愤怒哥吐槽油价：不说脏话无话可说

Kapernaumov · 2 months

Sogou Pinyin is the best IME for any operating system right now.

NielDLR · 2 months

cool stuff.

Would be really awesome when/if you can break characters down into more than two components.

Wenlin has a similar feature, but called it's CDL, but the data is much more robust (no offense). I've always secretly wished that Wenlin would open source CDL so that others could actually use it.

intermu · 2 months

Nciku's other dictionaries come from a lot of places. They originally used an FLTRP dictionary, they have used Collins and Macmillan EC dicts, they added words from a variety of technical dictionaries. It really is a hodgepodge.

GoP-Demon · 2 months

I don't really believe the Unihan database is useful. It has pronunciations that no other source I've looked at has. And I've looked at close to 100 dictionaries. They are so obscure/outdated that including them is essentially wrong. They shouldn't include them at all. You wouldn't have 100 or 200 year old definitions n an English dictionary, would you?

intermu · 2 months

Simplified:

nciku has monolingual definitions for most of it's words. It's in the "contemporary standard chinese dictionary", which is 现代规范汉语词典, a pretty good dictionary.

Unfortunately, you'd have to the box every time you looked up a word.

airuike · 2 months

I worry about Chinese comedy. 90% of it is based on making fun of dialects that no one will know how to speak in 30 years.

jentaculophile · 2 months

You don't have to buy it. :)

It does have a free trial where you can play around with it. Just click the big "try it out" button.

It also has study lists and quizzes which are free. (currently requires signup, but I'll be removing that restriction.)

jentaculophile · 2 months

thanks. I was using the URL converter.

Sex_Janitor · 2 months

True... I hate hearing the question: "How do you say ... in Chinese?"

most of the time the answer is. You don't.

Sex_Janitor · 2 months

Even though it has the "sewer/aqueduct" connotation, it also is used for drains and such.

jentaculophile · 3 months

how does it create a vocab list? I didn't see that option.

Here's a site that does something similar(and a bit more) that I created: http://3000hanzi.com/products/reader

Sex_Janitor · 3 months

There isn't one definitive answer to this question. It's just not something that is commonly said in Chinese.

A drain is generally called 地漏 dìlòu. Instead of saying an exact word, a Chinese speaker might say:

浴室的地漏 yùshì de dìlòu (bathroom drain)

卫生间的地漏 wèishēngjiān de dìlòu (restroom/bathroom drain)

SteveWBT · 3 months

I always loved the dystopian world presented by the TV show Firefly: you speak in English and cuss people out in Chinese (and rather bizarre Chinese at that).

SteveWBT · 3 months

Maybe Mandarin's different. If you add up all the native Russian and Japanese speakers combined, you get 1/5 - 1/6th of the population of China.

From those numbers, it makes a lot more sense to study Chinese. If the Chinese government continues to push Chinese education in schools around the world (while footing a good bit of the bill for materials/teachers), then learners will continue to increase.

WildYorkies · 3 months

There was a second round of simplifications in the late 70s and early 80s. It wasn't widely adopted and was rolled back. It had even cooler/more disturbing simplifications. Search for 二简字

choudoufu · 3 months

Good point. Although the posts are on topic. And some of them are hopefully useful, too.

I'll try to submit more links from other good posts I read.

choudoufu · 3 months

The contradiction does bother me some: i know there are people who spend more time reading about studying than actually studying. In that case my blog becomes language-study porn.

I've tried to do things a bit better. Now most of my posts list action steps that people can take to study... But the issue is be I worry about. It will only get worse, I think.

choudoufu · 3 months

I agree. It tests skimming, but that's what most reading tests are testing. By the very design of the questions and the selection of the text, skimming is the optimal solution.

WhiteSky · 3 months

You can also check out some example sentences of 一边.

Guard01 · 3 months

There are two contexts to pay attention to: the context of the discussion you're having (linguistic context) and the situational context.

For non-native speakers, proper pronunciation and proper tones is more important than linguistic context. That's because the situational context overrides the linguistic context. When a non-native speaker speaks with a native speaker, the native speaker will assume that you will make mistakes. This assumption makes listening comprehension more difficult for them. A non-native speaker is much more likely to be understood if they have proper pronunciation.

For native speaker (who come from different regions) tones may be different from area to area, and linguistic context is more important. Even though native speakers might use tones inconsistent with standard Mandarin, their tones are consistent, so other native speakers usually only need a minute or two to get used to the conventions of the first speaker.

choudoufu · 3 months

Doing is better than analysis, but a little analysis can make doing much more efficient. I think students should spend 5-10% of their time thinking about their goals, their methods, and analyzing how they could improve their studies.

choudoufu

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