To learn Chinese, you can get a Chinese-English dictionary or an English-Chinese dictionary, so that you can search a Chinese character for its English meaning or search an English word for its Chinese meaning.
Instead to buy a dictionary, you can use some free online dictionaries, and among which, below 10 are most powerful and worthy of a try.
1. Nciku
Nciku is an online English Chinese dictionary, and you can search Chinese characters, pinyin or English words, the search results will include pronunciation with sound, definitions, and some sample sentences. You can listen to the sample sentences both in Chinese and English.
2. Dict.CN
Dict.CN is an online Chinese-English English-Chinese Dictionary, and you can search Chinese characters for the English explanations, or you can search English words for the Chinese explanations. The search results will show you the definitions, the relative explanations, and some sample sentences.
3. Mdbg Chinese-English Dictionary
The Mdbg Chinese-English dictionary is good for you to learn how to speak and write Chinese characters, you can search Chinese characters, pinyin or English word, you can listen to the Chinese characters, and you can also select to learn simplified characters or traditional characters.
Go to Mdbg Chinese-English Dictionary
4. Bab.la Dictionary
The Bab.la dictionary is available for multiple language translations. You can search Chinese characters, pinyin or English words, the translation results will show you definitions, similar terms, and sample sentences, all the results are written in both English and Chinese.
5. YellowBridge
With the YellowBridge Chinese-English Talking Dictionary, you can search Chinese words, Chinese pinyin or English words, then you will get some related Chinese words and their meaning, pronunciations, simplified or traditional characters, etc. You can learn more details (such as writing) for every single Chinese character.
6. Babylon English-Chinese-Dictionary
You can search Babylon English-Chinese-Dictionary with Chinese characters, pinyin or English words, the search results will show you the traditional or simplified characters, pronunciations, definitions, and explanations from Wikipedia.
Go to Babylon English-Chinese-Dictionary
7. Chinese Character Dictionary
The Chinese Character Dictionary of Chinese-tools.com is available for you to search Chinese characters, pinyin and radical, when you search single character, the search results can be filtered by general meaning, definitions, words or vocabulary.
Go to Chinese Character Dictionary
8. Mandarintools Chinese-English Dictionary
With Mandarintools.com’s Chinese-English Dictionary, you can search Chinese words, pinyin, or English words, the search results will show the Chinese word (simplified and traditional), the pinyin representation of the word, and the English definition.
Go to Mandarintools Chinese-English Dictionary
9. Xiaoma Cidian
You can search Xiaoma Cidian by Chinese characters, pinyin or English words, the search results will show you pronunciations (without sound), English definitions, radicals, variants, and some frequent compounds.
10. Google Dictionary
Google Dictionary supports multiple language translations. You can search a Chinese word for its English or Chinese explanations, or you can search an English word for its English or Chinese explanations, the results will also show you the related phrases, web translations and web definitions of the word.
Go to Google Dictionary
Among the above 10 websites, my favorite is Nciku, since you can listen to the sample sentences both in Chinese and English. How about you? Which one is your favorite? Or do you have any other free online dictionary to learn Chinese? Share with us by adding a comment.
Related free web apps:
Xiaoma Cidian has moved to http://www.xiaoma.info/
It also features HSK lists, and Chinese News annotation: select daily news article to get it segmented by compounds with proposed translation.
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