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Does anyone know any online Japanese dictionary which provides audio reading?

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I voted to close because this is really barely related to the Japanese language itself, and is answered easily by a Google search for "japanese dictionary". – rintaun Jul 2 '11 at 5:19
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Usually when one wants to close a question he doesn't answer it :) and a link to meta is good also: meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/160/… – repecmps Jul 2 '11 at 8:04
OK. I had to scour meta to try and figure where we currently stand on "what are good resources/dictionary" questions, and the consensus is still pretty muddled, so I won't force an immediate close (but feel free to vote for a close if you feel that way)... But I think it should at least be made a Community Wiki. Updating accordingly. – Dave♦ Jul 2 '11 at 16:24
Why? Pronunciation of a single word by some software isn't going to be much helpful to have a nice intonation. And as Japanese basically reads as it's written, I quite doubt this would be useful… – Axioplase Jul 4 '11 at 9:23

5 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

It's strange that no one mentioned that WWWJDIC provides the audio clips for the reading for all the entries (rintaun only mentioned about the pronunciation hiragana).

In case anyone misses it (I didn't realize the blue button is a play sound button until later), here is where:

play sound button wwwjdic

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“I didn't realize the blue button is a play sound button until later” I did not know that. Thanks! – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 21 '11 at 22:54
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UmaiKanji has an audio library. It doesn't have anywhere near as many words as a dictionary, so don't expect to get a result for every word you look up. It's not a dictionary actually, but with Rikaikun/chan its useful.

I've seen dictionaries on the iPhone that use software to synthesize the readings.

Apple and Microsoft do this decently (for words more than sentences), in English at least. So, desktop software in combination with the OS's text-to-speech, or some dictionary that can take advantage of their frameworks is a possible lead for you.

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up vote 4 down vote

I use http://nihongoresources.com which includes a lot grammar and pronunciation as well as a dictionary.

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Also, I use google.com/translate and you can then listen to the reading. It is not very good quality, however. It is best to learn the basics of the kana and their readings. – h4xnoodle Jul 2 '11 at 16:01
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Pretty much every online Japanese dictionary that I know of provides reading, unless you mean something out of the ordinary by "reading." Take the following entry from WWWJDIC for reference:

結論 【けつろん】 (n,vs,adj-no) conclusion; (P)

Edit: WWWJDIC also contains audio examples for many common words, as Lukman points out in his answer.

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I mean pronunciations, the sound. – Steven Jul 2 '11 at 13:00
up vote 2 down vote

I've yet to see a dictionary that didn't provide the reading. Plus, if you did manage to find one, you could just install RikaiChan or RikaiKun (depending on your browser) and it would give you the reading.

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For what it’s worth, English-Japanese dictionaries for Japanese speakers (who speak English as a foreign language) usually do not provide readings of words in Japanese. :) – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 4 '11 at 13:03

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