The Canon Wordtank is an English/Japanese electronic dictionary designed with the English speaker in mind.

The Canon Wordtank looks like a mini-computer, because it is. It’s hard to get a sense of scale from this photo, but the Wordtank is about the size of a large PDA.

The keyboard is a standard QWERTY layout, with a bunch of special keys. Because the keys are labeled in Japanese, I’ve identified some of the most important ones here.

1. Power button
2. English to Japanese dictionary
3. Japanese to English dictionary
4. Clear key
5. Shift key
6. Back key (return to previous screen)
7. Jump key
8. Enter key
9. Scroll keys

Let’s run through an example of how the Canon Wordtank works. I want to know how to say “boy” in Japanese. Turn on the unit and hit the ‘Eng/Jpns Dictionary’ key. Type in B O Y and the following is displayed:

Using the ’scroll keys,’ select the word you want and hit the ‘enter key’ and you are presented with the following screen:

Can you read this? This is where knowing a little bit of written Japanese is helpful, otherwise, it’s just a matter of experience with the Wordtank. The Japanese word for ‘boy’ is represented by the 3 characters following the number 1 and the boxed “C” in the above display. To look up how to read this word, we’ll now use the ‘Jump’ key.’

Following the sequence in the image below, first you hit the ‘jump key,’ then using the ’select keys’ scroll the cursor down until the first of the 3 characters is highlighted. Next, hit the ’shift key’ and then using the ’select keys’ highlight the 3 characters (think of selecting multiple words on a computer, it’s the same thing). Finally, hit the ‘enter key’.

The following screen is displayed. This is where knowing your hiragana and katakana will help you. Next to the boxed “1″, the hiragana characters say “OTOKONOKO” or the Japanese word for BOY.

Now that you know how to read that kanji combination, you can go one step further and see how “OTOKONOKO” is used in a sentence. From the above screen, simply select the item you want (number 1) and hit ‘enter.’ You will see the following screen:

From here, you could continue to “drill down” on any kanji combination to learn how to read it. The Wordtank also allows you to store words that you’ve looked up in a special ‘Word Memo’ section that is great when you are trying to build a vocabulary study list.

I found the Canon Wordtank for sale online at the following web sites: www.worldlanguage.com has a collection of great language learning products. Also see www.jbox.com, they carry Wordtanks plus other very interesting Japanese imports.

Go to: Communications Problems? Get an Electronic Dictionary

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