WHAT happened to nciku --- crazy

[Tomas Tomas]

Looks like they've been incorporated into Naver.

 

The site is AWFUL now... lost lots of features.

 

http://linedictionary.naver.com/dict.html#/cnen/home

 

it's called Line Dictionary now

[Tomas Tomas]

can someone please recommend a good online Chinese-Chinese dictionary?

[roddy]

That's interesting. If I recall correctly, Nciku was originally part of Naver's efforts to start working in the Chinese market - which always seemed kind of a roundabout way of doing things. Any insiders got any info (surely SOMEONE on here works for Nciku?)

[Tomas Tomas]

i tried the Baidu dictionary but it seems like total garbage.

 

i just need what Nciku had -- the 现代汉语词典-- with clear separation by parts of speech like Pleco and Nciku do, and with example sentences by part of speech

 

this new "Line" Nciku is a complete disaster

[Tomas Tomas]

Until I can find a better site, all I can figure out to do now is to paste the Pleco entries onto my anki cards as i get new cards, then sync to desktop, then clean up / organize on the desktop ... time-consuming

[ChTTay]

Yellowbridge dictionary has some good examples and explanations.

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/dictionary.php

Also, dict.youdao.com is also pretty good. It's abit better than Baidu but honestly I find Baidu ok. Both dictionaries usually give a load of example sentences with English as well as some phrases or collocations.

Also, why don't you just use pleco flashcards?

[Tomas Tomas]

I need a Chinese-Chinese dictionary that lists each definition by designated 词性, and has example sentences for each, and that is using the 现代汉语词典。

 

I think Pleco flashcards and its study software suck -- I make my own on Anki

[mikelove]

As somebody who holds online-use-friendly licenses to the 规范词典 and a number of other nice dictionaries: this is a very interesting development :-)

 

@Tomas Tomas - sorry you feel that way about our flashcards (could you possibly elaborate?)

 

However, you don't have to copy-and-paste to get Pleco vocabulary into Anki - create your flashcards in Pleco, then export them to a text file with the option to export 'dictionary definitions' turned on. Doesn't work for every dictionary but it does work for the 规范词典. The resulting text file can be transferred to your desktop and should then import directly into Anki.

[Tomas Tomas]

Hi,

 

Haha did not know Pleco team people read this board, would have worded that more politely...

 

Uh Pleco I like a lot, I use it to look up words and also paid for the Chinese-Chinese dictionary add-on

 

My study materials are all centralized in Anki -- Pleco just can't compare to the power of Anki --database functions, editing, flexibility, syncing, statistics-- there isn't even a desktop version of Pleco on which to do editing of cards, database management etc.... I don't think they can be considered similar products.

[mikelove]

Heh, no worries, honest criticism is hard to come by when people think you're likely to read it :-)

 

Certainly understood about keeping things centralized - the lack of a desktop option has been a sore point for us for a long time.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

[Tomas Tomas]

My dream product would basically be Anki + Pleco combined.  

 

The problem is that the Anki Chinese plugin does not support Chinese-Chinese definitions, and does not provide example sentences.  So I have to start with the plugin-provided card and then paste in the Chinese-language definition and example sentences, divided by 词性.  

 

So basically, Anki is perfect except the Chinese plugin doesn't meet my needs.  Pleco is perfect as a dictionary I think, but doesn't meet my Anki-type needs.

[Tomas Tomas]

If someone somehow made an alternative Chinese plugin for Anki that used the modern Chinese-Chinese dictionary to populate the Meaning field and populates an example sentence field (basically, to make the card look like Pleco Chinese-Chinese dictionary plugin provided cards), then that would be perfect

 

I get why the Chinese plugin doesn't do that, as you have to get to a pretty high level to switch to a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, but it would be great to see an alternative plugin for advanced learners

[ChTTay]

Tomas Tomas, I like Pleco for the ease of which I can add words ... but I'm considering using ANKI aswell as Pleco ... because I want to drill cloze/gap fill sentences.

 

Does anyone know the best way to make sentence flashcards in Pleco? I have tried doing it by making new, blank flashcards BUT It takes too long on my phone or iPad. I can type a lot faster on a keyboard.

[mikelove]

@Tomas Tomas - understood. So while I realize this wouldn't necessarily get you to switch to Pleco for flashcards, what you'd basically like to see from our end are a desktop version with sync, more powerful flashcard editing features (along the lines of Anki's), and more powerful statistics?

 

@CHTTay - we've actually done a lot to improve on that front recently.

 

If you just want to make a card from a Pleco example sentence, turn on the "+ for every example" option in Settings / Definition Screen and that will let you make a card from one of those in a single tap.

 

To make a card from a custom sentence, go into Settings / Search Interface and set "Unknown word handling" to "Card"; then, simply enter (or paste) your sentence in the search box and tap on the 'create custom card' option at the top of the list of search results. That will give you a card with the opposite character set + Pinyin + (if you're using it) Cantonese fields pre-populated, so all you need to enter is the sentence translation.

[Tomas Tomas]

Hi,

Things I like with Anki:

 

Can use on desktop. -- I like studying at my computer and using the keyboard, this also lets me very easily make notations to cards, hints, etc.  I take my computer to class and make notes on Anki cards while teacher lectures.  Also helps save phone battery.

 

Syncing and backups

 

Stats:  number of characters known, words known, all kinds of review counts, forecasts, there are tons of stats when you have the Chinese plugin.

 

Database functionality -- very easy to look up words etc, also i look up grammar cards when writing essays.  On desktop can browse and search cards very easily

 

Flexibility -- can make up your own card types.

 

Download other people's decks -- I downloaded a deck a guy made for traditional Heisig hanzi and use that to study.

[mikelove]

Thanks!

 

Desktop is a tough one, particularly on something other than Mac OS (as we'd pretty much be starting from scratch), but there are some interesting possibilities for running Android apps in Chrome if we could get the licenses worked out. Or we could do something web-based.

 

Sync / backup we support on iOS now (via iCloud) but are working on something for Android users too - tricky thing on that is that most of the popular options like Dropbox or Google Drive are unreliable or blocked entirely in China.

 

Stats are a definite weakness at the moment, yeah - a relic of our origins on extremely memory-constrained Palm OS devices is that we didn't want to use up disk space tracking things over time, but there's no reason for us to continue that policy now.

 

Quicker database lookups are another weakness, at the very least we need some sort of quick search box at the top of the Organize screen. Though FWIW (and perhaps useful even if you only use Pleco to make wordlists for Anki), if you type a ! at the start of a search query Pleco will put all of your flashcard vocabulary words at the top of the list of search results, so you can use that as a pseudo-flashcard-search now.

 

Custom card types are actually coming quite soon, though we're not currently planning to offer full HTML / CSS support like Anki does - we do at least plan to allow custom fields and embedded images / audio, though.

 

We have a good-sized collection of decks in our forums now, but we'd like to fill out some major gaps in it and obviously we need an easier way to browse them than sifting through forum posts.

[Tomas Tomas]

Cool.

 

I think the mac and iOS are not well suited for Chinese study for a couple of reasons:

 

1.  AnkiDroid is way better than the iOS version

 

2.  Lots of Chinese video software, like CCBOX desktop and YouKu desktop, aren't offered for Mac, so if i had a mac, would be way more difficult to get content.  Almost nobody in mainland China has a mac, so there generally aren't Chinese versions of desktop software for mac.

 

I think Pleco has improved a lot and the C-C dictionary is great, I paid the $19.99 for that.

 

Hopefully Nciku gets its old features back, is really bizarre that they would strip that all out.

[淨土極樂]

can someone please recommend a good online Chinese-Chinese dictionary?

http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw -- Taiwan MoE's official dictionary (which is actually based on a huge pre-war dictionary of the same name), traditional characters.

http://www.zdic.net/ -- this one has 漢語大詞典 (in simplified characters), 康熙字典 and lots of additional info on characters themselves.

[shaoxuan72]

I was also really surprised to see what LINE did to NCIKU. Presumably they're going to be updating it with new and renewed features in the coming weeks/months, but I'm afraid that certain defining features of NCIKU are gone for good. I principally used the site because of these two features:

 

1) Its vast database of sample sentences. While NCIKU was not unique in having this sort of database, I really liked that it distinguished between sentences that were originally written in Chinese and those which were translated from English. With this feature, I could focus on the sentences originally conceived in Chinese (with the assumption that they were more authentic), and use the English translations (which were admittedly not always the most accurate) more for reference. It seems the that in the new LINE dictionary, this distinction is being ignored, and all the sentences with a given word are lumped together, regardless of their original form. This leads me to doubt the authenticity of many word usages, which is a pretty fatal flaw for a dictionary.

 

2) The 现代汉语词典. The concise definitions of characters and words (along with its attention to variant pronunciations and usages) supplied by this feature were invaluable for me as I tried to gain a more subtle understanding of high-level vocabulary. While English translations are (again) very useful for reference, without Chinese definitions it can be extremely difficult to grasp subtle distinctions between related or nearly-synonymous terms. There's almost never a direct translation to English, and taking out the Chinese dictionary radically reduces the efficacy of NCIKU as a reference source!

 

I imagine that there are other serious students of Chinese who are disappointed with the changes made to NCIKU. While the new Flash format is very slick and there is less visual noise on the screen, it seems to me that LINE has exchanged quality and depth for style. I can only hope that LINE can find a way to reincorporate these features and avoid turning into a slicker-looking version of the countless other Chinese dictionaries on the web.

[realmayo]

I know it was mentioned earlier, but what do you think of http://dict.youdao.com/ as a replacement for the old nciku?