Important Resources

[zakojanai]

I posted this over at Jpod, but figured it belonged here too. These are a few good websites for helping those getting started with Chinese. I'm sure a lot of you more advanced learners already know about them, but they're pretty new to me.


Installing Chinese input on Vista:
http://www.pinyinjoe.com/vista/vista_new.htm

The Chinese version of JDIC(CEDICT):
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=cedict

The Chinese version of Rikaichan (Pera-kun):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349
(for those not familiar with this add-on, it allows you to roll over kanji/hanzi and see how to read them with kana/pinyin and what they mean in English)

I'm also using smart.fm to study vocabulary lists. What I'm looking for now is a good guide to Chinese grammar. Something kind of equivalent to Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar. Any suggestions?

[vahid]

Hi zakojanai and thanks a lot!

I was looking for a Chinese "Rikaichan".

Just for the record I have come across these sites:

http://zhongwen.com/

http://www.nciku.com/ ( you get to draw the Hanzi with your mouse and find the meaning)

http://www.tudou.com/ ( It is a mssive Chinese youtube-like site)

zàijiàn
Vahid

[Frank]

Popup Chinese (our partner site) has the best Firefox plugin that I've ever seen. Check it out at:

http://www.popupchinese.com

...and look under tools. Cool stuff.

Frank

[vahid]

Xiè xie nǐ Frank.

Vahid

[Frank]

More than welcome!

Frank

[zakojanai]

I like the Popup Chinese website, but I'm a little less enthusiastic about that plug-in. When your website seems to focus a lot on HSK materials, why does the pop-up automatically change the characters from simplified to traditional? If it was just to show that the traditional version looked like as well, that would be fine but then you should show what the simplified version of a traditional character looks like (which it doesn't). The Popup add-on also seems to have trouble recognizing a lot of characters. I like the ability to add a definition for something new, but is there any reason that the definition for 因为 is listed as "because; because; because"? Isn't one because enough?

I don't think pera-kun is perfect, so there's definitely a chance to make a better plug-in. I just don't think this is it (yet). My suggestion for your pop-up dictionary: Make the pop-up smaller (there's a lot of empty space), show both traditional and simplified character, add an option where if you press enter you see more information on the hanzi (Cantonese/Japanese reading, stroke count, common compounds, etc.), and when it's a compound, show the meaning for all the characters individually too.

I'm still not very experienced with Chinese, so I'm not sure exactly what I want in a product like this. But I do know that right now, pera-kun is a lot closer to what I want.

[david]

@zakojanai - try hitting D when the popup is open. that'll change the display mode to traditional. we should really tweak the default settings for that.

[zakojanai]

Ok. That's better and I like that feature, but I'm still leaning towards pera-kun.

Also, both pera-kun and the pop-chinese as well as CEDICT are pretty lousy at recognizing chengyu. (please tell me if I'm missing something). But, I did find these two websites:

http://www.chinese-tools.com/chinese/ch ... earch.html
http://dict.baidu.com/

[lan_dawei]

I see that the Reference Material under CC101's "Learning Center" has had some additions:

1. The Pinyin Chart
2. About Chinese
3. Chinese History

They seem to have been added recently to the Grammar Bank and Flashcards as useful tools without any announcement for CC101. C'mon guys toot your own horn!

When will the Dictionary and Ordinal Numbers come online?

[lan_dawei]

I've posted some flash cards on flashcardexchange.com.
The entries are from Chinese Class 101 Elementary lessons.
Check out the tag cc101_elementary

This link will also work.
http://www.flashcardexchange.com/tag/cc101_elementary