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iPad for Learning Chinese


adripv

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Hi,

I have been given an iPad for Xmas and I would like to use it for helping me with my Chinese ( I have been studying for already 5 years). Do you have any recommendation of interesting apps? Also, I would like to have a dictionary on it. The little research I have made only refers to tools that are useful for beginners, and I was wondering if you happen to know good resources for more advanced learners.

Thank you!

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Pleco (free), and it's Reader and Flashcard add-ons (in app purchases) - these together meet a vast majority of a Chinese student's needs.

Qiyi, Youku, Sogou, etc video apps are also good for viewing video, if you are at that level. All free.

ChinesePod has a great app, if you are a subscriber.

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A bit of self-promotion for my company's app....

http://manmanlai.net

ManManLai is an integrated dictionary and learning assistant...

• dictionary with search (characters, pinyin and other romanization schemes, and English)

• flashcards

• HSK vocabulary lists

• miaohong (描紅) character writing.

It's designed for iPhone and iPod but runs fine on the iPad, and it's being actively developed.

Matt

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A major omission on Skritter - especially since I use it daily. Good catch mikelove!

A good Flipboard alternative is Zaker - not sure about regional restrictions.

Another obvious one is the Weibo app, although Weico is a more popular front end.

AllSet learning has a free app called AllSet Pinyin that may be helpful if you are just getting off the ground - good to drill your pronunciation.

Popup Chinese has a app called HSK Test (iPhone, but find on iPad) that is great if you are trying to evaluate your level or get random tests here and there.

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Can anyone recommend a quick, straight up, simple dictionary for iPad/Pod? I used to use a combination of Hanping Chinese and Pleco on my Android but now I've just got an iPad and hanping isnt available.

I would usually use Hanping for quick searches when I just heard a word and searched using pinyin. I'd use pleco more to write characters I didn't know to find the meaning.

I have seen dianhua mentioned a lot but the threads on here were all really old, especially in the world of technology/apps.

Thanks

p.s.

I used skritter online until I bought my iPad ... the app makes it such a better experience. Really great app

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On my phone:

Hanping was always quicker in class, when I'd try to find out what the teacher said but had to guess the pinyin. My classmates would try on pleco but i'd always find it first with hanping ... or they wouldn't find it at all.

Equally, some of the words we searched in English wouldn't show up in pleco but would in hanping. If I type the word "gay" in pleco, I don't get any words associated with homosexuality. If I type it in hanping, there are a 4/5 included in the top 10 results. This happened with a few English searches, I just happened to search for 'gay' today.

Sorry but I don't know why really. I just typed in partial pinyin (like "xi h" instead of xi huan) in both dictionaries and they both found the stuff. I can't remember which words from class as we stopped a while a go.

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Thanks for that feedback.

It sounds like you might have been searching our PLC dictionary (which isn't as up-to-date but has lots of details and example sentences) rather than CC-CEDICT (which is the primary dictionary in most other apps). If you install CC-CEDICT (built in on Android but a separate download on iOS due to Apple download size limits), then switch to that (tap on the "PLC" icon so it turns to "CC") you'll get better results for words like "gay" and other new terms. You can also configure Pleco to make CC the default dictionary for all searches while still having the option to switch to PLC for more details with one button tap.

This isn't something you should have to think about, though, so in our newer Android updates and in our next iOS update we've started aggregating results from all dictionaries in the same list and eliminated the need to switch altogether. (rather complicated thing to implement because we've got users with 10 or 15 dictionaries and we need to be able to return results from all of them in real-time)

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My favorite iPad apps targeted at Chinese learners:

These apps get everyday use:

  • Skritter: SRS flashcards for reading and writing chinese characters. Tons of pre-built lists, great writing engine, optional integration of Heisig keywords, and example sentence system soon to be released.
  • Pleco: Tons of dictionaries, many features and add-ons. I especially like the Tuttle Learner's dictionary, flashcards, and OCR

I like these as supplemental material:

  • Great Wall Chinese 1-6: Basically a collection of 180 animated dialogues from beginner level. I use this one to practice native speaker imitation, since the app is designed to record and compare yourself with the dialogs (either one line at a time, or role-playing one or more of the characters). Dialogues are quite interesting, much more so than any textbooks I've given up on. You can also select whether to display pinyin, characters, and/or english subtitles (and turn on/off subtitles) depending on what you're looking for. No grammar notes or individual vocab lists though (they might be in the companion books, I've never looked at the books)
  • Dim Sum Warriors: Fun comics targeted at Chinese learners. You can tap the dialog bubble to hear the mandarin spoken, or long-press the dialog bubble to see an english translation
  • AllSet Learning Chinese Picture Book Reader: Only have a couple stories released so far, but you can switch between simplified, traditional, pinyin and english with a swipe. Stories are kind of short, but have original storylines and pictures and, unlike most bilingual reader apps, are not targeted specifically at children.

Some useful utilities:

  • Pinyin Typist: Let's you easily type pinyin for copying into email, a web browser, etc
  • Hanzi Reader: Has a cool feature where you swipe your hand across sentences, which updates the definition in real-time.

Those are the ones that stand out for me among the sea of flashcard, CC-CEDICT dictionary, phrasebooks, and Pinyin chart apps.

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Everyone has already given some great suggestions, but I'm listing a few below that haven't been mentioned yet.

Regarding tools for advanced learners, I think the Chinese-Chinese dictionary built in to iOS 6 is really useful and can be used in most apps.

Reading

多看阅读: App for reading ebooks. I like that there is a Chinese-Chinese dictionary built into the app based on 金山词霸. You can load your own books or buy from their store. The store has a relatively limited selection, but the formatting is nice if you find something you like.

Video (in addition to the players mentioned above)

PPTV

风行电影

搜狐视频

News

南方周末 (recently in the news)

FT中文网: Original Chinese content as well as Chinese translations of English content about business in Asia with the original English included as well!

I know I'm forgetting some, but this thread has more than enough to keep everyone busy for a while.

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If you guys don't use ANKI as a flashcard program ... which one do you use?

I like the fact I can make the flashcards on my laptop then sync them to my devices with ANKI but not sure it's worth the £17.99 price.

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Pleco. I like the fact that I don't have to make flashcards on my laptop/desktop and that it's all automatic from the dictionary definition (I realise some people like more on their flashcards than just what's available from a dictionary definition, so this may or may not be a viable solution depending on your preferences and the types of flashcards you are making).

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I second imron's recommendation of Pleco. I used to have all my flashcards in Anki, but now I just use Pleco. It saves me a ton of time and effort.

Regarding imron's point above, you can customize any automatically-generated Pleco cards, so it's not an issue unless you need to add pictures or custom sounds to the cards. If you prefer making your own cards, you can do so within Pleco, or you can create cards on your computer and then import them into Pleco.

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Thanks,

I don't know what to do really. I found that just having the words from my speaking classes didn't really help me learn them. Better if I had a whole sentence.

I could always use ANKI on my netbook at home for sentences then pleco on my Ipad mini. It was a real pain making all the single word flashcards on ANKI. Might be less so if I just take key words and make sentences.

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