The Wordtank series is a line of Japanese electronic dictionaries manufactured by Canon. Although officially only sold in Japan, several of the multi-language models are popular among students of the Japanese language around the world. The ability to change menu display options to English on many of the Wordtank models is cited as a reason for the relatively wide foreign adoption. The ability to highlight an entire Japanese word (as opposed to just one character) and display a hiragana rendering of it is unique to the Wordtank series and is an extremely popular function for advanced learners. This function applies to all Wordtank models. One of the latest Wordtank models, the G70, offers this function for over 400,000 words.
History
Canon has been manufacturing electronic dictionaries with the "WordTank" name since the late 1980s. Some series were better than others for the non-Japanese user (the mid-nineties IDX series was more usable than models from five years later; later series around 2004-5 are again improved).
ID series – Wordtank
ID-7000
ID-7100
ID-7200 – popular in 1991/92
ID-8500
ID series expansion cards
ID-110 Business Conversation Card
ID-120 Onomancy/Fortune Telling Card
ID-130 English Conversation/Travel Card
ID-140 Japanese Definitions Card – for the ID-7000/ID-7100
ID-150 English/Japanese Dictionary Expansion Card – for ID-7000/ID-7100 (ID-7100 + ID-140 + ID-150 = ID-7200, but cost more)
ID-160 English Conversation/Business Card
ID-170 Contemporary Phrases Card
ID-180 Game of "Go"
ID-310 English/Japanese Dictionary Expansion Card – for the ID-7200 and ID-8500
