nihongobenkyo.org

Public Japanese dictionary server
一般向け日本語辞書サーバー

[日本語]

What is nihongobenkyo.org ?

nihongobenkyo.org is a public dictionary server that provides free Japanese dictionaries. It is compatible with the DICT protocol. It is provided with the hope that it will be useful to learners as well as native speakers but without any warranty of any kind.

How to use it ?

The most convenient way to use it is to use a so-called "DICT client". This is a dictionary application that can connect to the server and look up words. Possible programs include:

Fantasdic (Windows, Linux, Mac)
gnome-dictionary (part of the GNOME desktop)
Kdict (part of the KDE desktop)
OmniDictionary (Mac)
Mesa Info Booth (Java, mobile)

In the settings of the program, enter "nihongobenkyo.org" and voilà! You get a Japanese dictionary!

nihongobenkyo.org using Fantasdic

A web interface is also provided although using one of the above programs is well more convenient.

What dictionaries does it provide ?

nihongobenkyo.org is based on the excellent EDICT and its related projects. The following dictionaries are available on the nihongobenkyo.org server:

Dictionary name	Description	Possible keywords
JMdict	Japanese to English dictionary.	in kanji reading (hiragana or katakana) english translation
Kanjidic2	Kanji dictionary.	the kanji reading (on-yomi, kun-yomi, pinyin) english meaning "stroke count: x" with x the number of strokes "frequence: x" with x the frequence index "grade: x" with x the grade index
JMnedict	Japanese proper names dictionary.	in kanji reading (usually hiragana) name's romanization
Tanaka Corpus	Japanese/English sentence examples.	in kanji hiragana or katakana if the word does not use kanji
Tanaka Corpus Subset	A smaller set of Japanese/English sentence examples.	in kanji hiragana or katakana if the word does not use kanji
Edict-fr	Japanese to French dictionary.	in kanji reading (hiragana or katakana) french translation

The programs used to convert the dictionaries from their original format to the format of the dictd server are under GPL license. They are distributed with the source code of Fantasdic in the tools/ directory.

NOTE: The former Nihongo Benkyo project (a standalone dictionary application) is now abandoned.