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Amazon Kindle and language learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 41 of 64 13 August 2011 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Since the Kindle is now officially supported by amazon.de, you'll get a free monolingual German dictionary, which will be downloaded on demand. As for other languages, you can copy Mobipocket/Kindle dictionaries to the Kindle and it'll automatically select them based on the ebook's language code. Since the Kindle's native format is based on the Mobipocket format, most Mobipocket dictionaries will work on the Kindle as lookup dictionaries, though some advanced features might not work. If no dictionary for your target language exists, you can compile your own from a tab delimited file using a Python script and the free Mobipocket/Kindle compiler. For more information, see Michael Sheldon's site. Also a Kindle hacker has figured out how to change the built-in English TTS voices to other languages, but the results are a mixed bag. There's still no flashcard software, though, RTL languages (Arabic, Hebrew etc.) are only supported as PDF files and dictionary lookup apparently doesn't work for Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chris13 Groupie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4051 days ago 53 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 42 of 64 01 November 2013 at 11:43am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Hey guys, I realise this thread is now 3 years old or so, however I have much the same question. The Kindle has undoubtedly changed vastly since these posts, so I was curious who here uses a Kindle for their language acquisition and, if you do, do you happen to use it for Swedish or Finnish?
I hear that the best feature is the aforementioned dictionary aspect, and I have also read that Japanese, Chinese and Russian characters are supported by the Kindle these days, however it doesn't seem to mean that the resources are out there. For example, I have seen two Swedish dictionaries that are able to be used as the default in the Amazon store, the problem being they both got around two stars and very poor reviews. If you are learning a language such as French, Spanish, German, Italian it seems to be a very worthwhile investment, but is it still worthwhile if you are learning a language such as Swedish or Finnish? I was thinking of getting one for Christmas seeing that they also enable you to make flashcards out of the words you look up in the dictionary, and this is a method that seems to suit me well (providing I can find a default Swedish and Finnish dictionary) so it seems worthwhile IF I can. I've also been told that you can borrow ebooks from libraries, so that was an interesting prospect seeing that I now live in Finland I could borrow ebooks from the local library. Do you think it'd be a worthwhile purchase or just a waste of money? Thanks in advance for any feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 43 of 64 01 November 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Alle current Kindles (K3 and higher) support Chinese/Japanese/Korean and Cyrillic Kindle books (with the latest firmware). Older models, such as the K3 and K4, however, lack an IME for Asian languages and don't support vertical text. BTW no Kindle model offers a Cyrillic keyboard layout and current Kindle models also support Arabic and Hebrew (and many other languages), but the Arabic font is very hard to read.
Try this one from MobileRead: it's free and good enough for Beginners.
I haven't looked into to Finish, but, IIRC, it's a highly inflected language, which makes creating a Kindle dictionary for it more difficult than creating dictionaries for other languages, because you'll need not only to find a Finnish/English word list with enough coverage, but also a way to automatically generate inflections for each dictionary definition. However, you could theoretically create a Finnish-English Kindle dictionary using free tools.
AFAIK, most libraries in Europe only offer DRM protected ePubs, which you couldn't read on a Kindle unless stripped off the DRM and converted it to the Kindle format with Calibre. But there are a lots of free Finnish ebooks at Project Gutenberg.
AFAIK, only the latest 2013 Paperwhite comes with a flashcard app and it's rather expensive. I wouldn't buy it only for language learning, because you'd probably be better off with a cheap tablet, which'll allow you to install multiple ebook, dictionary and flashcard apps. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5566 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 44 of 64 08 November 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I've also been thinking about this recently as I've just come across a wealth of ebooks in Spanish, Polish and a few
in Dutch, and thought it might be time to invest. I have no Idea which e-reader to get, been looking at the kindle and kindle paperwhite, but would love to hear of peoples experiences with using them in terms of general reading and language learning. Also just have a few questions. So ePubs and other ebook formats can be converted to the Kindle format without any trouble and be perfectly readable? Also can Kindles read pdfs (or can pdfs also be converted)? Secondly can a single Kindle hold multiple dictionaries simultaneously? And are they any good? And lastly in terms of the Kindle paperwhite, can the light be turned off? Haven't read this anywhere yet so I'm guessing no (which seems odd), and does this light irritate the eyes after a while like a laptop does? I know Doitsujin above recommended just getting a tablet instead which would work out cheaper and better in terms of dictionaries, but I really dislike reading of computers due to being backlit and hear the Kindle e-ink technology really is quite good and like reading paper. Any thoughts and advice would be much appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 45 of 64 08 November 2013 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
As long as they're not DRM-protected, yes. Calibre will convert pretty much any file to any eBook format. However, most PDFs are not suitable for conversion.
Amazon introduced a new ePub2 compatible format (KF8/AZW3) this year that is 99.99% compatible with epub2. I.e., as long as you select AZW3 as the output in Calibre, the book'll look pretty much the same on a current Kindle model.
Kindles come with a basic PDF reader app. However it's pretty much useless, because it'll either only display portions of a PDF page or uses default zoom factors that make it very hard to read text, because of the small 6" screen. You can convert PDF files (with text layers) with Calibre to ePub files and Kindle books, but the results often leave much to be desired.
AFAIK, there's no limit to the number of dictionaries that can be stored on a Kindle and the latest models will allow you to search several dictionaries. (Dictionary files are special Kindle books and are installed by copying them to the Kindle's \documents folder.)
Except for the French dictionary, Amazon licensed top European dictionaries with a good coverage. You can easily test this yourself by downloading any of the free Kindle apps, which all come with free monolingual dictionaries. (Open a book in the Kindle app, double-click any word then click the cogwheel in the lookup window to select other dictionaries for download.) (You can buy additional bilingual dictionaries for some European languages, but the number of good dictionaries is limited.)
You cannot fully turn it off, but the brightness level can be set to a very low level. If you're still unsure whether to get an ereader, try the following: 1. Get the free Kindle and ePub apps and open some free ePubs and Kindle books with it. 2. Get Calibre and convert some of your .pdf files with it to test whether the output is readable. (Make sure to enable all Heuristic Processing options.) If that doesn't work, you can also check out K2pdfopt. 3. Have a look at eink demo models at your nearest electronics retailer. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4736 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 64 08 November 2013 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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A quick note on the bilingual dictionaries (I've purchased some for German & Spanish)-
These generally have very poor ratings because most people purchasing them expect them to be bi-directional. In my experience the offerings are not great compared to paper dictionaries, but more than adequate for quick reference. Also, the monolingual dictionaries are great, but when looking up words in-line it only shows a few lines from the definition. By their nature bilingual dictionaries can pack more information in a small space, thus I generally prefer them for kindle reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5566 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 47 of 64 13 November 2013 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Thank you very much Doitsujin for such an incredibly helpful post. Very much appreciated. Going to have a look at
the free apps and calibre on the weekend. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 48 of 64 13 November 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I stumbled upon an interesting new Hungarian website that offers tab-delimited word lists extracted from Wiktionary.
This file format is ideal for Kindle dictionary conversion. BTW, they have a number of unusual language combinations e.g. Catalan-Occitan, German-Esperanto etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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