Different Types of Chinese Dictionaries

[lukeaf8]

Maybe you guys can help me out. 

 

I've noticed that there are different kinds of Chinese dictionaries and I'm just wondering what their function/purpose are? 

 

The ones I've heard of are:

• Character 
• Phrase 
• Rime 
• Chinese-Chinese
• Chinese-(other language) 

I'm sure there are others that I'm missing. 

 

Can you tell me what the difference is? 

 

Thanks! 

[Hofmann]

• Most useful to language learners are Chinese-to-other word dictionaries. They translate Chinese words (辭) to other languages.

Character dictionaries translate characters (字, which function as morphemes) to other languages.

Phrase dictionaries are not very common and not very useful IMO. They translate phrases.

Rime (or rhyme) dictionaries group characters by rhyme, often used to write poems.

There are also variant dictionaries which show different variants of the same character.

Word, character, and phrase dictionaries can be either Chinese-to-other or Chinese-to-Chinese. They can also be between different varieties of Chinese.

[lukeaf8]

Thanks @Hofmann. 

 

Clarifying question: with a character dictionary it's just the translation of ONE character. Whereas with a, say, Chinese-english dictionary some words would have multiple characters to directly translate a word? 

[lechuan]

A character dictionary (字典) only single characters. Characters have meaning on their own, and knowing their meaning helps with aquiring vocabulary that uses these characters. Some characters are commonly used as standalone words as well.

A word dictionary (词典) contains words made up of one or more characters. most dictionaries are word dictionaries unless they specifically state that they are character dictionaries.

[li3wei1]

Often a character dictionary will list words that contain the character, but it won't go into great detail about each word.

[lukeaf8]

So thinking best resources here... would Pleco's basic bundle be the best option for the various dictionaries? 

 

Or, do ya'll have other suggestions? 

[Demonic_Duck]

Pleco's basic bundle doesn't have any Chinese -> Chinese dictionaries, and none of the dictionaries it contains are huge (e.g. a lot of highly technical or colloquial stuff won't be covered), but I think it's perfectly sufficient for a beginner.

[alanmd]

It's difficult to choose the 'best' bundle, Obviously if you pay more you get more, and with Pleco 3.0's merged search, sentences and words tabs there are more advantages than before to having extra dictionaries.

To give more specific advice it would help to know your Level, and what you are looking for. Pleco comes with it's own dictionary and CC-CEDICT which are both quite useful, if I was going to add C-E and E-C dictionaries to those I would probably choose Oxford, ABC, and maybe KEY in that order (for concise definitions) - you should probably browse the demos and see which match your needs best. More advanced users would probably benefit more from the new Da Hanyu Cidian and/or other C-C dictionaries.

Also consider whether you actually need the add-ins in the bundles- I have the Pro bundle and have added pretty much everything else over the years, but I don't use some dictionaries much, and have used the amazing OCR and the flashcards very little (enough that I don't regret getting them though). However the stroke order diagrams, handwriting (better than iOS) and the really awesome reader/editor are invaluable to me. I don't regret a single cent I have spent on Pleco though, so my last piece of advice if you are serious about learning is to spend as much as you can afford!

[mikelove]

The Basic bundle doesn't offer much dictionary-wise, no - it's more intended to give you a bunch of features to which you can then add the dictionaries of your choice. (that way we don't have to offer a separate bundle for every particular combination of skill level / specialized vocabulary needs) It adds a basic English-Chinese dictionary to the two Chinese-English dictionaries that are built into Pleco, but that's the only dictionary it includes; if you're mostly interested in dictionaries, it might be better to buy those a la carte along with maybe one or two specific features if there are any that you especially need.

 

What kind of information would you like to be able to find about a particular character / word? What's your current Chinese skill level (roughly)? Are you mostly working with textbooks / worksheets / graded readers or are you dealing with a lot of real-world vocabulary too? Do you mostly use traditional or simplified? Have you learned to read characters pretty well or would you prefer something with as much Pinyin as possible?

[lukeaf8]

Thanks for the responses everyone!

 

My skill level is beginner to intermediate. 

I'm trying to work on my speaking and getting my Chinese to flow into my mind. 

 

I can read quite a bit and understand written text. It's just translating that into speaking. 

But I was curious about the various dictionaries because I never really used dictionaries, just my trusty Google and MDBG. 

 

 

Thanks again everyone!