Some Good Online Chinese Dictionaries

Modifed 4/30/08--
Frustration with looking up character by trying to figure out the radical (bu4shou3 部首) led a couple of my classmates to an excellent dictionary for PDA's from Pleco that allows them to search by drawing the character on the screen.

Online dictionaries, some with many additional tools are another invaluable resource. If one is trying to read something online, it is possible to copy and paste into the dictionary. Online dictionaries can also give you both the simplified and the traditional forms of a character. Most paper dictionaries, with the exception of Oxford, do not do that!

Here are some good Online Dictionaries:

• Yellow Bridge -- An absolutely top-notch dictionary loaded with features. I like accessing it through its Chinese Language Center page, that gives clearer visual access not only to the word and character dictionary, but also among other things, flashcards and memory games to help you remember Chinese characters key to a large variety of textbooks, HSK Level, frequency, etc. The dictionary for both compounds and single characters lists a few other compounds beginning or ending with the same character. Single characters have additional tabs for etymology, stroke order (not all), and "detail," which includes Japanese, Korean, & Cantonese pronunciations, character statistics, computer character encoding, texting input methods, and characters with similar structure and phonetics
• MDGB Dictionary from Xue Zhongwen.net -- Has a variety of features and possible entry screens. Also has hanzi flashcards and hanzi quiz, both accessible under "practice." You can also copy whole sentences and get either character by character breakdown, or two more word and sentence structure-based breakdowns, one of which is called annotated.
• Mandarin Tools.com -- has a huge variety of additional tools available, including hanzi flashcards, for online or download.
• Zhongwen.com -- Online version of the popular Zhongwen Zipu (中文字谱) paper dictionary that groups characters "genealogically" into families that share components called radicals other than their semantic radicals (that characters are usually grouped by in traditional character dictionaries). In many characters, these parts are sometimes indicative of a vague, historical similarity in pronunciation, sometimes referred to as rhyme/rime, that can both help and confuse. This dictionary allows one to see characters side by side that one could very easily confuse in terms of meaning, tones, or variant pronunciations, making it a very good learning tool, particularly for the intermediate and advanced learner. Character simplification has sometimes obscured these relationships, because some of the shared components used to group characters here have been changed or replaced with another, historically distinct radical and some not. This dictionary is therefore more traditional character based.
• ChineseLanguage.org -- Provides an English-Chinese Dictionary, a Chinese Character Dictionary (with access to Chinese characters via Pinyin, Cantonese, Hakka, & Japanese, Korean pronunciations), and a Hakka Dictionary.

These are some other sites that offer help (in the form of pop-up "training wheels") for those trying to read Chinese Characters:

• Popjisyo -- gives a pop-up window showing pronunciation and meaning for at least some sites not only in Chinese but also in Japanese or Korean.
• News in Chinese from Adso Trans gives pop-up windows showing pronunciation and meaning for a variety of articles and levels. Goes out of service every so often for a while--presumably for updating. --Back in service as of 4/30/08.
• Clavis Sinica -- is the maker of Software that will produce pop-ups for any texts. There are some online services available too though.

Chinese Dictionaries--中文的词典--Remarks

Modifed 1/18/08-- Dictionaries are important when learning any language, but they are of monumental importance for learning Chinese. Consider the following:

• Chinese students are taught about 5,000 characters, or han4zi4 汉字, just to be able to read newspapers.
• The characters are not phonetic, although part of many characters may hint at some degree of similarity with the pronunciation of other characters containing that part. Their pronunciation is not easily accesible to the uninitiated. This renders most dictionaries for natives barely usable by non-Chinese. Even when the pronunciation is shown for the headword, any examples are almost always left untransliterated.
• While some dictionaries are arranged more or less in phonetic order, more are arranged by a traditional system based on part of the character called the the radical (bu4shou3 部首) which is used to classify characters plus the number of additional or total strokes to write the character. Even most of those that appear to be phonetic in order, alphabetize by the pronunciation of one character at a time, usually listing all those having a particular pronunciation and the first tone before those of the same pronunciation and the second (3rd, 4th, or neutral) tone. The traditional system puts puts all words beginning with a particular character together, but these character by character phonetic systems can place words beginning with the same character but having a different tone or different pronunciation altogether in different parts of the dictionary. While total or partial grouping together by beginning character is helpful for learning related words, it makes rapid lookup of words very difficult. For rapid lookup I therefore prefer the strictly alphabetical order of the Langenscheidt Chinese-English Dictionary or another version of it put out by Berlitz. While the glossaries at the back of most phrasebooks are also strictly alphabetical, many lack Chinese characters, and the number of items tends to be quite limited. You have to know the range of "quirks" of the dictionaries you use. Each has it advantages or disadvantages for certain tasks.
• Trying to figure out in a traditionally organized dictionary which part of a character is the radical (bu4shou3 部首) used to classify the character you don't even know the pronunciation of, never mind the meaning, can be extremely frustrating. Usually the classifying radical is on the top, the left, or partially or totally surrounds the rest.
• The majority of Chinese characters today fall into the category of semantic-phonetic logical aggregates, combining a radical, or component, that provides a general semantic category for the word with a radical that provides a clue to the general pronunciation of the characater. Traditional dictionaries classify these characters under the semantic component, but Zhong1wen2 Zi4pu3 中文字譜 (Chinese Characters: A Geneology and Dictionary) by Rick Harbaugh classifies characters according to the phonetic component, putting together that share this component and generally, but not always have a similar or somewhat similar pronunciation. Students of Chinese often find that it is very easy to confuse such characters, and it can therefore be extremely helpful to see these characters grouped together.
• Particularly good dictionaries may also refer you not only to alternate pronunciations of a character, but also to words containing but not beginning with the word. Software and online dictionaries are particularly good at this, and a hot link may save the tedium of a second round of looking up.
• Another point of difficulty is whether a dictionary's main entries and example phrases are shown just in traditional characters still used in Taiwan and many places outside China or in the simplified forms used for many but not all characters in the People's Republic, or both. Because I like to see both, I prefer dictionaries like the Oxford Concise CE-EC Dictionary. However I must point out that Japan has also simplified characters, though not so many as in China, and more importantly, not always in the same or even in a similar way! Modern Korean has largely eliminated the use of Chinese Characters (hanja) in favor of a native phonetic system (hangeul), but traditional Korean is written in a combination of Chinese characters and phonetically written inflections and particles, in a manner very similar to that still used to write Japanese.
• Students learning more than one East Asian language must learn not only the different written forms of characters used in each language, but also the different pronunciations. In Mandarin Chinese, each character typically has only one pronuciation (though some do have alternate tones or pronunciations). In Japanese and Korean, each character typically has at least two types of pronunciation, first a Sino-Japanese or Sino-Korean pronunciation related historically to a Chinese pronunciation associated with the character at one or more times when uses of the character were brought to each country from China, and secondly one or more native pronunciations of words or morphemes whose meanings are linked with that/those of the character.
• Beyond this, although when I refer to Chinese here I am mostly referring to Mandarin, known as pu3tong1hua4 普通话 in the PRC and as guo2yu3 国语 in Taiwan, Chinese is not just one language, but a family of languages at least as different as those of Europe, though usually referred to as dialects. Words and the pronunciation of characters may therefore differ considerably in each "dialect." Mandarin has for example has lost all final consonants expcept for "n" and "ng," but this is not true of many of the dialects, nor is it true of Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, or Sino-Vietnamese pronunciations of characters and words. The preservation of many such older features in these has been of great value to scholars in the reconstruction of older forms of Chinese, as have the phonetic or "rime" components of characters.

Dictionaries' ease of use can make or break the language learning experience for any language, but particularly for Chinese.

Self-Intro Ziji Jieshao 自己介绍

Having done a blog in Spanish for a class up in New Paltz in July, http://lingopath.blogspot.com/ , I decided, with more than a little trepidation, to do one for Chinese study. Following the Lingopath name (which is also my alter ego name at gmail.com) I've decided to call it Yuyan Kuangren (语言狂人): http://yuyankuangren.blogspot.com/ . Seeing that a blog or wangluo riji 网络日记 is called an internet diary in Chinese, the blog name suggests the title of a Chinese classic, "The Diary of a Madman" (狂人日记) by Lu Xun 鲁迅.

I see that my profile in Spanish written for the other blog comes up here too, which I did not anticipate, but so be it. I hope to share some of the things that I learn along this long journey of trying to learn Chinese, as well as try to make some feeble attempts at writing some things of my own in Chinese.

Although born in the US and raised in a monolingual home, I acquired a strong interest in other languages and cultures from my home environment and from an extensive 11-week international trip taken with other students while still in secondary school. I am currently teaching middle school Spanish and sometimes French, but previously taught German & ESL, as well as Japanese & East Asian studies at the college level, and worked for a dozen years in a Japanese company in Manhattan. I lived in Europe for a half a year and in Japan for five and a half.

Majoring in German as an undergrad, I completed a master's degree at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan in anthropology (mostly linguistics--all classes in Japanese), then another master's degree and all but my dissertation for a Ph. D. at Yale University in cultural and linguistic anthropology (with geographic emphasis on East Asia), and a third master's degree in education at Manhattanville College for NYS certification in ESL and foreign language.

I have had a variety of language learning experiences, but the major portion of my learning a number of languages after German has been on my own. I started my study of Chinese while living in Japan in the 1970s. I listened to a few Japanese TV programs for beginning students of Chinese and acquiring a feeling for the sound system of Chinese. Then, still in Japan, I bought a couple Chinese textbooks put out by the Chinese Foreign Language Press and worked my way through more than the first book on my own.

Although I was able to avoid forgetting everything due to my strong knowledge of the Japanese use of Chinese characters and some study of Korean on my own and at Yale, my study of Chinese went no further than a very infrequent glance at one of my books or a dictionary until about 2 and 1/2 years ago. At that time a few people from an adult ed Chinese class at Westchester Community College began to come once a month to the Westchester Language Club (more at posting for Sept. 18, 2007), in which I had been a member since 1991. Although I was unable to join the actual class until January this year due to my singing in a choral group on the evening of the class, I found that my knowledge was compatible with members of the class, and began to meet with them when I could for some summer study sessions, as well as at language club.

Since beginning to teach foreign language at the middle school level only five years ago, I have had to spend a lot of time preparing lessons and materials, as well as trying to take some classes for more credits, still trying to squeeze in singing with two or three groups, language club, and the on again off again study of Russian on my own. So, I dropped the Russian in favor of Chinese, and more recently dropped a singing group, making it possible to join the class, but I still wish I had more time to study Chinese. The class, which I believe is beginning its 6th year this fall, has been relabled from intermediate to advanced, although as busy adults in a non-credit evening class, I think we need more work to be worthy of the label, despite the herculean efforts of our teacher. As a former teacher of college Japanese, I know only too well the problem of how difficult it can be to help students to move from a basic or intermediate level of knowedge to a more advanced level, particularly when the students have only a limited amount of time to devote to it and are not living in a culture where the language is widely spoken.

After having spent a month this summer at SUNY New Paltz in immersion classes of Spanish, where I started a blog in Spanish, I felt that a blog for Chinese could help me focus more, so I could build up momentum, as well as allow me to share my efforts and things I have learned.