Cantonese?

[mikelove]

There are many foreigners in hong kong who have no intention whatsoever of learning Cantonese, they might be interested in a pleco-lite app that bundles OCR + cantonese dictionary + reader.

Our OCR really isn't very useful if you don't know any Chinese, unfortunately, and just in general that's not a market we think has much long-term potential; between Google Goggles and Bing Translate and others, there are too many big rich companies offering (or about to offer) image-translation-for-people-who-don't-speak-the-language systems for free. It's the same reason we've held back on doing much of anything ourselves with speech recognition - it's clear this is in the process of becoming a core operating system service, and there's no sense in investing a lot of money and time in it when it'll soon be something that anybody can put in their Chinese dictionary app with a few minutes of coding.

 

[mothbox]

Is there any news on a possible release date for this dictionary? Really dying to get my hands on it!

 

[mikelove]

Is there any news on a possible release date for this dictionary? Really dying to get my hands on it!

No release date yet, we generally try not to announce release dates since things inevitably come up to delay them - it's moving along but we can't predict when it'll be ready with any accuracy at this point.

 

[scykei]

At least give something like Summer 2013 or Fall 2015 so we know roughly when to expect it?

 

[dustpuppy]

Android 2.4.0 Beta 4 has Cantonese Jyutping pronounciation for the PLC dict. This is an awesome step in the right direction.

 

[mikelove]

Android 2.4.0 Beta 4 has Cantonese Jyutping pronounciation for the PLC dict. This is an awesome step in the right direction.

Thanks! First of many Cantonese features - actually a slightly self-serving one since it gets more people to examine our new Cantonese data (and thereby our process for generating it).

 

[dustpuppy]

It's the most useful one, with the closest second being cantonese audio. I'm not expecting a dicitonary to provide me with very accurate definitions of cantonese slang, I just want to know how to pronounce words and verify their meaning.

 

[mikelove]

It's the most useful one, with the closest second being cantonese audio. I'm not expecting a dicitonary to provide me with very accurate definitions of cantonese slang, I just want to know how to pronounce words and verify their meaning.

Audio we're weighing two approaches for, actually; we can support it through a Cantonese TTS system, which will make our app significantly bigger (especially on Android) and bring another potential vector for crashes / bugs (every time you include a third-party library you have to worry about that) but could be ready very quickly, or we can license or commission some Cantonese audio recordings, which would sound better and carry less of a bug risk but would take a bit longer.

 

[mikelove]

BTW, iOS users: we're preparing a version of PLC that you can install over the one that's built into the app which adds this same Jyutping pronunciation data, so you're not going to have to wait for another app update to get some Cantonese support.

 

[mothbox]

It's the most useful one, with the closest second being cantonese audio. I'm not expecting a dicitonary to provide me with very accurate definitions of cantonese slang, I just want to know how to pronounce words and verify their meaning.

Theres a little app out on Android called Cantonese Phonic which accesses an online lexicon including audio - each item is downloaded on access but it does help a lot for single characters, it wont process strings of characters which is the major drawback in my use and I find myself flicking between Pleco and Phonic to translate.

 

[scykei]

Wow thank you so much, Mike! You're amazing, as always!

 

[mikelove]

Wow thank you so much, Mike! You're amazing, as always!

No problem, glad to finally be making a dent in one of our oldest feature requests.

 

[crj]

Thank you so much for adding the Cantonese pronunciation in the PLC dictionary!

While I have been using Pleco for my Mandarin studies, my children (age 5 and 6) now attend local cantonese school in Hong Kong and I use Pleco with them.

1. I use OCR when I don't understand something in their homework
2. I set up flashcard sets for them with the traditional characters they are learning, and set it in 'test' mode for stroke order - it is a fun and helpful way for them to reinforce what they are learning.
3. I also use a traditional flashcard set for their putonghua homework, and set it to multiple choice, showing the pinyin and audio, and they have to choose the character.

Question:
Is there a way to show the cantonese pronunciation with the initial look up, or only when I look at individual character details?
Having it on that initial look up, especially with multiple character words, would be fabulous.

When a more robust Cantonese dictionary, with reverse look-up and audio, is out, that would be wonderful - for now, I just take the characters and use pinyin input (or OCR scanning) to create the flashcards, but in the not so distant future their vocabulary will far exceed mine and they will have to use it on their own Plus I would love to do flashcard testing with Cantonese Audio and they have to choose the right character - that would be so useful.

Whenever people see my 6 year old using Pleco, they inevitably ask me about it, write down the name of the app and look on in amazement as he uses it. But the huge smile on his face when he gets 'all green' on the stroke order is the best reaction for me

Thanks again, and looking forward to more Cantonese and kid friendly testing and learning options

 

[mikelove]

Thank you so much for adding the Cantonese pronunciation in the PLC dictionary!

You're very welcome! Many more Cantonese improvements coming...

Is there a way to show the cantonese pronunciation with the initial look up, or only when I look at individual character details?
Having it on that initial look up, especially with multiple character words, would be fabulous.

Certainly in the release version, yes. I believe in the pre-release Cantonese-equpped PLC we're releasing for our "old" iOS app we'll be putting Cantonese at the front of the definition, so while it won't display right next to the Pinyin, it'll display at the start of the definition section.

When a more robust Cantonese dictionary, with reverse look-up and audio, is out, that would be wonderful - for now, I just take the characters and use pinyin input (or OCR scanning) to create the flashcards, but in the not so distant future their vocabulary will far exceed mine and they will have to use it on their own Plus I would love to do flashcard testing with Cantonese Audio and they have to choose the right character - that would be so useful.

That should all be in the offing, we're still trying to decide on an audio strategy though (we're liking synthetic text-to-speech for Mandarin as we play around with it more, but the only Cantonese TTS we know of requires an internet connection and is incredibly expensive, so we're probably going to end up hiring people for recordings as we did with Mandarin).

Whenever people see my 6 year old using Pleco, they inevitably ask me about it, write down the name of the app and look on in amazement as he uses it. But the huge smile on his face when he gets 'all green' on the stroke order is the best reaction for me

Thanks again, and looking forward to more Cantonese and kid friendly testing and learning options

Thanks! (about to be a parent myself, so you can expect a variety of kid-friendly developments over the next few years)

 

[kleung21]

wow. been a long timer user back from the palm days but fell off the study wagon.

been requesting cantonese audio since the beginning since that was always my goal.

the ocr is great too. good job and the support of legacy purchases... top notch.

 

[mikelove]

wow. been a long timer user back from the palm days but fell off the study wagon.

been requesting cantonese audio since the beginning since that was always my goal.

the ocr is great too. good job and the support of legacy purchases... top notch.

Thanks!

 

[mothbox]

Is there any potential release date for this dictionary?

For the soundbites I've been using an app which grabs sounds from the CUHK: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nesnet.android.cantonese

Really itching for the dictionary itself though! The jyutping to the standard dictionary has been a welcome addition in the mean time.

 

[mikelove]

Is there any potential release date for this dictionary?

For the soundbites I've been using an app which grabs sounds from the CUHK: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nesnet.android.cantonese

Really itching for the dictionary itself though! The jyutping to the standard dictionary has been a welcome addition in the mean time.

Probably around the same time as our big iOS update, though it may take a little while to get our Cantonese search engine / audio code ported back to Android. (also gives us the opportunity to work the kinks out on one platform before releasing it / having to maintain it on two, much as we've been doing with Mandarin TTS on Android the last few months)

 

[John]

I've got the following dictionaries on my shiny new version 3 upgrade (thank you, Pleco!):

Chinese - ABC, Pleco, Oxford, Tuttle, Guifan, CC-CEDIT, Unihan, OCD, KEY
English - ABC, NWP, Oxford, C&T, OCD, 21cn

Am I correct in understanding that there are curently (at least) no Cantonese to English and vice versa dictionaries ?

 

[mikelove]

Pleco has Cantonese readings now, though it's still a Mandarin dictionary technically. But no, nothing specifically Cantonese<>English - we've got a couple of those licensed but they all have various problems (there don't seem to be any out there that don't) and we're debating now whether to actually release any of them.