Introducing YìXué Chinese Dictionary (Windows Phone app)

[clement]

Hi everyone,

I've built a new Chinese dictionary & learning assistant for Windows Phone, called YìXué Chinese Dictionary, and would love to get some feedback from experienced Chinese learners. I'm a French college student currently majoring in computer science, and I started learning Chinese about eight months ago. Unfortunately, there were not so many options for learning Chinese on Windows Phone at the time (必应词典 and Kuaishuo are nice, but they don't have flash cards or quizzes), so I built my own. I've tried to focus on simplicity, and gradually added more features as users requested them.

It's been about six months since I published the app, and with the latest release I now feel confident enough to submit it to you all. Please do let me know what you think! I'd be honoured to get some feedback from beginners and experienced learners.

YìXué Chinese Dictionary includes a fast offline Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionary, word lists (much like flash cards decks) to help you learn new vocabulary faster, and full support for pinyin and both simplified and traditional characters. The core dictionary is CC-CEDICT, with plenty of neat additions to make learning and memorization easier — for example, YìXué ranks search results by frequency so you're never lost when looking up a word in pinyin or English: searching for returns "card" returns 卡, 帖子, and 名片; in comparison, the first results on MDBG are 和, 主, and 帖. Apart from definitions and pronunciation, YìXué has 20'000 examples sentences, radical information for 30'000 characters, and etymological information (structural decomposition) for ~1500 characters if you want to learn more. Finally, it includes 2700 self-made stroke order diagrams, covering all HSK levels, in case you're not sure how to write a simplified character (I'm thinking about including traditional characters, but these stroke order diagrams take a lot of time to draw!)

YìXué also lets you create your own study lists (much like flash card decks) and test how much you remember with multiple-choice quizzes and games (漢字|汉字 to pinyin, English to 漢字|汉字, and plenty of others). All HSK levels (along with plenty of extra study lists) are available through YìXué's online catalogue, and the first HSK level is included for free in the trial version.

The core strengths of the app, I think, are the relevance of the search results, the stroke order diagrams, and the flexible study lists system — all in all, the app works pretty well for me, and has definitely helped me a lot master some vocabulary faster; plus, since I have a stylus, I rarely print practice sheets anymore; instead, I write directly on the screen while reviewing my flash cards.

Here are a few screenshots to get a feeling of the app:

If you're interested, there's plenty of extra information on the app's website, including more screenshots and a download link. In any case, I'll be honoured if you let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Clément

[andysun731]

Will there be Android or IOS version?

[clement]

Sure! If the app gathers momentum on Window Phone and people start asking for a port, I'll probably make one to iOS or Android.

[li3wei1]

Just looking at the screenshots, I'd say it would be helpful if you could ditch the background. Keep it for the introductory screens if you want, but otherwise it's almost designed to be distracting and confusing.

[clement]

Thanks for the suggestion! In fact, there's already a setting to disable the background; I introduced it in the last release, about two weeks ago.