The Inadvertent Collection Part Two

Having written the first Inadvertent collection, I think I may have cursed myself.  Now, when I look around my house, I wonder if the things I am seeing are, in fact, part of my new inadvertent collection.  Before, I thought I just had stuff.  Now, I wonder if I have indeed collected stuff.  I changed my perspective and probably would have been better off if I hadn't.
I guess it is too late.

Just some of my dictionaries

Today, while looking for a book on one of my many bookshelves, I started to realize that I have way too many dictionaries.  Perhaps it is because I am an ESL teacher.  Perhaps it is because I have the dream of one day being a fluent Japanese speaker.  Perhaps it is because every kid in Canada who doesn't speak French is expected to study it.  Whatever the reason, I have more than 20 dictionaries.
Of course I have the English dictionary to help me with crosswords and codeword puzzles when I am completely stumped.  It also comes in handy when challenging someone in Scrabble.

Two hard working, well travelled and used books

I have The French-English Dictionary, and it's fraternal twin the English-French Dictionary.  I also bought a cool paperback French-French dictionary on the advice of my university French teacher.  Since I often tell my students to put away their smart phone translators and use a real English to English dictionary, I can't fault her logic.  It did make writing essays easier because example sentences reveal lots of patterns.
The bulk of my collection are Japanese dictionaries.  I have them in portable form, and large, backbreaking format.  I have them written in Kanji, and Romaji.  Of course, I have a dedicated Kanji dictionary (I will never complain about alphabetical order again)  I even have a dictionary of Japanese verbs.  In addition to all that I have moved into the 21st century.  I have a Japanese dictionary in the form of software for my Nintendo DS.  It's pretty cool.  When it is all said and done, I have a lot of reference material for studying.
One of my favourite dictionaries is my Japanese Loan Word Dictionary.  It contains words from other languages that are used in Japanese.  This is absolutely essential because foreign loadwords are written in the often hard to decipher Katakana, and thought by Japanese people to be easily understood by foreigners.  This is of course not true.  Most Japanese people think that they are all from English.  This is also untrue.  This was a great find.  And oddly enough, where I found it is remarkable.  It was on a discount table at a grocery store.  I got it for 2 or 3 dollars.
I may no longer look at my pile of stuff as just stuff, but at least I be able to find a definition when I need one.