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KANJI & KANA

Japanese kanji and kana characters have been introduced into the original dictionary and can be found immediately after the romanized forms of the entries. The most contemporary renderings of kanji have been used, including the 2,136 characters from the jōyō kanji [常用漢字] list. As it is unreasonable to attempt to convert all romanized words into kanji, kanji is provided only when it is commonly used by the Japanese. In some cases, the kana representation appears before the kanji, and in other cases, after. This means that in the former case kana is most commonly used but at times kanji may be preferable because it conveys the precise meaning of the original word. In the latter case this means that the word is usually written in kanji but kana may sometimes be substituted when the kanji is perceived as too difficult or too long to write.

Other dictionaries provide difficult kanji that are rarely used by native Japanese, but we have chosen to avoid this and focus on contemporary usage. It is possible to write “lemon” in kanji, for example, with the kanji 檸檬, but the katakana form レモン is much preferred.

Every effort has been made to reflect common usage of kanji and kana; thus the ordering of the kanji and kana that follows the romanization is based on frequency of usage. Centered dots mean “or,” so appearance yōsu 様子・ようす indicates that 様子 is more frequently used but よう す is also an acceptable representation for appearance. Kanji is of course important to clarify the exact meaning of the word; as the Japanese language contains many homonyms there is a certain amount of vagueness in the usage of kana, especially out of context.

In general, romanized words are not hyphenated unless the hyphen represents a morpheme boundary within a compound word. In addition, in this dictionary we have provided kanji and kana renderings for all forms of the romanized words offered, including constituent parts of words that are abbreviated by a hyphen or substituted by a swung dash. Although this takes up extra space, it will facilitate understanding of the exact forms of the relevant word.