I'm a new user of Pleco and really like what I have seen so far, but I am in the middle of an intensive Mandarin program and am trying to learn on the fly. I am wondering if there is a better way to make sentence-level flash cards to study grammar than my current method of keying in the headwords, pinyin, and translation manually on my ipod. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sentence-level flash cards
- Thread starter firstimer
- Start date
You could make them in a text file on your computer, actually - that's probably the single fastest way to input them. Create your file with a sentence on each line, formatted like this:
characters<tab>pinyin<tab>definition
For example:
你吃饭了吗？ Ni3 chi1fan4 le ma? Have you eaten yet?
Then, copy that file over to your iPod - easiest way to do this (assuming you have OS 4) is to connect your iPod to your desktop, open up iTunes, go to the "Apps" tab (on the top, after selecting your iPod in the bar on the left side of the screen), select Pleco in the box at the bottom half of the screen, and click "Add" or drag the file into the list box. After that, import it through the "Import Cards" flashcard function and you should be good to go.
characters<tab>pinyin<tab>definition
For example:
你吃饭了吗？ Ni3 chi1fan4 le ma? Have you eaten yet?
Then, copy that file over to your iPod - easiest way to do this (assuming you have OS 4) is to connect your iPod to your desktop, open up iTunes, go to the "Apps" tab (on the top, after selecting your iPod in the bar on the left side of the screen), select Pleco in the box at the bottom half of the screen, and click "Add" or drag the file into the list box. After that, import it through the "Import Cards" flashcard function and you should be good to go.
That's basically what I do. I create them on my computer and then import them.
I create them using excel - put the hanzi sentence in column 1, then once I have all those I use a free tool from mandarintools.com called dimsum to auto generate the pinyin and then put the English sentence in column 3.
Then file-> save as Unicode Text and that will be ready to import into Pleco.
You might want to specify which categories you want to assign the cards to using
The autogenerated pinyin will not be 100% correct, so when going through the cards on Pleco I'll use the pop up dictionary on the cards to double check.
I create them using excel - put the hanzi sentence in column 1, then once I have all those I use a free tool from mandarintools.com called dimsum to auto generate the pinyin and then put the English sentence in column 3.
Then file-> save as Unicode Text and that will be ready to import into Pleco.
You might want to specify which categories you want to assign the cards to using
You can have multiple lines of these per file.
The autogenerated pinyin will not be 100% correct, so when going through the cards on Pleco I'll use the pop up dictionary on the cards to double check.
rhizome
秀才
Hi, making flashcards for phrases now on my mac in TextEdit. I downloaded a phrase flashcard set from flashcard exchange so that I can copy the format, just adding new phrases in text edit and will delete the phrases from the original set when I'm done.
But I don't need to add pinyin, how can I "skip" this category? It seems that this guy/gal who made the flashcard set basically just did what you said before, i.e. 漢字>tab>han4zi>tab>character. What if I don't want to add pinyin?
But I don't need to add pinyin, how can I "skip" this category? It seems that this guy/gal who made the flashcard set basically just did what you said before, i.e. 漢字>tab>han4zi>tab>character. What if I don't want to add pinyin?
rhizome
秀才
actually, just finished the list, and used the pinyin box to add grammar notes. e.g.
門關著，我們進不去 V+得／不＋去／來=v+(can/’t)+(come/go) the door is closed, we can’t go in.
unfortunately, somehow it seems pleco "autocorrects" my pinyin comments? e.g. for the card above I get shown the picture below. Any way I can disable that?
Other than that, this seems like a great way to drill myself on pesky little grammar phrases.
門關著，我們進不去 V+得／不＋去／來=v+(can/’t)+(come/go) the door is closed, we can’t go in.
unfortunately, somehow it seems pleco "autocorrects" my pinyin comments? e.g. for the card above I get shown the picture below. Any way I can disable that?
Other than that, this seems like a great way to drill myself on pesky little grammar phrases.
Attachments
rhizome
秀才
ah! Now I am also getting a "cards skipped" message, and all of a sudden I "lost" about 20 cards from my deck! Don't know why, because I filled in every of the three columns (character/pinyin/meaning) with something! If I don't put in correct pinyin in the pinyin category, does it skip it? noooooooo
I would love to be able to convert example sentences in my dictionary directly into flashcards, but have not been able to find a way to do this other than manually copy the text and paste it into a card created from scratch.
That is pretty labor intensive (compared to just clicking once to make a card of a single word), since I need to copy the sentence and the translation at once, and then separate it into the relevant fields in the newly created card.
I have been learning Chinese for 10+ years, and I find the example sentences in the dictionaries to be a real standout feature (among Pleco's many great features) in helping me grasp the true meaning of difficult words.
But it is a little frustrating because I cannot link the usefulness of the example sentences up with the usefulness of the flashcard testing, without the effort of manual card creation. Is there a way to directly convert example sentences into flashcard that I am missing?
Thanks!
That is pretty labor intensive (compared to just clicking once to make a card of a single word), since I need to copy the sentence and the translation at once, and then separate it into the relevant fields in the newly created card.
I have been learning Chinese for 10+ years, and I find the example sentences in the dictionaries to be a real standout feature (among Pleco's many great features) in helping me grasp the true meaning of difficult words.
But it is a little frustrating because I cannot link the usefulness of the example sentences up with the usefulness of the flashcard testing, without the effort of manual card creation. Is there a way to directly convert example sentences into flashcard that I am missing?
Thanks!
The fastest procedure at the moment would be to set "Unknown search" to "Card" in Settings / Search Interface, and after that, highlight + copy an example sentence's English explanation to the clipboard, highlight its Chinese characters, tap on the magnifying glass icon to bring it back to the search screen, then tap on the button to create a custom flashcard; the opposite character set + Pinyin will be pre-filled and you can just paste in the English explanation and have the whole thing.
That being said, we're planning to store example sentences in our database a bit differently once we do add official support for them (hence the lack of a convenient + button for them now), so if you ever want to migrate to our official example sentence system it may be necessary to export and then reimport all of your example sentence cards to do that.
That being said, we're planning to store example sentences in our database a bit differently once we do add official support for them (hence the lack of a convenient + button for them now), so if you ever want to migrate to our official example sentence system it may be necessary to export and then reimport all of your example sentence cards to do that.
Thanks for the quick reply and instructions.
The way that you outlined is a marginal improvement over the way that I have been doing it. So I will start doing it in that way, and many thanks for that.
I would be happy to migrate to the official example sentence system once it is available (I presume it is slated for inclusion in an upcoming version of the app?) and I don't mind if I have to export and reload my current cards at that time.
The way that you outlined is a marginal improvement over the way that I have been doing it. So I will start doing it in that way, and many thanks for that.
I would be happy to migrate to the official example sentence system once it is available (I presume it is slated for inclusion in an upcoming version of the app?) and I don't mind if I have to export and reload my current cards at that time.
Would love to see your sentance Flashcards, if you'd like to share them.