PlecoDict worth it?

[Jamie]

Mike,

I have been a happy user of the Oxford C-E dictionary for more than a year. It is an excellent product, the best available. I am happy to see the revamped interface, especially the flashcards. When using C-E, it has been extremely rare that I would ever enter a word that I could not find the definition.

My question: What are the major differences between the Oxford C-E dictionary which I have now and the new NWP and ABC dictionaries? Are the NWP and ABC dictionaries targeted to scholars? Besides the 8X as many words, which I haven't noticed ever needing, what justifies the additional cost?

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for the kind words.

Certainly the biggest difference between the Oxford and the ABC/NWP is size, but there are some other advantages too. The ABC in particular is very well tailored to the needs of people learning Chinese: unlike the Oxford, it includes the measure word for every noun in the dictionary, it's very rigorous about Pinyin orthography (which syllables should be connected, which should be separated by a space, which should be capitalized, etc), and it also includes very thorough coverage of alternate characters for words. (in some cases there may be 3 or 4 different characters which commonly occupy a particular position in a particular word) I suppose it's a little more scholar-oriented in that it tries very hard to be rigorous about these sorts of things, but both of them cover modern Chinese vernacular quite well.

So if the Oxford's depth is sufficient for your needs then there's really no need to upgrade. The extra cost of the NWP+ABC is entirely a function of the dictionaries; we're about to raise the price of the Oxford to $59.95, so this will ultimately be a $40 price difference, which is actually a good bit lower than the difference in cost between the printed NWP/ABC and the printed Oxford. And the $79.95 to upgrade is just a little lower than the cost of those two books in printed form.

 

[herve]

Hi,
Like Jamie, I am very happy with the new product, and changes in the user interface are very good.

With regard to the ABC/NWP dictionary, I agree that they contain more data.
However, could I suggest to Pleco to invest a few man/hour to extract a few entries of the same words in the different dictionaries, and put them accessible somewhere on their web site. It is much better for a potential customer to "see" examples, and then to test the product, of course.
This is a problem that I always had when looking for dictionaries (english/english, english/french, ...). I would have liked to first have examples before installing trial versions and test a little bit.

 

[mikelove]

Good idea. We've already rewritten the PlecoDict product page to explain the variations between dictionaries better, and this would be a nice addition... thanks!

 

[koreth]

The ABC in particular is very well tailored to the needs of people learning Chinese: unlike the Oxford, it includes the measure word for every noun in the dictionary

Really? How do you view measure words? I just tried entering a few basic nouns from the first few lessons of my introductory Chinese course ("cha2", "shu1", "ren2", and "pi2jiu3") and I don't see any measure words. I don't see anything related in the preferences; is there a command to show them? I was actually thinking just yesterday of posting a feature request for that!

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, it was late and I wasn't thinking... it isn't every noun, just the countable ones. So there's no noun for pi2jiu3 (which can come in bottles, cans, barrels, and various other things) but if you scroll down one entry to "pi2jiu3chang3" you'll see "M: 1jia1" at the end of the entry. And there's no measure word listed for "cha2" but there is one for "cha2bei1". I'm not sure about the exact rule for which words get measure words and not, but it seems like most of the countable ones do have them.