The Edict Audio Companion

No longer available for purchase (not enough business to be worth keeping the licensing agreement alive);

JLT is happy to offer any support previous customers require, though.

Three great resources:

Edict is the flagship project and intellectual property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, under the fearless leadership of Prof. Jim Breen, at Monash University in Australia (copyright and license terms). It's a Japanese-to-English dictionary with about 150,000 entries. And I've edited it to work far better than the original (especially in English-to-Japanese searches) than the original.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1-4 Vocabulary mp3 set is a fantastic way to learn Japanese by listening and speaking; it's also the best guide to proper Japanese pronunciation, with 8,054 English to Japanese and 8,054 Japanese to English audio files, each spoken by a professional, native-speaker voice actor and carefully recorded. The words are pronounced clearly, with the proper intonation and rhythm--far better than any other audio pronunciation guide I've heard. It's keyed to the previous, four-level format of the JLPT, but while the organization of the test has changed, the actual vocabulary is largely the same.

Japanese Language Tools--well, that's me. I'm committed to bringing you the best dictionary system and tools you can find. And I've brought Edict and these great pronunciation files together.

The Edict Audio Companion puts them all together. It's got all the advantages of my custom version of Edict (see my Edict page) plus a very special feature. The entries for all 8,054 Japanese words on all four levels of the JLPT contain links to the JLPT vocabulary mp3 files--tap a link, hear the word pronounced! No other system has as many words pronounced by a real human being, and no other system gives you such top quality audio. Here's what you'll see when you look up a Japanese word that's among those 8,054 (actually, with variations on how the words are written, there are about 11,000 entries that have these pronunciation links). (Note: after a slight update, the links now just say "Listen," not "file..."--I'll add a new screenshot soon. But otherwise it works the same way.)

Simply tap the green link and hear the word. Easy as pie!

This tap-and-hear function now works on iOS and Android, as well as Windows Mobile, regular Windows, and Mac OS devices (until recently it didn't work on iOS or Android, but that was fixed).

Audio Flashcards

The audio files used in the Edict Audio Companion were originally created to be audio flashcards to be used in studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Tests (previous format, but the same vocabulary words). Purchase of the Edict Audio Companion includes the entire set of Audio Flashcard files, all set up and ready to use as an audio flashcard study system as well as a dictionary. The flashcard pronounces an English word, then pauses to give you time to say the Japanese. It then pronounces the Japanese word so you can confirm that you were correct. And of course it goes the other way, too, pronouncing and showing a Japanese word, then pausing for you to say the English. Many people find this kind of spoken learning a highly effective complement to the visual learning of most typical study methods. This works on anything that can play mp3 files, as long as you've got an extra 2.4 GB of room to spare (though it's nice to have a display, so you can also see the word--combining listening, speaking, and reading for effective learning).

The Edict Audio Companion

Audio Flashcards

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