nciku Team Blog

Learn more about Chinese characters and pinyin from the nciku dictionary blog

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Today’s characters: 参,较,户,共 & 片

May 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

cān

Search results for: words with 参

jiào

Search results for: words with 较

Search results for: words with 户

gòng

Search results for: words with 共

piàn

Search results for: words with 片

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

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Today’s characters: 士,青,见,英 & 完

May 13th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

shì

Search results for: words with 士

qīng

Search results for: words with 青

jiàn

Search results for: words with 见

yīng

Search results for: words with 英

wán

Search results for: words with 完

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

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Today’s characters: 装,五,带,改 & 考

May 12th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

[Ed: Sorry it’s a little funky, the zhuang is a little big.]

zhuāng

Search results for: words with 装

Search results for: words with 五

dài

Search results for: words with 带

gǎi

Search results for: words with 改

kǎo

Search results for: words with 考

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

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Today’s characters: 始,克,议,流 & 马

May 11th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

shǐ

Search results for: words with 始

Search results for: words with 克

Search results for: words with 议

liú

Search results for: words with 流

Search results for: words with 马

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

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Today’s characters: 难,准,德,形 & 质

May 10th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

nán

Search results for: words with 难

zhǔn

Search results for: words with 准

Search results for: words with 德

xíng

Search results for: words with 形

zhì

Search results for: words with 质

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

No Comments...Tell us what you think!Tags: 5 characters a day

nciku passes 500,000 entries

May 9th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Last night nciku passed the 500,000 entry amount for the first time. We added 159,855 this week alone, and hopefully we can continue to add more than 100,000 a week for a while. The big increase came because we are starting to reap the benefits of months of hard work compiling, filtering, and editing industry-specific and technical terminology. Now on nciku you can find thousands of words related to information technology, business, law, biochemistry, and biology. These are just a few of the subjects we would like to cover, and even those subjects are not comprehensive yet. We still have a lot of work to do on this project but it is very nice to see some results.

At this point, it is stacked heavily in favor of English-Chinese entries, with 364,000 in the EC dictionary and 165,000 in the CE dictionary. This just happens to be luck of the draw. Generally speaking, it takes more time to create a new CE entry than it does for EC. This is because there are additional fields in the database which make searching for Chinese words easier for people like me - I still am not confident enough to type ‘gong1zuo4′ (I guess that wasn’t too hard.), and would rather just write ‘gongzuo;’ especially when it comes to words you have just heard for the first time.

It was a pretty long week here at nciku, so I would like to say good job to everyone here for sticking it out and doing some really nice work this week.

Talk to you next time and, as always, 好好学习.

4 Comments...Tell us what you think!Tags: content

A new nciku giveaway

May 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

I’m sure many of you have already seen the news on the front page that a new promotion is underway. The theme this time is to give nciku a new slogan in one of two ways: a one line catchphrase, or a 5 word tag line using the letters in nciku. We got the idea for this promotion from you actually; many people said that “More than a dictionary” wasn’t ‘cool’ enough, or it didn’t pack the punch that it should, so we decided to make you put your money where your mouth was and see what you can come up with. If you just had your eureka moment, this is how you enter the contest.

First, check out the contest main page and take a quick look at the rules, then choose which contest you would like to enter (or both is OK too) - play with the letters or create a new slogan - and click ‘View list’ to see the current top 10 contestants.

Play with nciku’s letters

Create a new slogan

If you think you’ve got a great idea, click the large ‘Join now!’ button, tell the nciku community your idea, and hope you make the top 10 for a chance to win an iPod (3) or a webcam (7)

Good luck!

1 Comment...Tell us what you think!Tags: news · win prizes

Today’s characters: 项,非,育,传 & 足

May 9th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

xiàng

Search results for: words with 项

fēi

Search results for: words with 非

Search results for: words with 育

chuán

Search results for: words with 传

Search results for: words with 足

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

No Comments...Tell us what you think!Tags: 5 characters a day

Today’s characters: 息,取,增,整 & 团

May 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

Search results for: words with 息

Search results for: words with 取

zēng

Search results for: words with 增

zhěng

Search results for: words with 整

tuán

Search results for: words with 团

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

No Comments...Tell us what you think!Tags: 5 characters a day

Today’s characters: 反,它,或,权 & 南

May 7th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Posted by Dan, Blog Editor

Learning Chinese characters is, in my opinion, the most time-consuming and difficult part of the language. Well, it’s not that difficult but it takes tons of dedication. Learning just a few new characters each day can break the seemingly impossible goal into bite-sized pieces. Every day I will post 5 new characters, each with a stroke order flash movie; pinyin with a link to the character’s page; and a link to search results including the character. The characters are loosely ordered by frequency.

fǎn

Search results for: words with 反

Search results for: words with 它

huò

Search results for: words with 或

quán

Search results for: words with 权

nán

Search results for: words with 南

Note: Some additional pronunciations for 多音字 characters may be omitted.

好好学习!

No Comments...Tell us what you think!Tags: 5 characters a day