My weirdest experience of Chinese yet...help!
silentnoise
April 07, 2009, 07:38 PM posted in General DiscussionI've just discovered something that has never crossed my mind about learning Chinese.
Last week, my friend bought me a Chinese book for my birthday - it's all written with characters and no pinyin. Initially I thought "awesome - it's about time I paid some attention to hanzi". After all the excitment of opening presents, I turned my attention to understanding what the characters on the front cover said, so I grabbed my Chinese dictionary and was immediately shocked to realise something I've never considered before about learning Chinese - how do you look up characters in a dictionary if you don't even know the pinyin to begin with?
I am actually quite shocked that I've not considered this before.
How do I even begin to look words up in a Chinese dictionary when I've only got the characters and have no idea what the pinyin is? Is there any simple way of doing this? How do Chinese people do this?
hkboy
January 08, 2010, 05:37 AMThanks, will check it out.
jckeith
April 07, 2009, 10:03 PMDoh, Trevor already mentioned this. That's what I get for not reading closely.
silentnoise
April 08, 2009, 04:31 PMThanks for your suggestions and help guys. :)
carromy
June 20, 2009, 08:12 AMI think maybe you can find the indexing component
first.And after that you can use the dictionary.
otomik
June 20, 2009, 08:21 AMthere's a dictionary tool in the new chinesepod iphone/ipod touch program. you can just handwrite the character and it will guess what you're trying to write pretty well. anyway it's usually what i have on hand.
henning
June 20, 2009, 10:11 AMThere is also an old CPod lesson on this. It is called Using a dictionary.
But be aware: It was from the time when Intermediate was actually Upper Intermediate.
sebire
April 07, 2009, 08:36 PMYeah, stroke count with radical index is the easiest way. Though counting the strokes is not as easy as all that sometimes!
richad
January 07, 2010, 03:59 PMFind a chinese people like you wanna learn chinese well， he or she wanna learn english well，that is one stone to get two birds。I am a chinese guy，if anything I can help you，just contact me，wayne198719@hotmai.com ， by the way ，I am in Shanghai。Hope you can pass the hard time，and have a further study 。
matthiask
January 08, 2010, 02:54 AMhow much time is wasted on using a chinese dictionary without knowing the pinyin. wouldn't wanna study without MDGB or nciku.
xiaophil
January 08, 2010, 04:45 AMAs was mentioned, you can draw characters at nciku.com. That said, I highly recommend that if you are really serious about learning Chinese, buy an electronic dictionary that you can use a stylus to input characters. It is quicker than using a mouse, it will help you learn to write and it is portable. Personally, I don't recommend you looking up words using radicals. There are some benefits of doing it this way, but it is overall too time consuming. Note: sometimes I use my electronic dictionary to find out the pinyin and then input it into nciku.com as the definitions there are usually superior.
hkboy
I've just started learning the characters. What do you use?
xiaophil
I use a Besta dictionary. It was the cheapest one with a stylus two years ago. I think I paid about $100 back then, but my memory is quite fuzzy. I tried to find a link for you but couldn't find anything. It doesn't really matter, though. If you do a little search on google I think you will find many choices.
hkboy
Thanks, will check it out.
simonpettersson
January 08, 2010, 05:24 AMI'm still waiting for the iPhone app which lets me take a picture of a character to look it up in the dictionary.
hkboy
January 08, 2010, 05:28 AMI've just started learning the characters. What do you use?
matthiask
January 08, 2010, 05:31 AMsimon, brilliant idea.
xiaophil
January 08, 2010, 05:35 AMI use a Besta dictionary. It was the cheapest one with a stylus two years ago. I think I paid about $100 back then, but my memory is quite fuzzy. I tried to find a link for you but couldn't find anything. It doesn't really matter, though. If you do a little search on google I think you will find many choices.
8thstore
January 07, 2010, 02:27 PMYeah, stroke count with radical index is the easiest way. But I think maybe you can find the indexing component first.And after that you can use the dictionary.
our website: www.8thstore.com
MSN: pt-nikesports@hotmail.com
trevorb
April 07, 2009, 08:20 PMHi Silentnoise,
I'm no expert but the key to this is radicals and strokes, these are parts of characters and allow you to look them up in a dictionary. Somewhere in your dictionary you will find a table of radicals that will be sub index with stroke counts so you first look for the radical in the character (which can take some finding at times!) then count the number of strokes in the character. You can then find the right sub section of the dictionary to look up the character.
I'm sure others will explain it beter and you may find it explained in your dictionary too.
Another way though is to go to the MDBG or NCIKU online dictionaries. Both will explain radicals but more importantly both let you draw the char on the screen to find it. Esspecially useful if you can't figure out what the radical is as they will show you when you find it.
Oh one more thing the radical tables are not always the same, I think there is more than one system in use. Also Traditional and Simplified differ.