Creating a word list from characters I know

[大肚男]

Sorry if this has been asked, but I don't even how to google what I'm looking for. So here goes...

I've been using Heisig's Remembering the Simplified Hanzi to learn Chinese character, and I'm at the 700 character mark.

However, I've been having a difficulty, Heisig only offers one meaning for each character, and pay no attention to words that the character is a compound in.

For example, 处 is given as "location", and 理 is given as "logic", but from my studies, I learned that 处理 means "to process (documents...)".

So, what I'm looking for is a website or a way that I can put a list of all the characters that I know, and it would give me a list of all the compound words made from them.

If that is not available, then a website that gives you all the compounds for each character, and I would parse it one-by-one.

[WestTexas]

dict.baidu.com will give you a list of words with each character if you input a character. It might be a bit tough to use though if you are just working on the first 700 characters. I would think that for many of the more common characters the list would be too big to be useful, and also many of the words would be very uncommon. A better approach would be to get a list of the most common words (WORDS, not characters) in order and then just use ctrl+f with the character to get the common matches for the character you want.

[Areckx]

also try pleco dictionary, mbdg, and zhongwen

I'll check out baidu, I've always liked it

[大肚男]

WestTexas, do you know where can I find a list of the most common words? I've trying to look online, but all I come up with is character list.

Thanks for the help

[creamyhorror]

However, I've been having a difficulty, Heisig only offers one meaning for each character, and pay no attention to words that the character is a compound in.

For example, 处 is given as "location", and 理 is given as "logic", but from my studies, I learned that 处理 means "to process (documents...)".

I would assume most people simply finish Heisig before they start on word/sentence learning proper. It's only meant to be a pre-introductory course that familiarises you with recognising/producing characters. You'll learn some of their meanings, but you won't learn all of them - that's just not practical.

The common approach (I believe) is to simply start learn words separately from Heisig. Here I would suggest you simply reuse the mnemonic system, but apply it to words: 处理 = to put something in a logical place, i.e. to deal with it. "place" + "logic" = "deal".

I would recommend against getting a list of words that can be made from all the characters you know. It would be pretty disorganised and you'd have to do sub-searching anyway within that list. You might as well just go to mdbg and look up individual characters to see the compound words associated with them.

(Relatedly, it would be nice to have a navigable semantic map of characters, one that graphically shows various compounds involving a character grouped by the involved meaning of the character. E.g. 处 --> 1 [处理，处治] 2 [相处] 3 [到处，好处，处于]. This "character explorer" would be a pretty nice upgrade to traditional dictionary presentation formats. I wonder if this could be easily done programmatically to a dictionary...)

[WestTexas]

There's some lists of common words here:

http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/list.html

[HerrPetersen]

If you are already halfway through, you could just use the next month or so to finish the book. After that you could just take a beginners book (like Assimil: Chinese with Ease) and fill the hanzi with life.

[大肚男]

Thanks a lot for the replies. the MDBG dictionary looks like something I could use.

See, I would love to finish the book, but the problem is that I recently don't have time to sit down and read any books.

I've been mostly studying through flashcard programs on my phone, talking with my girlfriend, and chatting on skype.

Hopefully in the next couple of months I would get a break and I would finish the book, but until then I would like to add word to my flashcard routine, not just characters.

Another thing, is that seeing characters in words, helps me remember the reading better.

\

[stephanhodges]

There's a very recent post in another section "New Tool for Vocabulary Extraction" in which the author announced his off line version of a concordance generator:

http://www.zhtoolkit.com/posts/tools/

This should get you to the topic:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34994-new-tool-for-vocabulary-extraction/page__view__findpost__p__260571

[wibr]

I created a list for this purpose:

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=59932484

My list is with simplified characters but I think there is also one with simplified available on skritter.

The python code is also provided, maybe I can use it to create a simplified one...

[大肚男]

wow, Wibr. Too awesome, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Thank you very much

[wibr]

oops typo, my list is with traditional!! characters! (if I remember correctly)...so the sentence makes sense, i think skritter has a simplified one, otherwise I could create one (probably)...

[AdamD]

A really great way to develop useful word lists (as opposed to sifting through 60,000 possibly archaic words thrown up by online dictionaries) is to grab a New HSK word list. There's a load of New HSK books you can pick up, but there's also this page full of word lists (found via Wikipedia): http://lingomi.com/blog/hsk-lists-2010/

Alternatively, get hold of Rick Harbaugh's book or web site (http://zhongwen.com) and look at the words provided to demonstrate the use of each character. This is the method I use.

[creamyhorror]

A really great way to develop useful word lists (as opposed to sifting through 60,000 possibly archaic words thrown up by online dictionaries) is to grab a New HSK word list. There's a load of New HSK books you can pick up, but there's also this page full of word lists (found via Wikipedia): http://lingomi.com/b...hsk-lists-2010/

Hmm, wow, I was spending hours converting the Taiwan TOCFL 8000 words wordslist to Simplified Chinese (+ readings) and then to an Anki deck and I could just have used one of these lists. I feel pretty silly now.

[WestTexas]

The new HSK list is not a bad place to start to get words for the first 700 characters, but there are certainly lots of words which aren't on the new HSK list which are useful. Some extremely common surnames, for example 刘, don't seem to be on the new HSK list.

[roddy]

So, what I'm looking for is a website or a way that I can put a list of all the characters that I know, and it would give me a list of all the compound words made from them.

I know what you mean - I had a script to do that on here a few years back. It would let you put in a list of characters, and then generate a list of all HSK words that could be composed from those characters. It's no longer available (it was never very good, and I left it behind in a server move) but the old topic is here if it's of any interest.