lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4273 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 217 of 266 07 March 2014 at 9:41am | IP Logged |
Expugnator wrote:
If it weren't for the pinyin I'd have to draw the character myself. (...) 2) looking them up without a pinyin would take too much time. |
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Have you tried the handwriting feature of Google translate ("mouse writing" in fact)? If you happen to own a smartphone, there are also free and paid apps that allow you to draw characters; it's a very fast way to look up words (and to study characters, incidentally). Alternatively, you can also learn to look up words like they did not 10 years ago: find the radical, than count the remaining strokes, etc. It also helps understand the structure of characters and there are Android apps to look up words using that method. Online, you can use that method with the zhonwen dictionary:
Link
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5165 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 218 of 266 07 March 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
I know this feature, but it still isn't faster than just typing the pinyin (at least for
me).
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stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5831 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin
| Message 219 of 266 07 March 2014 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
You need to get Pleco, you can use pinyin, draw the character or use the OCR camera
function. It's well worth paying the money.
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4519 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 220 of 266 08 March 2014 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
stelingo wrote:
You need to get Pleco, you can use pinyin, draw the character or use the OCR camera
function. It's well worth paying the money. |
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I agree! Pleco is fantastic. I also love the flashcard function
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 221 of 266 08 March 2014 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
I've been studying Pleco's HSK lists. It's also much easier to draw a character with your finger than with the mouse. The OCR is also really nice (just don't try to use it to scan characters on your computer screen) as is the built-in reader, sorta like it's own version of Perapera. I like to load txt files to my phone and read them in the reader.
But really, there shouldn't be that many unknown words in a text. There will undoubtedly be a couple that you just don't remember, but you should be able to figure the pinyin out from the audio of the text. There are even videos of many (maybe all?) of the texts.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 222 of 266 18 March 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
Crush wrote:
I think this month we're going with the 100 of anything idea. I'll be (trying) to read 100 pages of Mandarin at Lingocracy. |
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Just wanted to say that i finished my goal yesterday. I'm now at 108 pages for the month :)
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proudft Senior Member United States Joined 5152 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin
| Message 223 of 266 18 March 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
I'm at about 20. :P
AFTER THE ACCIDENT is awfully boring. I'm nearing the end of it, thankfully. I keep hoping for a surprise twist at some point, but thus far no luck.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 224 of 266 19 March 2014 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
How long is the book? You can't expect many twists in 20 pages ;) Also, if it's not that interesting you might consider trying to read something else if you've got something available.
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