imiwa‪?‬ 4+

Japanese dictionary

Pierre-Phi di Costanzo

Designed for iPad

    • 4.7 • 207 Ratings
    • Free

Screenshots

Description

This application is a multilingual Japanese dictionary that does not require an internet connection.

Imiwa? was created using the amazing JMdict files from the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group based on the work of Jim Breen on the EDICT project.

While some definitions are available in 4 languages (English, French, Russian and German), only the English translation is guaranteed for all entries in the JMDict dictionary. Initiate a search in any of those 4 languages, in Japanese or in romaji and imiwa? will do the rest.

imiwa? Also includes a rich database of kanji (KanjiDic), examples (from tatoeba.org) and conjugations as well as tools suitable for beginners.

Use the Traditional Chinese character recognition keyboard included in the iOS system for drawing kanji on screen.

What’s New

Version 4.2.1

March 2021 dictionary and example updates
Various bug fixes

Ratings and Reviews

4.7 out of 5
207 Ratings

207 Ratings

MimiKidM ,

The #1 Best Translation App

Ive tried a lot of the translation apps, and none can touch this app. It provides an incredible amount of extremely useful information about each word. I like it for the following reasons:
(1) has very accurate, nuanced and detailed definitions in multiple languages
(2) provides info about what each kanji means (both as the whole word and broken down into individual kanji elements)
(3) provides the grammatical structure of the word (e.g. it is an intransitive verb, い or な adjective, etc.)
(4) provides all of the forms/conjugations of verbs and adjectives (e.g. present tense, past tense, ongoing, etc.).
(5) provides kanji, hiragana, and romanji
(6) has easy-to-access links to similar and related words
(7) enter full sentences and it will break down each piece of vocab in the sentence
(8) lets you know if the kana or kanji is more commonly used
(9) has language cards you can practice that are organized according to both JLPT and school grade levels of difficulty
(10) can bookmark and write notes
(11) very nice “copy and paste” function
(12) lots of kanji info: kanji brush strokes, info about radicals, lists other words using the same kanji radicals, etc.
There are other apps with similar features (e.g. “Shitabe Jisho” and “Japanese”) but Imiwa is much cleaner and easy to read.

Ignolopi ,

BEST language dictionary

Imiwa is the BEST English-Japanese dictionary out there. Actually it's the best cross-language dictionary I've used period. Although I admit, I mostly look at free ones, often paid ones I find are junk.

Imiwa makes it so easy to look up terms in romaji, or if you've installed Japanese keyboards on your phone/ipad you can look up by hiragana or kanji directly. If you install the one Chinese keyboard that lets you draw the characters it's even better.

Once you've found a word, you can see example sentences, when they are available. You can also see the breakdown of the kanji in the word, and continue to see what that particular kanji means. The kanji definitions have all the readings, radicals, and brush strokes.

Imiwa lets you have multiple lists. I save lists for fun phrases, cool words, kanji I need to study, and (when that was a concern) words for the different JLPT levels.

...I use it a lot in the car to look up a Japanese lyric I just heard. Or a random word I suddenly realize I don't know the Japanese word for but I should.

If you are studying Japanese, or even if you just like anime, it's a no-brainer to install Imiwa on your phone.

りん🌸 ,

Best app for Japanese learners

UPDATE 11/21: Taking one star away since as of the new version, there are two really annoying bugs that make the app much harder to use. When viewing example sentences, only the first line of each translation is displayed until the example is scrolled past (vanishes from view). When you view the example again, the full translation is then visible. This workaround doesn’t always work because not every example can be scrolled past. The other bug is that the search icon on the top right doesn’t work sometimes when viewed from an entry. The magnifying glass overlaps with an “X” and stops working. I’m not sure how exactly to reproduce this but it happens often enough.

***
This is by far the best Japanese dictionary app that has ever graced the App Store, bar none. It's simple to use and extremely effective, allowing you to look up the definitions you need at lightning speed. The devs deserve a big thank you for keeping the app free all these years.

As of iOS 11, there are a few small bugs in the UI (eg the search icon on the top right didn’t seem to work sometimes when viewed directly from a dictionary entry). Hopefully the devs can get that fixed as it’s a bit annoying when you’re looking up many words at a go and have to hit an extra key to go back each time.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the kind words, an update is coming for iOS11 and all screen geometries 心配しないでください ^^

App Privacy

The developer, Pierre-Phi di Costanzo, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

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