Adding words to a dictionary

It is assumed that you already have a dictionary to which you wish to add new words. If you do, select Search... from the Dictionary menu and choose the dictionary from the popup menu in the Find word dialog. Then select New... from the Word menu to bring up the New word dialog (shown in Figure 1 below). If not, select New... from the Dictionary menu and create a new dictionary.

Enter your word information into the New word dialog and press the Save button to have the word added to the dictionary.

Figure 1. The New word dialog

To illustrate this procedure, we will enter the following word:

日本語    にほんご    Japanese language

We begin by entering the Kanji into the New word dialog. Position the cursor in the Kana/Kanji area by clicking it - you will then see the flashing green Kana cursor displayed. Click the Kanji button on the Input dialog and enter each of the three Kanji of the sample word above (it is assumed you already know how to use the Japanese input system). You should now have a New word dialog which looks like Figure 2.

Figure 2. The word with the Kanji entered

Now highlight the question mark above the first Kanji, press the Direct Hiragana input button on the Input dialog (the button on the extreme top left) to go into Hiragana input mode, and type 'に'. You should see the question mark be replaced with 'に'. Select the next question mark and type 'ほん', and then select the last question mark and type 'ご'. You should now have a New word dialog which looks like Figure 3.
Figure 3. The word with the Kanji and Kana entered

Now, move the mouse pointer up to the blue line under 'ほ'. You should see the cursor change to a right pointing arrow. Hold down the button and drag the blue line so that it stretches to include the 'ん' as well. You have just edited the furigana of the second Kanji so that the Kanji reading is correctly shown as 'ほん'. If you press the Look button (the button on the top of the New word dialog with the eyes in it), you will see the word displayed with its correct furigana.

To complete the entry of the word, click the English textbox and type in the English definition: 'Japanese language'. Go down to the Type textbox, click the popup menu next to it and select 'n - noun' from the list. This sets the word type to 'noun'. You should now have a New word dialog which looks like Figure 4. Press the Save button and the word will be saved in the dictionary, and the New word dialog cleared, ready for entry of the next word.

Figure 4. The word with the Kanji, Kana and English definition entered

When editing Kanji, you can move them around within a word by simply dragging them, and they can deleted by dragging them into the trashcan on the right side of the Kana/Kanji area.

Additional word information
The Status popup menu allows you to select whether the word is included in exercises if you were to add the dictionary to the Flashcard dictionary list. Generally, you should leave this as Unused and let the Lesson planner control the word status information.

The Year, Lesson and Group numbers shown on the New word dialog allow you to group words so they will come up in a particular lesson in the Lesson planner. For example, if you are a 2nd year student in your 12th week of study and you are entering your weekly vocabulary into JWM for study, you might make the Year number equal to 2 and the Lesson number equal to 12. This will help you find all words in this weekly vocabulary list easily at a later time. The Group number you use is completely up to you, and should be left blank if unused.

The three buttons on the right side of the New word dialog allow you to attach multimedia to a word (these buttons are shown in Figure 5 below). This allows you to create multimedia dictionaries which can include sounds, pictures and multilingual notes (ie. you can create a text document with JWM and attach that to the word). These multimedia are used during the exercise process, and adding them makes exercising more interesting and varied and also assists with memorisation of Kanji and vocabulary.

Figure 5. Buttons used to attach sounds, pictures and notes to words

You may wish to read more details about preparing multimedia for JWM.

For example, if you would like to attach a sound to a word, press the Attach sound button and the dialog in Figure 6 will be displayed. Press the Attach button on this dialog and you will be able to select a sound using the File selection dialog.

Figure 6. The Attach sound dialog

When you have selected a sound, you can listen to it to make sure it's the one you want (by pressing the Play button), and detach it if you decide to use a different sound (using the Detach button). If it's the sound you want, press the OK button and then the Save button on the New word dialog and the sound will be saved with the word. The same procedure is used for attaching pictures and notes to words.