alex and betty » Chinese language

The Father of Pinyin (Pīnyīn zhī fù)

alex — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:45:17 +0000

An illiteracy rate in China in the last 50 years has dropped from 80% to 10%. In this fascinating 4 minute interview in February, 102 year old Zhou Youguang remembers being told by the Communist government to create the pinyin romanization system in the 1950s. Pinyin has become the standard mechanism for learning how to pronounce Chinese characters, both inside and outside of China. To Zhou and his system, I am greatly indebted. Now if I can only memorize several hundred more characters…

In Pursuit of the Chinese Language

alex — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:12:45 +0000

I have been working on my Chinese literacy skills and the engineer in me has been increasingly frustrated with the lack of good software to aid these endeavors. So, today, I introduce Pingguo Chinese-English Dictionary, for the Mac OS X, of course.

Pingguo Dictionary

alex — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:21:46 +0000

Made for use with OS X’s Dictionary program, Pingguo leverages the public domain Chinese-English dictionary files of CC-CEDICT.

Pingguo Dictionary 1.0.0.3 (Pinyin Edition) Pingguo Dictionary 1.0.0.3 (Zhuyin Edition)

Requirements

Mac OS X 10.5+

Version History

1.0.0.3 – August 7, 2011

Fixed crashing under OS X 10.7 (Lion).
Based on the 2011-08-07 20:56:03 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.

1.0.0.2 – May 3, 2009

No functional changes.
Based on the 2010-05-02 21:59:33 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.

1.0.0.1 – June 3, 2009

No functional changes.
Based on the 2009-06-03 05:51:07 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.

1.0 – November 10, 2008

Split into two dictionary files — one for Pinyin and the other for Zhuyin.
Gives pronunciation in contextual menu dictionary panel.
Using different fonts for traditional and simplified characters.
Based on the 2008-11-08 21:00:48 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.

0.6 – July 7, 2008

Added support for Zhuyin fuhao (bopomofo). The display of the phonetic system can be configured in the dictionary application’s Preferences.
Based on the 2008-05-25 11:49:13 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.

0.5 – June 18, 2008

First public release.
Includes searches based on Chinese characters (traditional and simplified), pinyin (with or within tone marks) and English.
Based on the 2008-05-25 11:49:13 GMT release of CC-CEDICT.