qhanzi

[profiterole_reads]

qhanzi is a very useful website that I've just discovered (maybe some of you already know it or something similar).

It's not always easy to find out the meaning of an unknown hanzi in a picture or a video. Instead of counting strokes and looking it up, you can just draw it and it gives you the proper computer character so that you can look it up.

There are a couple of other tabs that look interesting as well, but the first one is my favourite.

Comments

[laireshi]

I use pleco, but that's a phone app.

[profiterole_reads]

Good to know! Drawing on a tactile screen is probably a little easier than drawing with a mouse.

[laireshi]

You can also draw in google translate (both app and web), but I find actual dictionaries better for obvious reasons. Still, it works if you just want character recognition.

[profiterole_reads]

Oh, I hadn't noticed you could do that in Google Translate, even though china_shop had told me about the keyboard function for Korean (I type on Lexilogos in Roman alphabet and it converts it to Korean syllables) and it's all in the same menu.

[grayswandir]

Thanks for sharing this! Like laireshi, I've been using Pleco (on mobile) and Google Translate (on PC) for this feature, but I just tried qhanzi and it loads faster than Google Translate for me, so I may switch to using that as my PC option. :)

It's not always easy to find out the meaning of an unknown hanzi in a picture or a video.

Hah, yes! It's so great to have places where you can just handwrite the characters and look them up that way. I spent so much time looking characters up by radical and stroke count before, and it took forever! (And another great thing is that if you can't read something because it's in an unusual font, handwriting apps like this can often figure out what the characters are, if you write them out exactly as you see them. I do this a lot with videos on YouTube etc. where they use cute bubbly fonts and I can't recognize half of the characters, even if they're words I know!)

[profiterole_reads]

Yes, it's very fast.

I get you. Even handwritten Korean or stylised Korean (in logos or adverts, for example) sometimes leaves me pondering and it's an alphabet, so it's not like there are many possibilities.

[donutsweeper]

Thanks! I didn't know about ghanzi, it looks like it is very good for drawing a hanzi and looking it up. Several other online dictionaries have that ability but some are much more strict about stroke order. (https://www.purpleculture.net/chinese-english-dictionary/ and https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary, although mdbg can be strict about stroke order)

[profiterole_reads]

When I have a doubt about strike order, I look it up on Wiktionary, but of course I can't look it up until I have a searchable computer character. lol

[sakana17]

This is great! Thank you! I've been using Pleco, but it's good to have another source, and handy to have a website.

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome. :-)

[yaaurens]

Echoing the others, thanks for this! More resources, huzzah!

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome. ^_^

[trobadora]

Thank you for the link, that looks very useful!

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome!