displaying not only the stroke order, but also the direction of the strokes. I believe it will do this for 2,600 of the kanji listed.
The related terms button also has use outside of the kanji dictionary. For example, if you press related terms while looking at the word neko (cat), Japanese phrases using the word neko are displayed. If you do this from the Japanese to English dictionary, the definition of the phrases are given in English. The G50 has a 52,500 entry Katakana dictionary, which is a significant improvement over the 16,000 entries in the IDF-4600. The Japanese to English dictionary is the Kenkyushafs New College Dictionary, and moves up to 95,000 words from 80,000 in the IDF-4600.
Two sizes of character display are now standard in all the new electronic dictionaries, and the G50 is no exception. Of course the wildcard query with the '*' and '?' remain the same as the IDF-4600. There is a new bookmarking function, four memos, and a marking function.
To order your Cannot G50 or any other great Japanese electronic dictionary visit Smart Imports at http://www.smartimports.net .
