Canon Wordtank G50

The Canon Wordtank G50 electronic dictionary is one of the newer Wordtank models. Apparently it’s very popular. For me, the best new features are the improved dictionaries and the animated kanji stroke order.

The most impressive change is the dictionaries. The G50 has about twice as many entries as previous Wordtanks — over 450,000 entries in the Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionaries. The IDF-3000 had just over 200,000. Hopefully this will allow it to avoid the IDf-3000’s problems with word lookups.

The other neat feature is the kanji stroke order animations. Look up a kanji, press a button and you’ll see an animation showing the stroke order of the kanji. This is obviously useful for a learner — it works for the 2000 or so daily use kanji, which should be enough for most people.

As with most Wordtanks, you can set it to display on-screen instructions in English. An English manual are also available.

You can buy the Wordtank G50 at JBOX.com. They also have some useful study aids and lots of other fun stuff from Japan. Note: If you click these links to shop at JBOX.com, this website makes a small commission.