Showing Taiwanese tones

juang

秀才
Hi,

In Taiwan, the pronunciation can often be slightly different (different tone or no neutral tone). Is it possible to have my dictionary search show the Taiwanese tones by default? Also if I have a flash card and I see that one dictionary gives the Taiwanese tone, how do I change the tone on the flash card without converting it to a custom card and losing all the night formatting. Thanks!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
If you download the free Cross-Straits dictionary and make that the default (drag it to the top in Settings / Manage Dictionaries), that should give you Taiwan pronunciation first in most cases. (we're working on adding a way to let you use Taiwan pronunciations without having that dictionary come up first)

At the moment there's no way to override the Pinyin without overriding the entire flashcard, unfortunately.
 

rizen suha

状元
how amazing is that! i have wished for this for a long time but deemed it such an exotic request that i never put it forth!
 

rizen suha

状元
so encouraged by this... please provide some setup where i can have only cn-cn dicts as primary BUT whenever i am inside a flashcard and look up a (cn) word there, choose from another selection of dicts, eg. all cn-en. that way i may focus on chinese whenever possible but when resorting to looking up a specific chinese word in the flashcard i dont go into a chinese maze. exotic, i admit.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
There isn't a good way to do that at the moment, I'm afraid - the flashcard definition screen selection can't be configured independently of the regular dictionary search one.
 

juang

秀才
Thanks again! I tried it out, and unfortunately, in the sidebar, it shows the cross-straits definition, which makes it really hard to see what the word means at a glance (which is helpful for seeing if you found a definition that fits the context). I imagine there isn't a way around that, such that the english PLC definition comes up, but with taiwanese pronunciation?

Regarding "(we're working on adding a way to let you use Taiwan pronunciations without having that dictionary come up first)", how can I keep track when that feature comes out? Looking forward to it!
 

cowabunga

秀才
If you download the free Cross-Straits dictionary and make that the default (drag it to the top in Settings / Manage Dictionaries), that should give you Taiwan pronunciation first in most cases. (we're working on adding a way to let you use Taiwan pronunciations without having that dictionary come up first)

At the moment there's no way to override the Pinyin without overriding the entire flashcard, unfortunately.
hey Mike! any update on having taiwan pronunciations come up first?

what about having Taiwan vocab (when/where it differs from PRC) come up first in search (impossible?)

This has probably been the biggest issue for me using Pleco (correct pronunciations for TW being another one). That is, when I want to know a translation but I don't know what entry(ries)/words are most commonly used in Taiwan vs. PRC, let alone other factors (e.g., now vs. in the past, formal vs informal speech [sometimes I see formal/informal markings, but I'm not sure how accurate/up-to-date these labels are).

Otherwise, noob question, but, I've assumed the most common words are generally ranked higher(?).

Context: I have the Basic Bundle.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Separate / prioritized Taiwan pronunciation is implemented for the 4.0 beta on iOS, and should come to Android too when 4.0 does. We're also working on another Taiwan-specific priority of Taiwan-optimized stroke order diagrams, but that might not be ready until a later 4.x update.

As far as Taiwanese vocabulary coming up first - I assume in searches for English words? - to do that in a useful way we would really need an English-to-Chinese dictionary that was optimized around Taiwan, like "The Right Word in Cantonese" is for Cantonese. The options there are kind of limited and I don't know of a good one for us to license, but if we ever found one, it would not be difficult to work it into the app; you'd simply rank it first in your English dictionary order and then if it covered a particular word you'd get its idiomatic Taiwanese translations ahead of any others.
 

cowabunga

秀才
Separate / prioritized Taiwan pronunciation is implemented for the 4.0 beta on iOS, and should come to Android too when 4.0 does. We're also working on another Taiwan-specific priority of Taiwan-optimized stroke order diagrams, but that might not be ready until a later 4.x update.

As far as Taiwanese vocabulary coming up first - I assume in searches for English words? - to do that in a useful way we would really need an English-to-Chinese dictionary that was optimized around Taiwan, like "The Right Word in Cantonese" is for Cantonese. The options there are kind of limited and I don't know of a good one for us to license, but if we ever found one, it would not be difficult to work it into the app; you'd simply rank it first in your English dictionary order and then if it covered a particular word you'd get its idiomatic Taiwanese translations ahead of any others.
Okay good to know. Thanks Mike. Yes English searches. I guess it would also be cool to search up an unfamiliar/unlearned Chinese word to determine how it ranks in commonality (in this case in Taiwan) compared to its synonyms. But Im not sure how that would work. Regardless, searching up English is probably more common for me if I’m guessing.

i see you mentioned Cross Strait in the past. Still recommend? Where might one find that to download?

I was looking at Cross Strait, MOEdict (seems maybe MOE has more beginner/learner friendly dictionaries than the major MOEdict one - which I guess is designed for natives?) etc, but not sure what is the best solution for right now.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Cross-Straits and MOEDict are free downloads in the "Add-ons" screen under Dictionaries / All Free.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That's only supported in the new 4.0 beta. If you've downloaded that, you should see an option for it under Chinese Language / Additional language settings.
 
Having lived in Taiwan for a few years after being in the mainland, I might chime in here.

In my personal experience, the only times you won't be understood in Taiwan using mainland vocabulary is with food items like vegetables (e.g. 馬鈴薯 instead of 土豆). Otherwise, people will understand you, and even if you use somewhat different vocab or pronunciation, you'll slowly pick up and adopt the words and pronunciation they use. They might also point out directly some of the more glaring differences, like 垃圾 la ji instead of le se. There really aren't so many differences though, and there are lists online that you can look at too.

As far as dictionaries go, the English–Chinese dictionaries in Pleco aren't good about providing regional usage information in general, not just for Taiwan/mainland, but some of the Chinese–English dictionaries do mention it. So if you find a word in an English–Chinese dictionary, you can tap on it and see if the Chinese–English dictionaries say anything more (e.g. CC and Key mention that 土豆 has a different meaning in Taiwan). If you can read Chinese already, Cross-Straights is helpful. If a word is only used in mainland or Taiwan, they start the entry with 陸詞 or 臺詞, and if pronunciation differs, they clarify with arrows (pointing right for Taiwan, left for mainland). It's always good to remember though that dictionaries never give you right answers, just things to try out. Trying out a word in conversation (or asking your tutor about it) and reading/listening to how others use it is when you find out if it's the right word or not.

If you take Chinese classes in Taiwan, something else to be aware of is that TW and Mainland traditional character sets are not completely the same, so make sure to choose a TW font for Pleco.
 
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