You rename the mobi file to the dictionary file name and put it in the spot your app expects to see the dictionary. I’m assuming bc it can’t tell that it’s not the file that the app shipped with that updates don’t really matter one way or another. I haven’t ever had it be overwritten, fwiw.
I imagine it does… I assumed it had a character limit and not a number of times limit… I haven’t run into it yet, BUT I read across multiple devices where my phone is a backup, limit my Kindle reads (vs ttsu) to level 26 and below (= not a ton of lookups for me), or (as of late) books I’m previewing in jpdb. I haven’t hit it before, but if you are only reading in the Kindle app ymmv.
When we’re talking about sideloading dictionaries, has anyone sideloaded fonts? I don’t really like the default fonts, I wondered if anyone has recs for easy to read fonts (maybe kyoukasho like fonts).
I have a mixed experience with this. For most words, what it auto-selects is fine. It’s just selecting the inflected part of the word (from a native grammar perspective). But I find with compound verbs this doesn’t always work and I have to extend the selection by a character or two to get it to work, which can be a bit annoying as you said.
And thankfully this is rare, but every once in a while I try to change what’s highlighted and the kindle freaks out. Like it’s saying “I told you the correct highlight, stop trying to f---ing change it!!”
For me, I feel like the word boundaries and sensitivity are off compared to my phone. So I often have 2-3 misclicks early on in a reading session where I have to figure out exactly what part of my finger activates the word select. In that time I will also sometimes accidentally turn the page instead of highlighting words. I’ll usually figure it out pretty quickly, but it does feel like it happens a lot.
The “oh, you wanted this whole verb, not just the first kanji” invariably turns into me struggling to use the tool to extend the selection and then it highlighting the whole sentence In that case I usually just try and select the word a second time kinda dragging my finger across the whole word instead of tapping. I feel like that tends to get me better results.
Yeah, that’s what I do immediately, and most of the time that works really well for me. I haven’t touched the selection extending widget in forever - it’s so finnicky that it might as well not exist at all.
I quite like the Kindle Paperwhite that I have, maybe 11th generation or so. It is admittedly quirky and maybe fixed the sluggishness by the newer generations (“quick, responsive”), and the words aren’t always available with the dictionary, I think it is still worth it. The main benefits are that it is easier to read anywhere anytime than any other device including physical books. You can change it to night mode for reading in the dark (always), and much easier on your eyes with the size and backlight versus a little phone screen. Basically the Kindle is great for plowing through reading because the time of day, lighting, battery duration, screen size, and physical weight and size are not an issue like books, full computers, and phones. It is seriously the best reading device even for your native language. I typically download samples or other books and then turn on airplane mode. Don’t get one with ads if there are ones with those. You also might be able to get one used to try it out. Basically if you do a lot of reading in general, the Kindle is the best tool. Except, I just remembered a downside is that everything is in black and white and graphs, images are not the greatest, or reference books that you would need to flip back and forth (due to my kindle being slow). You can get the gist in black and white but if trying to see many images or graphs then it would be better to read on something else.
The JP amazon is separate, and can’t be dual loaded, so you have to choose between reading your JP books and reading your other books
The dictionary fails lookups quite often, and some of the dictionaries entries aren’t super helpful… like you’ll look up XX性 and it’ll be like “the quality of being 性”
On my 10 year old kindle you could have multiple dictionaries loaded at once; the new kindle I bought only has an EN>LANG dictionaries, which anoys me. It seems you can load more but it’s trouble some and I cba
But other than those two things, I love it. I recently bought a new kindle, so I use my new one for reading in ES/EN and the old one for reading in JP.
Wihle it’s a pretty penny, I feel OK about the price. It doesn’t tak a lot of power to load a book to read, and the battery lasts for weeks. $100 for 5–10 years of use is pretty good. I wouldn’t even have thought to upgrade my old kindle if I hadn’t seen a friend’s new one and been infatuated with the refresh rate/generally swiftness of the UI.
That’s a pretty incredible feat on it’s own (idk if other eReaders are similar)
Do y’all ever see your reflections on Kindle while reading? One of the things I hate about reading on phone or tablet is I have to deal with seeing reflections and/or room light glare
It should be similar to other ereaders. It’s because it only needs power to rerender the screen, downloads, and things like that. If you turn WiFi off and don’t use it for weeks it would still have plenty of battery life because it doesn’t need to draw power to display a static image.
Nope, that’s not an issue! It’s a bit like a magazine, where you can see the blurry shape of the light or other reflections, but it’s not nearly as distracting as a reflection on a normal LCD or OLED screen.
Alright, that’s the nail in the coffin for me just ordered a Paperwhite. Hopefully this goes better than last time I tried it. I’ll report back next week, for anyone who’s curious (gets here on the 30th)
Paperwhite got here today. I’ve only used it for 10 pgs or so, but so far it’s a much nicer experience than reading on the app on my tablet.
Pop-up dictionary and selection take slightly longer to show up, but the dictionary presentation is much clearer
Switching btwn the dictionaries feels much smoother, as does going through separate entries for the same search query.
It handles inflections much better than the app does. So I don’t really need to look at my phone anymore. No more distractions or juggling devices from lookups, it seems!
Adjusting the selection boundaries is not as bad as I was worried it would be.
I miss the way you can flip through pages on the app, with the scrollbar and stuff - that’s a much more pleasant experience.
If I was trying to track lookups via highlights, it wouldn’t be my favorite (btwn the mild select lag & lack of color for differentiating different types of lookups), so in that case I’d use the app.
It feels a lot smoother to read in general, and with less picking up & putting down devices, distractions, etc, I’m probably reading slightly faster.
It’s convenient to be able to buy stuff directly again (which you can’t do from the Android app, cuz of some policy)
It doesn’t set up a PIN by default, but you can do that in the settings
I wouldn’t particularly recommend it for manga (it’s passable, but weird (and small anyway)). But for novels or other text-based books, it’s absolutely gonna be my default reader from now on.
It’s because Google (same as Apple for iPhones) wants a 30% cut of all purchases made on their devices, so big companies like Amazon just don’t allow purchases in a lot of their apps.
Not sure if this is helpful, but I’ve used https://read.amazon.co.jp/notebook (words automatically added, but I have had glitches) and https://my.clippings.io/ (manual imports) in the past to get my highlights and manually add them to Kitsun. I’m sure there are better tools to import into Anki if that’s you SRS of choice.
Ahh I don’t do that sort of thing. I pre-study/co-study with jpdb, or occasionally just make cards manually for very repeated words (in the simplest format possible), if there’s no jpdb deck. What I meant is that when I do track my lookups, I use the app’s 4 colors as follows:
Yellow - looked up for meaning
blue - comprehension issue
red - looked up for reading
orange - just double-checked what I already thought the meaning/reading was
It’s just for my own curiosity/to get a sense. I only do it occasionally tho, cuz it slows me down too much to do it constantly, and tbh I almost never actually look back on it, beyond a quick glance. Good to know tho!
That JM Dict one is soooooo much nicer than the default J-E dict. Looking into JP-JP and I found: Dicts | Anacreon DJT . I haven’t tried loading those yet, but will see if it works next time I’m on my computer. I’m getting along with 大辞泉 a bit better now, but still find myself switching to the J-E often enough
lmk how you find that j-j. I find switching between dictionaries a teeeeny bit annoying, but there are time I’d like to get a Japanese definition instead of some vague English one
Well it’s 4 different dictionary files to start. 広辞苑第六版 and 大辞林第三版 are probly the most comfortable for me. 明鏡第一版 tends to be a slightly more comfortable/comprehensible version of 大辞泉. I will probably set the default to 広辞苑第六版
In that case I usually just try and select the word a second time kinda dragging my finger across the whole word instead of tapping. I feel like that tends to get me better results.
just ordered a Paperwhite. Hopefully this goes better than last time I tried it. I’ll report back next week, for anyone who’s curious (gets here on the 30th)
