Murphy's kanji law.

[elwen]

Someone on japanese posted a link to Kanji Clinic, a regular column in the Japan Times. There's also a section of book reviews, which I immediately turned to, as I have been looking for a good Japanese-Japanese dictionary and a good synonym/homophone dictionary.

The reviews of Japanese-only dictionaries were not that numerous, but there were a few recommendations for synonym/homophone dictionaries, at least. Along with this observation:

While native speakers often disagree on the correct kanji to be used in a given context, as Mr. Jack Halpern notes on his web site, foreigners will almost certainly select a kanji that all Japanese will agree is inappropriate.

...yep.

[I know, I suck at wind-ups.]

Something to look for in my next trip to Kinokuniya. Though the only 使い分け辞書 I've seen there in the past are the ones with definitions in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean, and I don't want to pay for all that extra paper that is useless to me.

Comments

[ling84.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* It's kind of discouraging for this nihongo n00b to hear that. I'm already being weirded out by the use of kanji in combinations that would make a Chinese native speaker scratch his or her head - so close, but so far away.