chinesedictionary.info

Chinese Dictionaries

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:44:27 +0000

There are three major kinds of Chinese dictionaries.

Each has its value in understanding the written and spoken Chinese language.

In this global economy, it is important to know a little bit of Chinese in order to be able to travel to China or to work with Chinese businessmen.

See also

Online Chinese Dictionary

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:44:15 +0000

Online Chinese dictionaries are handy when you just want to translate a few words but don’t need an entire dictionary.

A site called Yellow Bridge allows you to use Chinese characters or pinyin to input Chinese words and will do the reverse from English to Chinese. Pinyin is a method of spelling out Chinese words phonetically. This allows a person to input Chinese without having to worry about typing in Chinese characters, which is impossible on a regular keyboard.

The advantage of an online Chinese-English dictionary is that you can easily go back and forth between the English and Chinese translations.

The disadvantage is that such a dictionary may not have as many words and has shorter definitions than does a regular dictionary.

A regular Chinese-English Dictionary

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:44:04 +0000

A book form of a Chinese to English dictionary may only use characters to identify the Chinese words.
This means that the English speaking person must know how to pronounce the characters and how to interpret the symbols in Chinese.

The advantage of this method is that it is easy to use the characters in the written interpretation of the language.

The disadvantage is that the Chinese characters can’t be inputted into the computer and it is almost impossible to identify a particular sound with a Chinese character. This kind of dictionary is practically useless to understand spoken Chinese.

A Pinyin Chinese Dictionary

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:43:51 +0000

A Chinese dictionary that translates pinyin Chinese to English and vice versa is a great tool.
It allows you to understand of how Chinese sounds when spoken. The Chinese characters are omitted. This is a great tool for learning the Chinese spoken language, which is its major advantage. Its major disadvantage is that written Chinese is done in characters so that a pinyin dictionary is useless in understanding how to write in Chinese.

Pay attention to whether or not you are studying Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese Chinese. Those from Hong Kong will most likely speak Cantonese Chinese whereas Mandarin Chinese is spoken by the bulk of Chinese people.