Encore un Nieme blog?

The first thing I did when I began to learn Chinese was to search open-source softwares and free websites to help me. The commercial softwares are way too expensive, and the open-source solutions are very few...

Then I found nciku.
Nciku is the google of dictionaries : very clear and simple interface, but a lot of possibilities.

Nciku is an Chinese-English dictionary that accepts pinyin (with auto-completion), hanzi and even handwriting. The results show the hanzi and its pinyin, the definition and lots of examples. With the new text-to-speech option you can listen to the word you searched, and also to the examples!

Handwriting?

The fun part is that you can use handwriting! If you know how a Chinese dictionary works, you understand that it's a revolution. The handwriting recognition works perfectly, even if your hanzi looks like a 3-years old kid did it. No need to remember the radical, to know the stroke order...

If like me you are learning Chinese writing, you can easily find an unknown character and then get the stroke order!!

Sign-Up for more

If you sign-up, you can get your own vocabulary lists. You can do like me and list the words you can't remember. Make vocab list by themes. You can keep track of your progress and pass memorization tests.
I found it very useful to consolidate the vocabulary I learned during my Chinese lessons.

If you sign-up you can also participate to the BBS, Questions & Answers, grab conversations and personalize your Nciku.

Unlike many (Chinese) websites, it's free and "clean" : no annoying popup, no annoying mails, no ads, it works on Firefox, Opera, konqueror... Nckiu is easy to use, simple, but very complete.

The swiss army knife of Chinese dictionaries.

That's my first post in English! I just finished one week of Chinese lesson, four hours a day. It was quite busy, since I often stayed at school to study and practise with the teachers or others students. But it was a good chance to meet two classmates, one Japanese girl and a Swiss. We got chance to eat Beijing roasted duck and and Cantonese food together, in places that my girlfriend and me like.

I'm very happy to meet Noriko and Hung! Hope that we can be good friends!

Un peu de français, ça va pas faire de mal! Je viens de faire une semaine de cours, 4 heures par jour. C'est assez intensif si on prend en compte le fait que je restais souvent une heure ou deux supplémentaires dans l'école pour réviser, parler aux profs... Mais ça été une super occasion de rencontrer deux autres "étudiants", une japonaise qui vit en Chine Noriko et un suisse d'origine cantonaise Hung. On a eu l'occasion d'aller manger du canard laqué et de cuisine cantonaise dans des restaurant que moi et ma copine nous connaissons.

Je suis super content d'avoir rencontré Noriko et Hung, j'espère qu'on deviendra bons amis!