Radical Dictionary & Flashcards - iOS/Android tested

[mikelove]

Sorry, I withdraw the question - I apparently have the latest version of the radicals dictionary.

You do, but that "kwukyel" suggests that the cards are linking to Unihan (which uses that weird definition for a couple of radicals) instead of to the radical dictionary.

Delete your radical flashcards, then follow the instructions in the first post to import the new list; however, on the import screen, set "duplicate cards" to "Allow." This should ensure that all of the cards include the text from the radical dictionary rather than from some existing flashcard that links to a Unihan entry.

 

[Markcrobinson]

Re: Radical Flashcards - Error displaying dao

I just uploaded the flashcard dictionary and flashcards. GREAT WORK!
A few of the characters, dāo , second three, and a few others appear as a box with an X in it. Have I done something wrong?

 

[ldolse]

Hi Mark,

Glad you like it. Regarding the X's, you haven't done anything wrong, it's just that some of the characters are quite rare, and font support isn't perfect on most systems. I'm guessing you must be using an Android based system, those characters all show up on iOS. Changing the font should be doable if you wanted to fix this, but I don't know how it's done on Android.

 

[brownae2]

你好！ I can't seen to get the flashcards to work. The dictionary is installed, but when I import the flashcards no Category appears. I've imported many a flashcard file, so I don't think I'm doing anything stupid... :| Does anyone have any tips? Sounds like it would be really useful so I'd love to get it working.

On an iPhone/iPad.

Cheers!

 

[mikelove]

你好！ I can't seen to get the flashcards to work. The dictionary is installed, but when I import the flashcards no Category appears. I've imported many a flashcard file, so I don't think I'm doing anything stupid... Does anyone have any tips? Sounds like it would be really useful so I'd love to get it working.

They might show up under "Uncategorized," actually, depending on how you did the import - do you see them in there?

 

[brownae2]

Ah, yes they're in uncategorised...along with a few hundred randoms. Now, how would I get them to import into a category called Radicals...? I've rolled back the import and had a look at how I could do it differently but no luck.

Cheers!

 

[mikelove]

Ah, yes they're in uncategorised...along with a few hundred randoms. Now, how would I get them to import into a category called Radicals...? I've rolled back the import and had a look at how I could do it differently but no luck.

This particular list file doesn't tag them as radical flashcards, basically because we're also using the same file as a user dictionary import file and in some versions of Pleco the category headers from a flashcard file can confuse the user dictionary importer. So you're not doing anything wrong - just make a new category and Edit / Move the radical cards into there and you should be all set.

 

[nlucchesi]

Need to update flash card installation instructions for Pleco ver 2.2.13

 

[mikelove]

Need to update flash card installation instructions for Pleco ver 2.2.13

They should still work - where are you running into problems?

 

[nlucchesi]

Yes, it works but the instructions' options for importing aren't the same as what I see in the Pleco app.

 

[mikelove]

Yes, it works but the instructions' options for importing aren't the same as what I see in the Pleco app.

Just tried them out here and they appear to be identical - how do they differ on yours?

 

[nlucchesi]

The instructions are missing recommended settings for:

- Text encoding
- Definition source
- Dictionaries
- Missing entries
- Ambiguous entries

Sorry for being so picky if this is obvious to everyone else.

- nello

 

[nlucchesi]

I too was surprised to see them import into Uncategorized.

Perhaps the instructions should encourage users to check their Uncategorized folder and delete/move existing cards to another folder so that the Radical import will not be commingled with other cards.

 

[mikelove]

The instructions are missing recommended settings for:

- Text encoding
- Definition source
- Dictionaries
- Missing entries
- Ambiguous entries

Sorry for being so picky if this is obvious to everyone else.

Ah, that's intentional - the defaults for those will be fine unless you've changed them so we didn't want to bother people to set each of them.

I too was surprised to see them import into Uncategorized.

Perhaps the instructions should encourage users to check their Uncategorized folder and delete/move existing cards to another folder so that the Radical import will not be commingled with other cards.

We could just add a category header to the file, I suppose - you'll get a gibberish "//Radicals" dictionary entry if you import them into a dictionary but presumably most people will just use the separate database file. (I'll see if ldolse chimes in here in a few days on that, don't want to update it on my own)

 

[ldolse]

We could just add a category header to the file, I suppose - you'll get a gibberish "//Radicals" dictionary entry if you import them into a dictionary but presumably most people will just use the separate database file. (I'll see if ldolse chimes in here in a few days on that, don't want to update it on my own)

The original version of the flashcard file had the radicals subcategorized by frequency of use, it's the one thing I was missing in this update. My inclination would be to restore those categories with the new version - I have the old data so this should be straightforward. If there aren't any objections I'll update it. I also think it's not too big a deal that the headers might wind up in a user dictionary, I would assume most users who want a user dictionary would just install the dictionary file in the first post directly.

 

[Longbow]

When I discovered how Chinese characters are actually created (not through my university program, but through independant research - using some of the references cited in op) I was angry, as I had wasted a couple of years trying to learn characters the hard way.

So, I wrote my master's thesis on teaching Chinese characters to westerners.

Progessively learning the radicals was a crucial part of my theory.

(The basic theory was to deconstruct every character learned to the base elements whether they were radicals or not and learn all the components as independent characters. So, every time a beginner would learn a new character they would actually learn two or three new characters depending on the complexity of the character. This would initially be a little slow, but the rewards would start paying off quickly as components of previously learned characters started appearing in new characters. Students would quickly learn to "chunk" two or three components when learning characters instead of trying to remember X amount of strokes.)

Thanks for this learning tool.

 

[stephanhodges]

Is your thesis available somewhere? I would like to read it.

 

[Wan]

Me too, could you provide a link?

 

[ckatt]

I had the same frustration about ten years ago when i was in school. i had always wanted to learn by radical but no one was teaching it that way. a little over a year ago i just started trying to memorize all of the radicals and i think it has payed off a lot. Recently i discovered this book called "The most common Chinese radicals , New approaches to learning chinese" by Zhang Pengpeng 《常用汉字部首》 张朋朋。 Man i wish i had this book back at university. Definitely check it out if you are interested in learning characters by radical. after doing so i felt a bit like i had been learning to write English without knowign the alphabet, trying to memorize words without knowing when one letter ended and the next began ( and as my experiences as an English teacher in china has shown, i think many kids learn to wright like this. Many can recite the ABC's from A-Z but hold up a flash card with a Q on it and no one can tell you what letter it is.)
i also recommend that you learn the common names of all the radicals as found in this book.
ie. 冫as seen in 冷 it often is translated and Bing 冰 ice but i have never met a Chinese person who calls it that. instead they all call it "er dian shui" 二点水 "two dots water" like wise 氵is called "three dots water". knowing these names has made it far easier to talk about characters as well. if you don't know how to write a character say, river"jiang", someone can just tell you san dian shui on the left 氵and gong on the right 工 and you get 江 jiang. (very useful too if you meet someone with a strange name and they want to tell you how to write it.) maybe that character is relatively easy but its a helps alot with 10 stroke plus characters that can easily be describe by their two or three components.
I have a custom flashcard list based around all of the common names, i can post it if anyone is interested. the list is set up to show the radical but the pronunciation and the definition use the common name.

 

[stephanhodges]

I'm very interested in the flashcaard list of radicals with common names. I had a student once write out about 30 of the most common ones, but I've lost that list.

Thanks for the book recommendation as well.