Infrequent Nights

Wenlin is my absolute favorite Chinese learning resource. I can honestly see myself using this computer program, or some incarnation of it, until I either miraculously acquire Mandarin fluency or I die. At first glance Wenlin appears to be an electric dictionary. Which it of course is, but it is so much more. The real power of Wenlin is its interface. One can search by pinyin, stroke count, radicals (by number or stroke count), character components, word, phrase, English meaning, character frequency, word frequency, unicode number, and more methods I'm likely forgetting to mention. If one is really stuck he can even use his computer's mouse to draw the character into an input box.

What this all means is that when one needs information Wenlin makes it easy to find. If I'm reading and I see a character I don't know I can find it easily as I have numerous ways of looking for it. If it's used it conjunction with another character I can search by words containing that character. If it has a component I recognize I can search by that component. If I can guess how its pronounced I can search by that sound, and so on and so forth.

Wenlin has sound files for every character, plus stroke order animations. These features are especially useful for people earlier on in the process of studying Chinese. Cantonese pronunciations are also included for many more popular characters. Many characters are accompanied by interesting etymological data, and some even have tips designed to make remembering the character's structure easier. Furthermore all characters are available in simplified and traditional forms.

Beyond all the regular functionality of a dictionary Wenlin offers much more. It can be used as a word processor/text editor or to view documentation. I often cut and paste Chinese news stories off of websites into Wenlin when I read them. Not only can I make the font nice and big to make reading the Hanzi easier, if I run into reading difficulties I can scroll over the characters and the program will display a definition at the bottom of the screen. The program is smart enough to know that if two characters used as a word are together the word's definition should be displayed. Included with the full version of the program are numerous full length texts drawn from China's long literary history. The texts are accompanied with English translations and offer students a good way to practice their Chinese and learn more about Chinese culture.

There is a high-quality flash card training/testing system included. I have used it briefly, but as I find my preferred learning methods do not jive with flash cards I haven't tested it extensively. Nonetheless this should be an attractive feature to many students.

Like I said, Wenlin is my absolute favorite resource. It makes my studying faster, more efficient, and easier. This means I am able to get more done in the hours I put in, which I like to think means I'll progress faster than I would otherwise. All that said, it isn't cheap. Purchasing information is available on their website. Note that academic, and institutional discounts are likely available. There is a demo version available for download, but it is severly hampered by the size of the dictionary included.