12 February 2011

Theres an App for that

Many of you out there have iPhones and iPod Touches assembled by suicidal Chinese workers. Although there are many to help learn Chinese, there are a few that I believe stand out and that I find particularly useful.

iCED
www.murage.ca/en/products/iced

iCED or iChinese-English Dictionary is a digital Chinese to English dictionary. It allows you to look up words in Pinyin, English or Hanzi characters. It gives the word in pinyin, traditional and simplified characters, the English translation, definition, as well as what each individual character means. It also allows you to view the characters in high resolution and perform searches for other phrases with the word. It lets you compile word lists for easy reference and download different dictionaries to use. The default dictionary has over 200,000 entries on everything built in so you dont need internet access. There has not been one thing I've looked up that didn't return any results, even my English first name. There is an ad supported free version as well as a 'plus' version with unlimited word lists and downloadable add-ons for $3.99.



Chinese Writer
http://popupchinese.com/chinese/download

An app by pop-up Chinese made to help you learn stroke order. It gives you an array of characters that you must draw in order. If you make a stroke out of order, it shows you the correct sequence. Its free.


iChinese
http://www.hubermat.com/iChinese/Home.html

If you're willing to spend a little more, you can get the iChinese Chinese Learner. It is an all in one portable app for learning Chinese. It has all of iCED's features as well as a tool for learning stroke order. It also has audio pronunciation playback, a flash card trainer and quizes. There are more lessons and plug-ins available for download. Its $9.99.


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