Hey guys,

I'd like to slowly get started with a little bit of Chinese and don't really know what to use as my main dictionary. And a good dictionary is the most important tool to learn a language.

What are the best ones both C->E and C->C (for later)? Something with multiple dictionaries like Yahoo! Japan has for Japanese would be great.

Alternatively, are there dictionaries that are not online but still worth considering? (electronic, software, paper?)

Any ideas? 谢谢

http://www.nciku.com

Has C-E, C-C, example sentences with audio, writing recognition of characters...

Basically, it's more or less perfect.

Thanks, this site seems awesome, lots of example sentences!

I've been using this site for a hanzi dictionary http://www.cojak.org/index.php?function=about

And zhongwen for hanzi studies http://www.zhongwen.com/

Thanks for the suggestions!

For an online dictionary, http://www.nciku.com looks pretty good.

An excellent offline dictionary would be a program called PlecoDict (http://www.plecodict.com).

Currently it is for Windows Mobile and PalmOS, but they are also working on an iPhone version of their product.

I use MDBG.net as standard. It's fast, comprehensive, and includes many options (tone marks, numbering, colours, simplified/traditional, etc.)

If I need to look up a word, it would be frustratingly slow if I opened a new tab, loaded up the dictionary, then typed in the word, etc. So I've set up a shortcut in Firefox, where all I have to do is open a new tab, type "m xxx" (without the quotes) and it will look up XXX, regardless of whether it's english, pinyin or hanzi.

You can see how to do this yourself here:
http://mandarinsegments.blogspot.com/200...-fast.html

Good luck
Greg

Hijack: any dictionaries anyone knows of for Cantonese, in Cantonese (i.e. that have Yale/Jyutping)? Been using Sheik's dictionary, but I'm told some of the sentences in there are not the best representation of the way the language is actually used...