What I would really like is...a Kanji/Hanzi resource that gives the readings for each character in *Japanese, *Mandarin, *Cantonese, and frankly as ***many other Chinese dialects/languages as possible (to the extent that they do have written forms). Oh, and the *simplified vs. *traditional versions, as well as *variants current and archaic, plus the *pen form of each.

I realise this is partially available in all sorts of guises, but my question is - what's the best single character resource that you feel covers the most of the above points?

It would be useful to easily compare the possible pronunciations of each character.

Or did we do this in a spreadsheet already?

Dictionaries that use the Unihan database might help.
For example: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BE%8D
But don't expect to find etymologies and compounds for all the characters.

You might want to mind the tone of your posts when making requests. Just a suggestion.

philiphoward123 Wrote:What I would really like is...a Kanji/Hanzi resource that gives the readings for each character in *Japanese, *Mandarin, *Cantonese, and frankly as ***many other Chinese dialects/languages as possible (to the extent that they do have written forms). Oh, and the *simplified vs. *traditional versions, as well as *variants current and archaic, plus the *pen form of each.

Is it too much to ask?

I realise this is partially available in all sorts of guises, but my question is - what's the best single character resource that you feel covers the most of the above points?

It would be useful to easily compare the possible pronunciations of each character.

Or did we do this in a spreadsheet already?

I did a big list a while back with something like 9000 characters including all variants. It had all the characters from RTK, RTH/RSH, 人名用 Kanji Kentei, and the Taiwan school list, and each character in Japanese, Traditional, and Simplified forms. It didn't have all the readings, but I'm sure a list of readings could be generated fairly easily. The other stuff, however, will be more challenging I think.

There is a program for Mac called Unihan Variant Dictionary that will give you all variants that exist in Unicode for any character you type in, but it's one at a time. I'm sure there's something else out there that will do the same for a big list. If you're talking about ancient forms of the characters though (Seal Script, Clerical, Bronze Script, Oracle Bones, etc.) that's a different story.

We are working on putting the entire zhongwen.com site into spreadsheet format, and I wouldn't be opposed to including variants and readings in different languages once we get the main work done if you want to help. I'm already planning on including Small Seal Script versions (the ones found in 說文 specifically) once we're done, so if I had some more help I'd definitely be willing to make this big project even bigger. I've wanted to do a really big hanzi project like that for quite a while, with info on readings in different languages, etymology, ancient forms, variants, etc. This seems like a good list to do that with (4280 characters is nothing to sneeze at, especially once you include Simplified and Japanese forms).

Of course, I'm sure a script can be written to extract most of the data you want from the Unihan database, but that's way outside my area of knowledge.

kazelee Wrote:You might want to mind the tone of your posts when making requests. Just a suggestion.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing. "Awful demanding."

philiphoward123 Wrote:What I would really like is...a Kanji/Hanzi resource that gives the readings for each character in *Japanese, *Mandarin, *Cantonese, and frankly as ***many other Chinese dialects/languages as possible (to the extent that they do have written forms). Oh, and the *simplified vs. *traditional versions, as well as *variants current and archaic, plus the *pen form of each.

Is it too much to ask?

I realise this is partially available in all sorts of guises, but my question is - what's the best single character resource that you feel covers the most of the above points?

It would be useful to easily compare the possible pronunciations of each character.

Or did we do this in a spreadsheet already?

Wakan can show you lots of information about each character:

Korean reading
Mandarin reading
Japanese definition
ON reading
KUN reading
Nanori readings
Chinese definition
Cantonese reading
Radicals
Stroke count
Bushu radical
Unicode radical
Japanese radical
Morohashi radical
KangXi radical
Korean radical
Cangjie
SKIP code
FourCornerCode
Spahn & Hadamitzky
S&H Kanji & Kana
DeRoo code
Japanese frequency
Joyou grade
Chinese frequency
HongKong grade
JLPT level
Compatibility variant
Semantic variant
Traditional variant
Z-variant
BigFive
CCCII
EACC
GB2312
GB12345
JIS 0213
JIS 0208
JIS 0212
Unicode
Halpern index
Nelson index
Haig index
Morohashi index
KangXi index
HanYu index
Henshall index
Gakken index
Heisig index
O'Neill index
Learners index
Essential index
Sakade index
Tuttle index
Crowley index
Nishiguchi&Kono index
JBP index
Kodansha index
Cihai index
Casey index

I hope that's enough.

kazelee Wrote:You might want to mind the tone of your posts when making requests. Just a suggestion.

I'm sorry if it has offended you.

To be honest, I have no idea what tone you are reading it with. The tone I wrote it in is not offensive.

I tried editing it with but it just looks sarcastic.

Is it possible you could suggest an improvement? It might help. I don't want to antagonise anybody.


O>>>Oh, maybe you think I was requesting RTK people to make me a resource with the above in it? Then when I said "Is it too much to ask?" it sounds like I'm addressing that remark directly to you. No, sorry, it's supposed to be a rhetorical device.

If that was the problem then sorry about that. It may be hard to discern my tone since I haven't written many posts. I will try harder

To the other helpful souls, thanks very much for the information!

I will look into Unihan and Wakan, it looks interesting.

bflatnine, your zhongwen project sounds interesting, I have been following it on the other thread. I wanted to have enough time to offer to help, hopefully I will ne anle to soon?

Thank you all!

*suitably mollified at response to tone of post, yet grateful anybody read it at all

philiphoward123: your tone wasn't offensive, it was clearly tongue-in-cheek when you said "is this too much to ask?". Non-native english speakers might interpret this as a demand as opposed to gentle sarcasm. Perhaps english isn't kazelee's mother tongue, or perhaps he misunderstood the nuance.

Hey blaha, yes I just realised it was something of an ironic tone! But as I am English that might be difficult to avoid I know this is basically the only country that has irony~~

As it was such a big thing to ask of the world at large, I suppose I thought it was clear that it might be too much to ask

I'm glad this happened though, because I think language learning is all about communication, and I want to know how to communicate better.

I'm also English, which is perhaps why it didn't seem rude to me. Aren't we a sardonic bunch.

I'm English as well and didn't find anything wrong with his tone? Just sounded like he was asking for something he wasn't expecting to find in full form.

same here ^^ so desensitized am I to the sarcasm and rhetorical speech of daily life, the OP sounded perfectly humble and polite ;)

Yep^^

Quote:I know this is basically the only country that has irony~~

We have irony in America, too, but 99% of the population is too stupid to realize it. (Also, we spell realize with a z)

I think maybe the problem was "Is it too much to ask?" At least in the US, that's often used to mean "This should have been done already, I can't believe I even have to ask you to do it" Same thing with "All I ask", which is often used (in the US, at least) with an exasperated tone of voice to mean "This is bare minimum stuff that you should already know to do anyway, but because you're not doing it, I have to spell it out."

I think the OP meant both of those in their more literal meaning but I can see how people would take it to be rude.

All I ask is a little respect when I come home! Oh baby!
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take care, T-C-T
OH! SOCK IT TO ME SOCK IT TO ME SOCK IT TO ME SOCK IT TO ME

I also find no recognizably offensive or demanding tone. Didn't seem particularly ironic, either, more of a minutely diffuse exasperation aimed at 'the situation'. I think kazelee was simply in hunter-killer mode, thanks to another thread.

For my next trick...how about a vicious discussion about the international conspiracy to marginalise Esperanto?


(for those of you who remember that thread)

I also didn't find anything offensive about the OP and I'm from America, hell I am American, I'm also pretty dumb too so I don't think intelligence has anything to do with it.

Haven't used Wakan, but sounds like it might be what you are looking.

So how about that Middlesex philosophy department? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...sity-logic

Blahah Wrote:Perhaps english isn't kazelee's mother tongue, or perhaps he misunderstood the nuance.

My mother tongue is silence, but that's beside the point. My thinking was that the OP was being intentionally rude or being rude by accident. Apparently I don't grasp British humour (with a U, strangely ).

@kanjiwarrior

I'm east coast. Smackle had it right. The post seemed lacking in it.

Also, as touched on by nest0r, I've been having to unleash my type A a lot lately (not just on the forum).

But... uh... let's not derail this topic any further.

nest0r

Quote:The closure of philosophy at Middlesex will send a terrible message

Not to many, I would imagine, though that doesn't minimise its importance - RevTK is hardly a majority view in the world of Asian language study but that doesn't make it any less important. Anyway I'm too busy sipping my Oloroso. Did you know a man can never sip the same sherry twice (Heraclitus)?

Kazelee
I wouldn't trust a guard who didn't challenge an interloper. Anyway it keeps me on my toes.

shihoro
Thank you, you kanji scum~~

>>Back to the actual post, Wakan doesn't work for me on Mac but rikaichan,which I can use, does have a lot of info. Denshi Jisho has quite a lot too. They do have Mandarin and Korean, as well as Japanese. As I was saying, I can find a lot of the things I need in different places, but I was wondering if there was one best place at the moment.

bflatnine and others
I wonder if there are books that list these things, maybe in Chinese or Japanese for example?

As my future plan will involve both Mandarin and Cantonese (starting from Japanese, slightly easier for me as I find tones to be the hardest thing), I was trying to think of an economical way of assigning pronunciations to the Hanzi, or at least with which to compare them. It seems Cantonese doesn't have as many resources as Mandarin, and the availabilty of such lessens as you go to even less "scholarly" languages like Hokkien or whatever. I don't know if I am correct about that but it seems reasonable to me.

I don't know if it will continue be helpful as I carry on with these languages but certainly at the moment knowing something like "你好 can be pronounced Nǐ hǎo and Néih hóu" is good for me.

philiphoward123 Wrote:Did you know a man can never sip the same sherry twice (Heraclitus)?

Fortunately Heraclitus chose to publish the 'stream' version of this pearl, after realising regurgitation put a spanner in the works.

Regardless of the tone, the irrelevant topic title is annoying.