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I was interviewed this week by the very nice people at PythonAnywhere: blog.pythonanywhere.com/79/ . They do a great job of hosting my hanzi analysis scripts, and allow you to create and maintain a site run by the Python language without any configuration, or uploading or downloading anything- you edit the code through a very advanced web editor. You can create a free account to try it out. The code runs on Amazon's EC2 servers, so the performance is quite amazing.

Thes hanzi tools I created do all sorts of things that are too numerous to list, give them a try here: hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com . I made a small improvement to the dictionary today, so that it copes with large amounts of input better. It shows a short phrase word by word, and annotates a longer phrase inline (recognise the poem?)

 
 
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I'm not sure if there's much point to this one, but just in case someone ever needs it- here's a page that lists all Chinese homophones, with a page for each word length: http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/homophones

I am defining homophones as words with identical pinyin. You can choose whether or not tones should be ignored by selecting the appropriate option.

 
 
I have seen this question asked a few times, so here's the best answer I am able to give.
 
 
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My HSK list browsing script took a step closer to being a real dictionary. I added:
  • Pinyin (tones optional) search, no wildcards yet
  • English (definition) search
  • All of the searches are done from the same edit field, very few things will match both English and pinyin, if they do you'll get 
  • Greying out of words/chars that only have frequency information and no dictionary entries
  • Added pinyin and definitions to the tooltip text for all characters/words.
  • Colouring of links to HSK list pages

And it's still lighting fast, and as before shows CC-CEDICT definitions, character composition, and word compounds. Give it a try 现在! http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/cidian?q=%E7%8E%B0%E5%9C%A8

 
 
A few people have asked me this by email, so here's the answer I gave them:
Remember, to really 'know' an HSK word you have to be able to use it in all of the different ways that Hanban expects you to. See my recent posts on HSK 1, HSK 2, and HSK 3 example sentences.
 
 
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The HSK list web pages and mini dictionary that appears when you click on words and characters in the pages have had a quick overhaul. There is a new option at the top of the page to ’expand‘ the characters and words to include frequency, radical, HSK version and definition information for every character displayed.

Thanks Davide for reminding me to give that script some attention!

Give the expanded versions of the pages a try:

HSK Chars: http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/hskchars2012?expand=yes
HSK Words: http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/hskwords2012?expand=yes
Dictionary: http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/cidian?expand=yes&q=%E8%83%BD

 
 
In my last post I announced some new Pleco English-English user dictionaries. Here's a guide that shows how to install these dictionaries in Pleco 3.0.

Step 1: Get the zip file into Pleco

  • Open the Web Reader in Pleco from the Navigation Pane->READER->Open Document->Web Reader.
  • Navigate to http://hskhsk.com/dictionaries (1)
  • Click on the download link. (2)
  • Click Open.  (3)
  • Click Save . (4)

 
 
I have created two English-English User dictionaries for use with Pleco. They are converted from Webster's Unabridged (1913) and WordNet 3.0 (2006). You can download them here! I also wrote a quick guide to installing them in Pleco 3.0.
 
 
I've added a dictionary 东西词典 to the script that runs my character analysis tool. It is currently only searchable by Chinese characters, but it has lots of links to related characters and words using character and word composition.  It also shows at a glance information about HSK level and frequency. It contains links to some more polished dictionaries on each character and word. Give it a try here: http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/cidian?q=%E8%83%BD
 
 
I'm a big fan of the AllSet Learning Grammar Wiki, and one of the most useful things I've come across on there is a few pages that list Chinese grammatical points according to their European Common Framework level. These six levels roughly correspond to the six levels of the New HSK, so it would be a good idea for someone studying for the HSK to ensure that they are familiar with all of the grammar points at their level and below. Each list of grammatical points links to a page with more explanations and examples, a really great resource! I have noted the corresponding HSK levels for each page.