Bigrams sorted by frequency with pinyin & English?

[DavidMars]

I'm searching for a list of Mandarin Bigrams sorted by frequency. This is just for general study, so I'm not too concerned about what corpus the frequency is derived from, as long as it is relatively modern. News, popular culture, etc. are all fine.

Ideally, I'd like to have pinyin and English in the list. I'm OK with tab-delimited or comma-delimited or Pleco flashcards.

Am I looking in all the wrong places, or is this hard to find?

Thanks.

 

[Shun]

Hi DavidMars,

@John. has uploaded excellent, modern frequency lists here:

Word frequency list based on a 15 billion character corpus: BCC (BLCU Chinese Corpus)

The Beijing Language and Culture University created a balanced corpus of 15 billion characters. It’s based on news (人民日报 1946-2018，人民日报海外版 2000-2018), literature (books by 472 authors, including a significant portion of non-Chinese writers), non-fiction books, blog and weibo entries as well as...

plecoforums.com

You could do the following:

1. Filter the lists to two-character word frequency lists (using regex or Python), sort them in descending order using the frequency number (using a spreadsheet app or Python), then discard the number field
2. Import the lists of Hanzi words into Pleco, telling it to Fill in missing fields. If you only allow free dictionaries (and some paid ones, like the ABC dictionary) as a source for your card definitions, you could export the lists from Pleco to text later, including the pinyin and definitions. If you only need the lists inside Pleco, you could also use all of your dictionaries as a source for your card definitions.

Enjoy,

Shun

 

[DavidMars]

Shun;

Thanks very much for your reply. I have downloaded the file and saved the spreadsheet column with the bigrams sorted by frequency as a file named Bigrams_For_Pleco.txt. I saved it in csv format but removed the second file type extension .csv that gave me the file name Bigrams_For_Pleco.txt.csv so am working with the file name Bigrams_For_Pleco.txt

The import format looked perfect, as per the screenshot below.

The import process seemed to work perfectly, as per the second screenshot below.

I'm expecting to see a set of Flashcards named "Bigrams_For_Pleco" in Pleco's "Organize Cards" but I don't see it. I waited some time and did a Pleco restart. No joy.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[Shun]

Hi DavidMars,

you're welcome! The imported cards have probably ended up in the "Uncategorized" category. To avoid this, you can add a line

// <destination category path>

at the beginning of the text file to be imported. Now that you've already imported the cards, you can also move them from Uncategorized to a category of your choice.

Best, Shun

 

[DavidMars]

Shun, I have hundreds of entries in Uncategorized, so it is very time consuming to try to separate the new Bigram entries from the old ones in Uncategorized. So I'd like to export the file into a new Flashcard folder named:

Bigram

by using this as the first line of my text file:

// <Bigram>

It doesn't seem to do the job. Is the destination category path more complex?

Thanks again.

David

 

[Shun]

Hi David,

oh, I'm sorry about having misled you a little.

For the category path, you may just write as the first line, then import:

// Bigrams

After the words have been imported into the Bigrams category, you can split it sequentially into groups of 100.

Would you like to share your Hanzi list to this thread?

You're welcome,

Shun

 

[DavidMars]

Shun;

Still no luck!

I am attaching the file I am working with. I am actually working with Column B only, but I include the other columns for those who may want to look at the frequency count, etc. I am using OpenOffice on my Macintosh, I expect anyone could change the extension to .xls for Microsoft Excel, etc. I could not upload the file here using the extension .ods so changed it to .txt.

Cheers, David

 

[Shun]

Hi David,

thanks! I copied the column B into a text file using a text editor. Does the file you are importing into Pleco look like this? (see attachment)

Cheers, Shun

 

[DavidMars]

Shun, brilliant, thanks. I now have my Bigram flashcards in my Bigram flashcards folder. Using your file the // Bigrams appeared after using the Import button when Pleco asks me to review the format. It was not appearing with my file, no idea why. You're a lifesaver, many thanks.

 

[Shun]

Hi David,

you're welcome! As a next step, for another category named "Bisyllabic Words", you could do the following:

The BCC frequency lists include a lot of bigrams which are just bigrams (= frequently co-occurring Hanzi) but not lexical words. So you could import only those bigrams which are actual words and have a dictionary definition, by choosing this setting:



(Missing entries: Skip and change the first line in the txt file to "// Bisyllabic Words")

Enjoy, Shun

 

[DavidMars]

Perfect! It reduces the flashcard count from 13,253 bigrams to 9,393 Bisyllabic Words.

 

[Shun]

Thanks for the Love! Happy to hear it!