best / favorite pleco dictionary poll

[歐博思]

Personally, I'm digging the MoE dictionary, but kinda curious as to how it stacks up against the Guifan; I'd rather spend the money on a good English dictionary and Chengyu dictionary instead (but which ones?)

 

I couldn't find a comprehensive voting roundup for favorite Pleco dictionary, but I didn't 100% check every thread from search so let me know! If we're good, please everyone cast your votes or comment and I will add your choice to the poll (there are a lot of dictionaries and only 20 poll slots)

 

edit: Added a new poll option; if your favorite Pleco dictionary isn't in the polls yet, tell about it in the comments section and I can add it to the polls. I wonder if a chengyu dictionary is anyone's favorite?

Edited March 30, 2016 at 01:48 PM by 歐博思

[imron]

Guifan is far and away my favourite.

I find its usage notes for various words to be very helpful.

[朱真明]

My favorite is Gui Fan because it is the only monolingual dictionary that shows the parts of speech for compound words.

[stapler]

I can't say which is the best because the listed dictionaries server different purposes in the way I use them. So I'll say my two favourite dictionaries are the ABC dictionary (for English definitions) and the Guifan (for Chinese definitions).

 

When I see a new word or one that I have forgotten my first point of reference is the ABC dictionary. If I'm looking up say 珊瑚 and see that's "N. Coral" in the ABC I don't need a Chinese definition. It's fairly straight forward and quick. But if the word is more nuanced, or feels like it has other meanings, I check the Guifan. For example 感慨 is listened as "SV/V sigh with emotion / N. emotional excitement/ M: 通/陣" in the ABC. This is good in that it has the measure words, and whether the word is 名 ， 形， 動, etc. However it's a bit "vague". How is this word different from say 感嘆? The Guifan is really good at pointing out these differences. Not only that, it also gives much better descriptions. Take 睬 for example. The ABC dictionary just says "V. pay attention to; take notice of", but again it's a bit vague. Compared to the Guifan "動： 對別人語言行為作出反應" - much clearer.

 

I'd say I use the ABC dictionary 70% of the time and the Guifan the other 30% when I need more clarification. I would use the Guifan exclusively but often I just find it way faster/more convenient to use the ABC dictionary - especially for understanding more abstract words

[Guest realmayo]

I normally use Pleco as a reader, so I'm just looking for a translation for a word in a book that I think worth looking up. I like the ABC dictionary but the CC-CEDICT one has some more contemporary words that the ABC and Pleco ones lack.

[艾墨本]

I'm on the same page as Imron. I voted Guifan solely due to the usage notes. I've looked at books that clarify the difference between synonyms and have found the Guifan dictionary tends to do it better. I just wish it gave more of these notes. 

 

Beyond that, the other dictionaries just kind of blend together. I especially like Pleco because I can buy so many different dictionaries and put the different definitions side by side. This allows me to derive the subtle nuances of complex words or know definitively for simple-er words. The meanings for many words seem to lie in the gray area between several translations.

 

I also like just have the massive database of sentences to pull from when I'm making notecards.

[Demonic_Duck]

For a general-purpose dictionary, I'd pick Guifan. MoE is excellent and considerably more comprehensive, but it has a few drawbacks: it's traditional only, doesn't give parts of speech, and uses Taiwan-specific pronunciations for some characters (that's not a drawback in general, but it is for my own purposes). Its example sentences also tend to be considerably more literary than Guifan's. Also, as others have said, Guifan's usage notes are very useful (the notes stating the standard form/pronunciation less so, as some of these aren't in line with the most commonly used form or pronunciation).

 

21st Century is great for E-C, though some of the uses (of English words) seem extremely obscure, and some of the info about regional slang (again, of the English words) is incorrect. I haven't bought the C-E version.

 

Overall, I vote Guifan. If I could only use one dictionary, though, I might have to choose MoE, simply because it covers more words.

[iand]

Other than agreeing with the others about the Guifan, I think it interesting to look at this review by a Chinese speaker/English learner of several English dictionaries, where the American Heritage Dictionary (also my favorite) comes out on top, for some of the same reasons as the Guifan. And my criticism of the MoE dictionary is similar to his criticism of the Merriam-Webster: many definitions are just lists of synonyms. This is true with the Guifan too, perhaps it's just a symptom of the structure of words in Chinese, but not as much as with the MoE.

[歐博思]

@iand thanks for that link—I often wonder what to tell students who ask for English dictionary recommendations.

 

@Demonic_Duck up-voted your write-up on MoEDict. I too noticed the pronunciation differences in the MoEDict. For dictionary order, right after the MoE I've set the Cross-Straits Dictionary, of which after comparing to the couple examples from Guifan here, seems to have a similar definition; granted right now I only have the Guifan demo, but for me the MoE/Cross-Straits is currently a nice 1-2 punch.

 

@all: If your favorite Pleco dictionary isn't in the poll yet you could just leave a comment here about its pros/cons and I'll add it to the poll (chengyu dictionaries, for example). Thanks to everyone for their input so far!

[archimon]

I've found Oxford to be a surprisingly useful dictionary - it gives parts of speech as well as tons of examples for most words, and is both English-Chinese and Chinese-English, so for a lower-intermediate learner like me, it's still very good. I've found the MoE dictionary extremely helpful as well, but haven't invested in any of the paid C-C dictionaries yet, since they'd be a bit beyond me. 

[Dani_man]

Favorite for modern Chinese, I guess.

For classical Chinese there is nothing like the Hanyu Da Cidian. The licensing of Pleco did a great favor for those who had to go through the muddy PDF versions.

 

(Disclaimer: I did not try Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese nor Gu Hanyu Da Cidian).

[archimon]

Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese is a great resource for those who can't use a C-C dictionary, but riddled with errors, incorrect Middle Chinese entries, and it lacks both parts of speech and many compound words, as it is a 字典. I'm taking Classical Chinese right now, and my professor has been baffled on a number of occasions by the errors Kroll makes, and the list of corrigenda for the Middle Chinese, released by Professor Baxter, frankly is enormous. (Some very basic mistakes = the entry that claims that the imperative negative 無 should be read in the fourth tone, when it should be read in the second along with all other readings of that character, and the entry for 見, when discussing it's xian4 readings, claims that this character can mean to "(inter)view, be granted (or grant) an audience; (be) recieve(d)," which is simply not the case - this reading means to appear, and nothing more. It can mean some of the things Kroll claims it can here when it is used causatively, but it does not simply mean these things ordinarily.)

[朱真明]

@archimon

Would you be willing to write a more comprehensive review of Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medievil Chinese in a separate topic?

[imron]

granted right now I only have the Guifan demo

The Guifan has a commanding lead in the poll, and not without reason.

 

To come back to what you mentioned in your first post (English dictionary vs a Chengyu dictionary vs Guifan), if you don't already have the ABC C-E dictionary then it *might* be worth getting that over the Guifan, with reasons to consider being: whether you are comfortable with a C-C dictionary, whether the MoE dictionary is sufficient for your current C-C needs, and whether you want a dictionary with a larger number of words (ABC is more comprehensive than Guifan).

 

If you already have the ABC (or even if you don't) then I think the Guifan is an excellent purchase.  In my experience, I've never needed a dedicated Chengyu dictionary - I bought one back when paper dictionaries were still a thing but rarely used it (and not just because it was unwieldy to carry around) - the majority of Chengyus you come across in reading will be in both the ABC and/or the Guifan and those that are not will probably be uncommon enough that they aren't really worth much time/effort learning.

 

I also think that once you reach a certain level an E-C is not really something most people will get much use out of.

[Pokarface]

Tuttle Chinese Dictionary has all the vocabulary and examples you'll ever need to know as a beginner and intermediate student.

[pross]

+1 for duogongneng chengyu cidian. 

 

For general lookups I use guifan and ABC in that order.

[ouyangjun]

Guifan

[archimon]

 

 

@archimon

Would you be willing to write a more comprehensive review of Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medievil Chinese in a separate topic? 

 

I wish I could, but unfortunately I'm still just a first-year classical student and I haven't used the dictionary enough to speak to its strengths and weaknesses much beyond what I've already done. I can say that it is a valuable resource, and studying classical would be a lot more difficult for me without it, but that if you can use, say, Wang Li's dictionary, do that instead. Kroll is intelligent and has an enormous vocabulary, so if you're looking for a translation aid, it's completely indispensable - his suggestions for translations are very, very helpful. I think that the usefulness of this dictionary just comes down to what you're trying to get out of it. It's not authoritative (the compiler, after all, is a professor of medieval Chinese poetry, and not a linguist), but in the main it is accurate, and it is a very valuable resource for anyone who deals with English more often than/as much as they deal with Chinese.

 

Edit: I've attached, for anyone who's interested, Baxter's list of Corrigenda for Kroll.

Baxter-for-Kroll-69824_Corrigenda-A_Students_Dictionary_of_Classical_and_Medieval_Chinese.pdf

[mouse]

I agree with archimon. Kroll very usefully notes what era a character has a certain meaning (he doesn't always do this, but he does it quite a lot) and he uses very particular translations. Their particularity can sometimes go a bit too far however. The amount of times I've had to look up the English word (I'm a native English speaker) sometimes makes using the dictionary a chore. I understand that he uses obscure words like residuum and onycha in the interest of accuracy, but it still makes me feel uneducated. The other other real problem with Kroll's dictionary is that it's a 字典 not 辭典. Sometimes within the entry Kroll will provide some two character words, which is nice. Overall it's a very useful dictionary, especially for translation, but I can't imagine using it without consulting 漢語大辭典 at the same time. 

[laurenth]

Also good to know: in my experience, the worst Pleco dictionary among all those I use is certainly the one is purchased most recently, i.e. FLTRP Chinois-Français. Not because translations are presented "flat" without  explanations (grammatical or other) or examples - many dictionaries are like that, unfortunately - but mainly because it's riddled with typos and, even worse, because the pinyin is quite often wrong.

 

It was relatively cheap, though.