Best dictionary to distinguish context?

[thph2006]

Here are two entries from the MDBG online dictionary. The entries could have come from any of the dictionary I have access to. Note that for all intents and purposes the two characters have the same definition. I'm sure native speakers make some distinction when deciding which to use for various situations but for a foreign newbie like me I can't tell the difference.

击 strike, hit, beat; attack, fight ji2 ji1

打 strike, hit, beat; fight; attack da3 da2

My question: Is there a dictionary that does a good job of showing the most common context a character is used in? Otherwise how would a dumb 老外 like me ever guess which one to use when?

[pandaxiongmao]

The best way is often just to ask a Chinese person. A lot of Intermediate-level and High-level Chinese classes in China devote a lot of time to the usage of terms with similar meaning, but different context. They can also inform you if the word is usually just used in books, or if it is used in speech.

You can try searching for the terms at http://dict.cn/. A lot of the words have definitions with several examples (along with English translations). The English is often not-quite correct, but good enough to understand the meaning. There are also some Chinese sentences there that are incorrect, so don't assume if you see it there that it is all correct.

I often search Baidu as well. Once you have a good understanding of Chinese grammar, you can try strings of characters including the different words you are not sure about, and see which one is more prevalent for what you want to say.

[flameproof]

Before I had Ectaco, they give a straight translation and no (English) explanation. That is in many cases not very helpful. To give an example: "Develop" will be different in Chinese whether you develop a relation, or a film.

NWP (came with Pleco) has English examples, and I find that extremely helpful.

I am not sure if NWP can be bought stand alone, I can't find anything on their homepage: http://www.nwp.com.cn/

[gougou]

I often search Baidu as well. Once you have a good understanding of Chinese grammar, you can try strings of characters including the different words you are not sure about, and see which one is more prevalent for what you want to say.

I do that too. You can even look for more colloquial/formal expressions by restricting the domain to a Chinese blog provider, or the people's daily (on Google, add "site:blogcn.com", for instance.)

[flameproof]

http://dict.cn looks really good, but lacks Pinyin. Also, the Chinese character in question is not highlighted in the examples, makes it difficult for beginners.

[pandaxiongmao]

When I look at dict.cn in Firefox, the Chinese character I search for is green in each sentence (the rest of the sentence is black). It is dark green, but it is differentiated when I look at it.

Good point about the lack of pinyin. If a user wants to see pinyin, I'd suggest using the Chinese Pera-kun plugin for Firefox. It shows pinyin and definitions for words under the mouse cursor. That way you can also toggle it off - at least for me, I get distracted if I see pinyin along with Chinese characters.

[flameproof]

When I look at dict.cn in Firefox, the Chinese character I search for is green in each sentence

OK, right. That depends if your search term is English or Chinese.

But an English gives you usually a few Chinese terms. And there it would be useful to have each character highlighted.

I find it a bit funny that most really good Chinese software is coming from the USA, and whatever comes out of China looks never really fully thought through. It would be a piece of cake to add Pinyin or to highlight all potential characters.