In the world of immersion learning, there are many different Dictionary experiences. Here is an overview of many of them and how to get started with them.
One of the easiest, with little to no learning curve, are the online dictionaries. You eventually want to move on from these as they are not super fluid for “in immersion” lookups, but in the beginning, the learning curve is so large that it’s best to learn the more advanced tools later. Here are two beginner-friendly online dictionaries.
After you feel you are in a groove and ready to learn more tools and techniques (dont rush it don’t get overwhelmed learning too much to quickly) you can move on to learning some of the immersion assistance tools. These tools generally require downloaded JSON (or other) formatted dictionaries.
The tools themselves will be discussed in this guide
However, most of those tools (Yomichan, Migaku, and more) will utilize these dictionary resources. Some of the dictionaries in these packs are “Monolingual Dictionaries”, meaning the words and definitions are in Japanese, and some are “Bilingual dictionaries” meaning the word is in Japanese and the definitions are in English (or another language other than Japanese).
One of the first good quality dictionary available for monolingual (and bilingual) word lookups was Qolibri. This is legacy and outdated and not generally recommended. There are better tools available. But for those that just want to bask in the nostalgia of old school AJAT methods, here is the lowdown on Qolbiri.
The program:-
https://osdn.net/projects/qolibri/releases/
The Dictionary Files:-
http://www.mediafire.com/file/hr30l1pw004gac9/EPWINGs.rar/file
How to set it up:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kny7eCfx9dA&ab_channel=MattvsJapan
How to use :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-AfT8XW63w&ab_channel=MattvsJapan