Cantonese Dictionary

Discussions on the Cantonese language.
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Kobo-Daishi

Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Kobo-Daishi »

Dear readers,

I posted this question at the computing forum at www.zhongwen.com , before they took the forums down, and didn't get much of a response. So, I am posting it here.

Is there anything like the CEDICT for Cantonese out there on the web?

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Alan Au

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Alan Au »

See if this is what you are looking for:

http://www.chinalanguage.com/CCDICT/index.html

Alan
Kobo-Daishi

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Kobo-Daishi »

Dear Alan,

Thank you for your reply.

Perhaps, I should have added the word “project” after CEDICT in my initial posting. What I actually meant was that I was wondering if there was a free downloadable Cantonese-English dictionary available on the Internet, something along the line of the CEDICT project’s dictionary.

The CEDICT dictionary is a Chinese-English dictionary in the Mandarin dialect that you can use off-line. It was compiled using words and definitions submitted by Internet users. The dictionary hasn’t been updated in quite a while. Many software programs and web sites use this dictionary as their main source for Chinese-English definitions.

You can find out more about this dictionary at:

http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html

and

http://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/cedict.html

The dictionary, that you recommended, at this site is fine as a character dictionary, but for words that are more than one character long you’re out of luck.

For instance, if you want to find the word “peanut” 花生 (Mand: hua1 sheng1, Cant: fa1 saang1) and input “peanut” at the English keyword query, you get “sorry, could not find any records matcing (sic) your search criterium”.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Alan Au

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Alan Au »

Hi Kobo-Daishi,

Oh, I see what you mean now.

I don't know of any such thing for Cantonese. But I would really like to see such a facility. Perhaps we can set up our own? My Cantonese is only at the intermediate level but I've been thinking of writing my own interface to the CCDICT. I'll think about adding a submission facility similar to CEDICT so that the dabase can be grown.

Alan
Kobo-Daishi

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Kobo-Daishi »

Dear Alan,

How would your interface work?

How would it access the CCDICT?

Do you mean that your interface would access the CCDICT at the chinalanguage web site or do you mean that you have downloaded the information contained within the CCDICT and will put it at a web site you will design?


Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Alan Au

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Alan Au »

Hi Kobo-Daishi,

I'm still thinking about the design of the interface. I think it will be simple to start with as I want to get the basic database, search and web features set up. Then I'll enhance as needed.

Yes, I have downloaded the CCDICT as a flat file and intend to write my own back end and web interface. Can use that as a starting point to build up a larger database by making use of your suggestion of having users submit entries.

I've also been trying to think about what the best way to display the characters is. To start with, I have a database of about 15,000 characters in GIF format. Do you know of a better way to do this?

Thanks.

Alan
Kobo-Daishi

Re: Cantonese Dictionary

Post by Kobo-Daishi »

Dear Alan,

Have you got your web site up?

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
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