There’s a new Chinese online dictionary called nciku. Oh, wait, excuse me… it’s “more than a dictionary.” The service may have a pretty bad English name, but the site itself looks well designed.
Anyway, I’m very impressed with the handwriting recognition. The interface is a very slick blend of Flash and javascript that puts other online handwriting recognition attempts to shame.
It’s great because it can recognize fluid handwriting where the strokes run together. Yes, you may have seen that kind of software before, but keep in mind that this is a free online dictionary.
Below are some examples of horrible handwriting being correctly recognized.
(Each character to the right displays its pinyin when you mouse over it.)
One of the really cool things about the handwriting recognition is that it keeps going in realtime as long as you write, and it always guesses. I’ve used programs that reach their recognition limit and just say, “nope, can’t do it.” Well, not this one. It gets an A+ for effort.
This, of course, leads to some fun experimentation. Here are a few of mine:
Thanks to David for introducing me to this website.
Awesome. Thanks to both you and David.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:20 amWhoa! that is so COOL! i like the handwriting feature! (but not working in firefox at the moment?)
August 8th, 2007 at 10:39 amThere’re some handwriting recognition softwares in internet, but now, I can use the online one, nice, thanks again! (Ok, i admit i sometimes forget/dunno the character’s pronunciation :P )
August 8th, 2007 at 10:45 amOk, my turn.
汉典
This is an online (Advanced) Chinese dictionary, it’s for native speakers but they also give simple English explainings beneath each entry. Besides, they offer tool/plug-in for your browser, check it here http://www.zdic.net/tools/
August 8th, 2007 at 11:04 amThat Rocks, John!
You’ll be happy to know that I’ve shared your site with two of my Chinese language professors and both of them are regular readers of your site and find some of your stuff to be beneficial to their students. O course, a lot of your stuff is beneficial to my own learning as well.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:01 pmWow, life can get better. Thanks for introducing the site. Now go license it and put it within Cpod!!!
August 8th, 2007 at 3:13 pmThat really is ace. It would have saved me a lot of time last week trying to track down a particular character, and made me look a little less like a vegetable.
BTW: Works fine (if slowly) on Firefox 2.0.0.6
August 8th, 2007 at 4:35 pmSo what DOES tic-tac-toe translate to?
August 8th, 2007 at 10:03 pmIt’s so cool.
August 9th, 2007 at 2:21 amThanks for sharing.
August 9th, 2007 at 2:22 amo funny man! ;p
August 9th, 2007 at 4:15 amTry drawing a happy face - you get the word “self” (Ji3).
August 9th, 2007 at 7:00 am…
Thank you Thank you THANK YOU!
I’ve been in an intensive elementary chinese class for the past month and a half, and with all the words we’ve been cramming into our heads (20+ a day) its easy to forget a few. This is a godsend for those tricky characters I forget while doing homework!
Also, I’ve been reading your blog for the last month or so and I have to say its awesome. I check it almost every day for updates (And bokane.org too, but that’s just wishful thinking…).
:)
August 9th, 2007 at 8:33 amAlthough tic-tac-toe is not played in China, 三子棋 (sanziqi) is the name I always use for it, derived from the term 五子棋 (wuziqi), a similar but more challenging game.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:38 amSO useful! Thank you!
August 9th, 2007 at 10:26 amSuper cool!
August 10th, 2007 at 2:03 amThanks for mentioning this website…. everytime I come across a fun new tool like this it just renews my desire to learn chinese… Thanks a lot!
August 10th, 2007 at 2:37 amThanks for the nice comments about what I think is one of our best features.
I got our blog back up and running so check it out if you’ve got the time.
August 13th, 2007 at 7:08 pmBy the time I got to the end of that entry, I was laughing out loud. Thank you for directing me to nciku, and thanks for the giggle.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:50 pmnciku (what a name!??) will not recognize traditional characters…
August 16th, 2007 at 12:06 amAwesome awesome awesome. But for the life of me I couldn’t get it to input 手, I was trying to look up some word where I only knew one of the characters and was feeling too lazy to press ctrl+shift. And the dictionary isn’t as click-aroundable as Wenlin’s. But in general this is a great tool and at least 20 times better than looking up characters with those cheesy stroke tables at the beginning of the dictionary.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:05 amThank you all for your interest in NCIKU and the Handwriting Recognition, which is the result of cooperation NHN and UniHan - my company. Please give us more comment and suggestions about Chinese e-learning, that we may provide more and more amazing service to you !
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:12 pmWe just made some upgrades over here at nciku. Check them out when you’ve got the time.
http://blog.nciku.com/blog/en/?p=9
PS> Thanks for wasting my Sunday on your geometry problem.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm[...] what I’m looking for even before I finish. For more on this innovative tool, checkout this Sinosplice post from last year [...]
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 amI saw nciku only yesterday for the first time. I began to study Chinese. Your experimentation is fun. It makes me laugh. Thank you for the useful information about a new free Chinese online dictionary, nciku.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:20 pmwell, you should try this site too: Dict.hjenglish.com
April 30th, 2008 at 8:24 pmhi….guys….now you can add nciku-msn-buddy on your msn list. very cool chinese study tool :) just add: nciku@msn.com
May 6th, 2008 at 9:57 amnciku’s parent company is apparently the biggest internet company in Korea, and they seem to be investing quite a lot of resources into the nciku website, so I don’t understand how they could have chosen such an awful name. It’s hard to remember and difficult to work out how to pronounce it. They are currently running a competition to find a slogan to make nciku easier to remember. I think they shot themselves in the foot when they chose their name, and now they need to bite the bullet (in their foot!) and start over with a new name, carefully chosen this time.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 amI just checked out the “nciku” tool, and it is very impressive (website is pretty stream lined as well), and Richard is right about the bad choice of name and branding, perhaps they should change their name to some thing more brand-able, it’s not too late ;)
May 30th, 2008 at 8:19 pm