The Hiragana IME Dictionary

Hiragana IME includes dictionaries specifically designed for elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as for adults. As students move up each grade, they learn more kanji characters. Consequently, the number of kanji words included in the Hiragana IME dictionaries also increases.

(As of October, 2024)

The grade-specific dictionaries are structured according to the table provided by MEXT. For personal names and place names, dictionaries for middle school students and above use kanji not listed in the list of Chinese characters in common use, known as the Jōyō Kanji Table.

Note: With ordinary IMEs, people often use kanji characters not listed in the Jōyō kanji table, such as '此方(こちら)に' and '纏(まと)める'. Using the Hiragana IME helps avoid these kanji characters that are not taught in schools. When writing for foreigners living in Japan, it's helpful to know that the JLPT N2 certification standard includes approximately 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words.

Editing Dictionaries

Hiragana IME's dictionary files are text files that use the following format:

; Lines starting with a semicolon (;) are comments.
; To add a word, write the reading, followed by a space, and then the word
; enclosed by slashes (/).
きれい /綺麗/
; When you prefix the reading with a minus sign (-), you can revoke words
; in the system dictionary.
-きれい /奇麗/
; Words with the same reading can be added together in one line.
かいざん /改竄/改ざん/
; The reading section of a word with okurigana contains only the hiragana
; part to be replaced with kanji and terminated with a horizontal bar (―).
ささや― /囁k/
あお― /碧i/

You can add words to your personal dictionary if you can not find them in Hiragana IME dictionaries. To edit your personal dictionary, click the Edit button in the Dictionary tab of the Hiragana IME Setup Window.

Adding words with okurigana

In user dictionaries, the reading section of a word with okurigana contains only the hiragana part to be replaced with kanji and terminated with a horizontal bar (―). The format of the word section changes based on its grammatical type, as described below.

For verbs with Godan conjugation:

In the word section, write kanji, okurigana up to (if any) the conjugative suffix, and one of the conjugative suffix symbols: kgstnbmrw.

For verbs with Kami-ichiidan or Shimo-ichidan conjugation:

In the word section, write kanji, the first letter of the okurigana, which is one of the letters in イ (i)-dan or エ (e)-dan, and the conjugative suffix symbol: 1.

For イ (i)-adjectives

In the word section, write the kanji, the okurigana up to (if any) the conjugative suffix, and the conjugative suffix symbol: i.

For ナ (na)-adjectives

In the word section, write kanji and then stem in hiragana.

The other types of okurigana

In the word section, write kanji and okurigana as they are.

Command-line dictionary tool

Hiragana IME provides a command-line tool called ibus-hiragana-tool for maintaining dictionaries. This tool is especially useful for creating large personal dictionary files.

Synopsis

ibus-hiragana-tool [-h] [-o OUTPUT] [--header] [--one] [--version]
[{diff,hyougai,hyougai-yomi,intersect,katakana,lookup,
  mazeyomi,symbol,taigen,union,wago,yougen,yutou,zyuubako} ...]

ibus-hiragana-tool takes a single sub-command as its argument. For example, to merge two dictionary files, use the union command:

$ ibus-hiragana-tool union a.dic b.dic -o c.dic

In this example, a dictionary file named c.dic is created by merging a.dic and b.dic. If the output file name is not specified with the -o option, the result will be printed into the standard output.

ibus-hiragana-tool supports the following sub-commands:

And ibus-hiragana-tool support the following command-line options: