"In the last two months I have learned more using Clavis Sinica than I did in two years of college Chinese."
—Martin Colwell
Chinese Dictionary Software
A traditional Chinese or Chinese-English dictionary can be very difficult to use because of the lack of an alphabet in Chinese. Clavis Sinica is a powerful new Chinese dictionary software package that incorporates a large Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary in electronic form, reducing the need for a standard Chinese print dictionary. The Chinese portion of the dictionary includes over 4,000 of the most commonly used Chinese characters. The dictionary entry for each Chinese character includes the pinyin pronunciation of the character, its meaning in English, and an analysis of the character into its component parts. The software also includes a versatile Chinese text reader, which combined with the Chinese dictionary can help translate Chinese texts into English.
Clavis Sinica Chinese Dictionary Features:
- The program's analytical dictionary of more than 45,000 entries includes over 4,000 characters and over 40,000 multi-character compound words, phrases, and idioms.
- Dictionary records for all entries include pinyin romanization(s) and concise English definition(s). For characters they also include stroke count, wuhua stroke order, radical and phonetic parts, frequency indicator, and (for 500 of the most common characters) etymological explanations.
- Powerful search functions permit searching the Chinese dictionary by character or compound pinyin, radical number, number and/or order of strokes, or English word or phrase
- Character Information Window provides helpful lexical and usage frequency information for each character, and breaks characters into radical and phonetic parts for ease in learning
- Radical Information Window provides definition and etymology for each radical, along with a complete, frequency-ordered list of all characters using that radical
- Shared Phonetic Window shows all characters using any given phonetic part
- Compound Window lists all compounds and phrases using any given character in any position
- Customization features allow user to add any number of new characters and compounds to the program dictionary as well as to edit existing entries
