nihon-kokugo-daijiten
robin d. gill
"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"
Keller Kimbrough
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McVey, Kuniko
Dear Mr. Gill,
FYI, JapanKnowledge (online resource package that includes Nihon kokugo daijiten, Jitsu , Full-text of
700 volumes of Toyo bunko and growing volumes of Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshu, and more.)
http://www.japanknowledge.com/common/member/general/kaihi.html costs 15, 750 yen/year for
individual subscribers. This resource is extremely useful. Unfortunately, the institutional subscription
is strictly controlled by the legal agreement that defines users as current ID holders of the institution.
I do not know any case that allows access beyond this definition.
I truly wish all Japan scholars were able to access this resource.
Sincerely,
Kuniko Yamada McVey
Librarian for the Japanese Collection
Harvard-Yenching Library
2 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge
MA 02138
Christopher MAYO
Siva Kalyan
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Siva Kalyan
Sent with Sparrow
robin d. gill
--
"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"
Charles De Wolf
和語は「なゐ」であるが、この語に由来するナイ、ナエ、ネーなどの方言形は、現在では九州・沖縄に分布するほか、東日本のごく一部に点在するにすぎず、全国の大部分でジシンまたはその変化形のリシンという語形が用いられている。九州各地ではジシンとナエが混在しており、ジシンを「大きい地震」、ナエを「小さい地震」と意識している人が多い。これは、新しい語形と旧来の語形との間で意味の分担が生じた事例である。
Just to put in a final plug for JapanKnowledge, there is much more than the NKDJ, including a new set of Shogakukan classical texts...And I have already given away my outdated volumes of the Encyclopedia of Japan...
From: robin d. gill <robin...@gmail.com>
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, April 18, 2011 7:28:25 AM
Subject: Re: [PMJS] nihon-kokugo-daijiten
Daniel J Mckee
At the risk of sounding like a “mawashi mono” for Japan Knowledge, I wanted to point out to users some of the advantages of having this dictionary available in digital format, which make it much, much more than simply an electronic copy of the print Nihon kokugo daijiten.
First, when using the print version, you must necessarily assign a phonetic reading to the term you wish to look up, so that you can select the right volume and then flip pages to find the term in phonetic order. With the JK version, however, you may search for kanji directly and will be given the alternate readings of the characters (when they exist) in multiple entries. Similarly, if you wish to find homophones, you can search with kana, and will be given variant character combinations (or kana terms) with those kana (including parts of terms as well as full terms, if you select this option). This function can extremely helpful for dealing with wordplay.
The JK version also has the ability to search by final character(s) (useful for investigating suffixes, or, when dealing with kuzushi-ji, trying to puzzle out what that pesky first character of a combination might be when you can only read the second,) or by middle character(s)/parts of terms, two major advantages over the print version.
Finally, you may also search the JK Nihon kokugo daijiten full text. I find this a useful shortcut when dealing with literary themes, place names, or famous lines of literary works or poems, as so many of these are quoted in the Nihon kokugo daijiten. Of course it is not the most complete or authoritative source for this purpose, but it is fast, and available when on the road. The full text search can also alert you as to how terms are used in defining other terms, and how literary or historical works are quoted throughout the Nihon kokugo daijiten.
Here’s a little quick, informal guide to manipulating the JK Nihon kokugo daijiten that I made a few years back:
http://asia.library.cornell.edu/ac/Wason/Wason-Update-June-2008#Exploring
And I’m sure there’s more that linguistics could add, especially in terms of searching for dialect or appearances of terms in early dictionaries.
Enjoy,
Dan McKee
Japanese Bibliographer
Cornell University
chris drake
Lee Butler
A few comments about NKDJ, more along the lines of Chris's and from the perspective of someone whose primary field is not literature. The dictionary is an excellent resource and one that occupies (in its shrunken, 10-volume form) a prominent place on my desk. I couldn't imagine having it in a bookcase or somewhere where I'd have to get up and retrieve it. And I admit being surprised on several occasions upon entering a colleague's office and not seeing the dictionary anywhere in sight, and wondering how he (or she) managed his research. I still recall buying the set in Jinbocho sometime in the late 80s, not too many years after it had become available in 10 volumes, and at a fairly reasonable price, and lugging it, with increasingly sore arms, a few miles to save on subway fare. So I'm obviously fond of it.
At the same time, it is clearly not the OED. In making the OED a public project, the editors of that dictionary were able to draw upon a wealth of outside talent and greatly extend the dictionary's reach. In contrast, in dealing with an older and more complex language (or rather set of languages--what is kokugo?), Shogakukan kept its work in-house and greatly limited the result. It isn't surprising that when one examines material outside of Famous Literature that the coverage can become less sure and occasionally spotty. It seems to me that Shogakukan's decision to exclude the public was particularly unfortunate because of the large number of local and amateur scholars in Japan, who would have gladly contributed to the project, and could have improved it markedly.
As evidence of the sort of omissions that have occurred, while in Japan recently a colleague mentioned to me that many additions to the new NKDJ edition from the late medieval era were from the Vocabulario, the Japanese-Portuguese dictionary of 1604--which made me wonder, had the editors completely missed it before?
Looking at this from a different perspective, I guess we can be happy that much interesting linguistic connections remain for us to find and make; the work in many cases hasn't been done.
Finally, the price of the new edition is outrageous, especially when compared to the OED, which has long been available at a reasonable cost in two volumes--with magnifying glass.
Lee Butler
Norma Field
Sharon Domier
it, and Norma's and Lee's anecdotes are helpful. I just a conversation
with a researcher on the term "hoko onchi" (minus diacritics). I
looked it up in the JK version, and there was only 1 listing in it,
and that was from the 1970s. I even double-checked the print and that
also had the same listing. Not PMJS worthy conversation, but it plus
this thread was enough to convince me to stop using the Japanese
equivalent to OED line.
Sharon Domier
Morgan Pitelka
Colleagues,
It is worth noting that this conversation rehashes, in its general trajectory, the findings of Henry Smith's multi-year Japanese bibliography seminar that he taught at Columbia between 1990 and 2000. The seminar produced several iterations of a marvelous printed guide, Japanese Bibliography, that is now available online with some recent revisions:
http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/BIB95/contents.htm
I hope Henry won't mind me sharing this information.
The chapter on dictionaries, "Words: Japanese Dictionaries," notes the following about NKD (which is I believe mistakenly listed as Nihongo kokugo daijiten): "This is the second edition of the standard all-purpose, multi-volume dictionary of the Japanese language, known by its publisher as "Nikkoku 日国". The first edition of 1972-76 included some 450,000 entries in 20 volumes, while the second edition reduced the number of volumes to 13 (by making each volume much bigger) and added 50,000 entries. This dictionary gives the longest and greatest number of word entries. Its definitions are elaborate and often encylopedic, including examples of historical usage. Beware, however, these examples do not necessarily include the earliest known usages, as in the OED. The first edition required the use of a slim supplementary pamphlet to track down the date and author of the historical works cited, but the dates have now been incorporated into the actual entries in the second edition, a major convenience (although for further detail, you must still do to the index in the supplementary volume). The supplementary volume includes an index of kanji, dialect words, and historical citations."
Note the comment on comparisons to OED.
Henry's seminar students also identified Iwanami kogo jiten, just commented upon by Lee, as "The accepted standard for desk reference," or as Henry apparently used to say often in class, "This one's for your desk."
I have found this to be a marvelous resource over the years, and am thankful to Henry and his students for their work on it.
Morgan
*****************
Morgan Pitelka
Associate Professor
Asian Studies Department
Mailing address:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB #3267, New West 113
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3267
Email: mpit...@unc.edu
http://artificialia.wordpress.com
http://www.unc.edu/~mpitelka
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On Apr 19, 2011, at 2:12 PM, Sharon Domier wrote:
> I wanted to thank the list for this thread. I have learned a lot from it, and Norma's and Lee's anecdotes are helpful. I just a conversation with a researcher on the term "hoko onchi" (minus diacritics). I looked it up in the JK version, and there was only 1 listing in it, and that was from the 1970s. I even double-checked the print and that also had the same listing. Not PMJS worthy conversation, but it plus this thread was enough to convince me to stop using the Japanese equivalent to OED line.
>
> Sharon Domier
>
robin d. gill
In the mid-nineties, I encountered what Chris mentioned, finding the word or phrase I looked up exampled by the very poem I was hoping to understand better, and there is no question that more and better examples were needed. In those case, I often found the definition insufficient, but wondered if that was because of my Japanese being insufficient. Even so, I found I could at least find the problematic item, maybe, 80% of the time, whereas, other dictionaries had batting averages a fraction of that. Of course, that would be because Nikkoku is strong in the vocabulary found in my main interests, haiku of the sort found in Shiki’s Bunrui Haiku Zenshuu, senryu and, most recently, kyouka. It may be true that the Iwanami Kogo Jiten is the best single dictionary for the desk of most students at Columbia, but for nitty=gritty 17-19c stuff, I dare say, Nikkoku is what you need.
Speaking of nitty-gritty, I was amazed time and time again by the number of senryu, not a few dirty, that are found in Nikkoku exampling this and that – most are far from famous (not in the Iwanami selection of senryu) and it makes me wonder if the Bunka-cho patronized it whether that would have been allowed. After all, when the first edition was being made, obscene senryu were not yet published by mass-market publishers (that happened in the 90’s). Here, rather than the OED one thinks of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, had it only dared to use more of Swift and Rochester.
Be that as it may, the large number of poems-as-usage examples in Nikkoku bring to mind Johnson’s dictionary, but is more satisfying to me in that the short form of Japanese poetry permits whole poems rather than stanzas. And, there is considerable encyclopedic information that I find of help – for example, where Issa haikus 福介がちゃんと居（すわっ）てぼたんかな, I knew of the tradition of praising peony for being prosperous and kingly yet humble enough to stay low, I knew of the fukusuke-ningyo and could feel that the “botan” sound of peony worked as a psychological mimesis, but only when I looked up “fukusuke” in the Nikkoku did I learn of a plague of door-to-door beggars (luckily dated!) who danced about with fukusuke masks, to which the poem must been, at least in part, a reaction.
Norma’s mentor’s description of working on the Nikkoku where the method of payment changed midway in the か行makes me wish someone with time on their hands would count the pages given to words starting with each letter and compare that with other dictionaries which would also need to be counted.
Sharon notes that the lack of modern words differentiates Nikkoku from the OED, to which I have associated it. I must confess that I only use the OED for old stuff and, be that as it may, do not feel the lack of modern words is a minus.
Daniel’s point about the ability to search for kanji directly might indeed save me from switching to reading glasses to open my handy Kangorin.. And, even knowing the pronunciation, given a good internet connection, I imagine it would save much time and reduce eye-wear by allowing c+v of usages and definitions to your file. But just to be safe, I guess I will ship my Nikkoku to NY when I go. Print-lovers should note, however, that if one has a carousel and a Carolina cartographer’s magnifying glass, using the set is not too hard.
Morgan mentioned some more things about the second edition. I would add that if you click on half a dozen separate pages at the Nikkoku.com site, all of those are elaborated. I was especially pleased to see that not only are dates given now, but an effort was made to bring in many more old usages, especially Heian and, unless I misread, even Japanese-style kango is given some space in the supplementary volume.
ps Visited your post-California, Carolina period website, Morgan. Shibui(!). Hope the recent storms did not uglify the university!