Mandarin Scholarship Taiwan » learning http://mandarinscholarship.com Studying Chinese in Taipei, Taiwan Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:56:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Web based handwriting recognition tool at NICKU.com http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/10/12/web-based-handwriting-recognition-tool-at-nickucom/ http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/10/12/web-based-handwriting-recognition-tool-at-nickucom/#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:33:10 +0000 kang-wei http://mandarinscholarship.wordpress.com/?p=217

Nciku is basically an online Chinese-English dictionary and is a great tool for Mandarin scholarship students. I had a look at it a while ago and came to the conclusion that it was a social networking dictionary. You can sign up and interact with others in the nciku community, as you look up new vocabulary. It didn’t appeal to me, as I thought the concept was odd and had been happily using mdbg.net.

That said, the Handwrite Characters function, or handwriting recognition tool, is brilliant! Pinyin.info recently highlighted this feature which I have used several times.

What is the handwriting recognition tool? The handwriting tool allows you to find characters by drawing them. Simply write the character, with your mouse, in the box and select the desired one from the list that appears.

If you’ve ever tried to translate a character, you will know that if you don’t know the radical it can take a very long time to work out. This tool makes short work of that problem.

How does it work?

The tool searches our character database based on the appearance of what you draw, the stroke order you use, and other factors. Even if you are unsure how exactly to write a character, the character you are looking for will most likely be included in results for you to recognize and choose from.
Does stroke order matter?
Stroke order does not matter. We will find your character even if you don’t write it perfectly.

The handwriting recognition tool has been around for many years. My Chinese teacher introduced me to it a few months ago. It was part of his Chinese language Windows OS or MS word suite. Unfortunately, I run an English language version of XP and that tool is not included.

This tool/software can also be put on a PDA. A mobile handwriting recognition tool! Just the thing for long bus journeys.

]]> http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/10/12/web-based-handwriting-recognition-tool-at-nickucom/feed/ 1049 300 Character Chinese Reader: The Lady in the Painting http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/06/300-character-chinese-reader-the-lady-in-the-painting/ http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/06/300-character-chinese-reader-the-lady-in-the-painting/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 10:54:14 +0000 kang-wei http://mandarinscholarship.wordpress.com/?p=22 Lady in Painting This book is available in Taiwan at www.books.com.tw. If your Chinese is limited it could be tough to get it delivered as Books.com.tw is an online bookstore.

The Lady in Painting is a well-known chinese folktale retold here within the limits of an elementary 300 character vocabulary. It has Yale and Pinyin romanization with Traditional characters. It’s an excellent text for those beginning to learn Chinese. As there really aren’t a huge amount of decent reading resources for beginners I think it’s worth a look. Although it is expensive. The version pictured (2008） has a CD and retails at NT$1350. There is another version (1983) without a CD for NT$673.

Yale Press has some excerpts of the 1983 version available for download:

Read the Foreword in PDF (1 page)
Read the Character Introduction and Preface in PDF (13 pages)
Read an excerpt from the book in PDF (10 pages)

Some of the characters, as my teacher pointed out, are written in a style not really used today but I still found the excerpts great to read. I’m not sure but the characters may have been updated in the 2008 version.

If you have read the 2008 version, please feel free to leave a comment.

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