Amazing dictionary, but old. New version?

[hoshinoumi]

Hi everybody, I am studying for HSK 4 and I just found a really usefull dictionary in my university library. It is called

A Dictionary of Chinese Usage: HSK Vocabulary (English and Chinese Edition)

The description is "8822 entries with annotation indicating HSK (Chinese proficiency test) levels, with examples and easy-to-understand explanations in Chinese and English." So what you find in the dictionary is the word and pinyin, a really simple and short English meaning and the explanation of the use AND collocations. It is not a dictionary, but a usage dictionary. It is definitely one of the most useful resources I have found ever since I started learning Chinese, but the book is rather old and I am struggling to find one to buy (Amazon doesnt have it and the cheapest one on Abebooks is like 90€).

 

Question is: can you think of a newer version of this kind of dictionary focused on usage and HSK??

 

 

[耳耳语语]

Hello,

I think you can find it here, from Amazon resellers http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Chinese-Usage-Vocabulary-English/dp/756190794X

I bought it recently, it's very good but also very long to study . For the time being, i take 15mn to study just one page

There is also the HSK phrasebook serie "新HSK词汇突破 (Xin HSK cihui tupo)" that you could find interesting : http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41388-hsk-vocabulary-phrasebook-mp3s/

[Demonic_Duck]

Note that the dictionary was published in 2000, and the new HSK came out in 2010, so the levels will be referring to old HSK, which used a different classification system.

 

The other book 耳耳语语 recommended should be a safe bet, though - stuff with “新HSK” in the title may or may not be 100% up to date, but at least is referring to the new format.

 

I can't recommend anything as far as a usage dictionary with HSK levels goes, but it's fairly easy to configure the dictionaries available on Pleco to provide HSK level information. All you have to do is download flashcard sets of some HSK word-lists, and you can then see from the flashcard button at the bottom of the dictionary entry screen whether a flashcard exists for this card. Then if you change your settings to always prompt for duplicate flashcards, tapping the button will bring up the "duplicate card" screen, from which you can tap "card info", switch to the "cats" tab, and see which category it's in from the flashcard set you've downloaded.

 

Actually, that's all rather fiddly, is there a better way to see this information in Pleco?

[roddy]

I'd also bear in mind that the old HSK ran for many many years and there were some excellent materials produced. If you're just worried about passing the new HSK, fair enough, but a lot of the old prep materials are still very valuable. And in linguistic terms, how much has usage changed since 2000? 

[Demonic_Duck]

I'm not suggesting in the slightest that materials produced wholly or partially in order to cater for the old HSK are now worthless, but if the knowledge of which HSK level a particular word is in is one of the main things you're looking for, this dictionary won't provide it.

[anonymoose]

Could you post a picture of a typical page from inside? It sounds interesting.

[耳耳语语]

Pictures can be found in this thread : http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/2940-hsk-汉语8000词词典-8800-hsk-vocabulary/?p=96749

[mikelove]

@Demonic_Duck - we actually made that a lot easier with our 'tags' feature; just long-press on a category in Organize Cards (on Android) or tap on the (i) button next to it (on iOS) and you'll see an option to add a tag for a category. Do that, and any word in that category will have that tag show up at the top right corner of its definition screen. So you can get a word's HSK membership much more efficiently that way.

[hoshinoumi]

Hi everyone, sorry it's taken me a while to answer the topic. Thanks for the helpful reviews. I have uploaded some pictures in the first posts so you can take a look. I found at BLCUP that they are creating a new series of usage dictionaries focused on new HSK (http://www.blcup.com/enPInfo/index/258?

The dictionary is called "A Dictionary of 5000 Graded Words for New HSK" and it will be 3 volumes divided into: HSK 1,2,3 in the first one, HSK 4, 5 in the second one, and HSK 6 in the final one. So far, only the first two volumes have been released but I would really like to know if anyone has tried them, if they are worth, how similar or different they are compared with the dictionary I talk about in the first post... Thanks

[xiaokaka]

Thanks for the tip, I just ordered them both. They seem to be ~400 pages and comes with audio and only cost 120元 for both, so I thought I can check them out. Will update with more info when they arrive.

[tiantian]

Here you can preview them:

 

http://www.blcup.com/preview6/4582/4582-2_output/web/flipviewerxpress.html

http://www.blcup.com/preview5/4314-2/flipviewerxpress.html

[xiaokaka]

Quick update: I just got the books in the mail today.

The HSK 1-3 edition includes all the words with simplified and traditional characters, pinyin and an English definition, as well as 3–8 example sentences for each – with pinyin and an English translation. It is a total of 400 pages including index and preface. A CD is included with audio for all the words and example sentences.

The HSK 5-6 edition is 667 pages and is similar to the 1-3 book, but has a few differences.

Firstly, the word definitions are now both in Chinese and English.

Secondly, for the HSK 4 part, the example sentences no longer has an English translation, while for the HSK 5 part pinyin is excluded as well from the sentences.

For the forthcoming HSK 6 version it seems like the word definions will be completely in Chinese as well.

Edit: For some nouns there are small pictures included.

[hoshinoumi]

Thanks for the extensive review. It basicaly seems as a sentence book, since it doesn't provide, for example, the difference between similar verbs such as 帮忙 and 帮助。The most "similar" book I have found just a couple of days ago is 

新HSK考试系列:四级词汇精讲精练(附练习册) 

http://www.amazon.cn/%E6%96%B0HSK%E8%80%83%E8%AF%95%E7%B3%BB%E5%88%97-%E5%9B%9B%E7%BA%A7%E8%AF%8D%E6%B1%87%E7%B2%BE%E8%AE%B2%E7%B2%BE%E7%BB%83/dp/B00ARCTIEU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416662130&sr=8-1&keywords=9787532759927

 

It provides one or two sentences, related words and the difference of similar ones.