Learn Japanese with Leopard

Within hundreds of new feature that Leopard offers, this is the one that makes me hesitate to turn back into Tiger. Dictionary in Leopard is just fantastic, I love it more and more! In addition to already adorable yet simple and easy to use ever dictionary application, Apple adds more new juicy features in Leopard, and that would be, well of course, what else but 3 sets of luxurious Japanese Dictionary !!

I shouldn’t be surprised though, because Apple products are soaring in Japan now, more than ever. Lucky me, since I‘m an apprentice in learning japanese language. This makes reading japanese website is easier within Safari, thanks to non obtrusive dictionary panel. If I’m not mistaken this little panel has been there since Tiger, and I think this what makes Dictionary different with other dictionary application. This simple feature eliminate copy-paste of text that I want to look up and no need to open new page, thus user are not disturbed on the reading. To tell you the truth it has improves my english reading skill a lot. Reading english website become more enjoyable, and now with new dictionary sets, reading japanese feels less tougher.

Did I mention it’s a two way dictionary? When you ask for japanese word it will answer with english translation, and if you ask for english word it will answer with japanese translation. It also has sentence sample to help grasp the context of the usage.

Enough with promotional speaks, and let’s find out how to enable it since it wasn’t enabled by default.

1. Open Dictionary application for Applications folder
2. From menu bar click on Dictionary and click again Preferences
3. I only pick Japanese-English progressive and synonym dictionary, for advanced learner you might consider to enable Japanese-Japanese.

Firefox users possibly know that there’s similar plugin for inline japanese text , Rikaichan. I use it too, mainly while I’m in Windows, and it’s one of my favorite plugin too. But if I’m in MacOS it hard to resist Dictonary because it could translate word in any Cocoa based application that uses text view control. This all might sound like promotional article paid by Apple, believe me, I’m not. When people use great and easy to use software they would just spread their love and share it with others.

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