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Pleco Chinese Dictionary 9+
Handwriting, OCR, flashcards
Pleco Inc.
-
- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
Pleco is the ultimate Chinese learning companion: an integrated dictionary / document reader / flashcard system with fullscreen handwriting input and live OCR, from a company that's been making the world's best mobile Chinese learning apps since 2001.
Major features: ($ = paid add-on)
• Amazing dictionaries. We offer two free built-in dictionaries: the popular open-source CC-CEDICT, with over 110,000 frequently-updated entries, and our own PLC dictionary, with 125,000 entries, parts of speech, and over 25,000 example sentences (with Pinyin). More than two dozen other dictionaries are available as free and paid ($) add-ons, including licensed titles from well-known publishers like Oxford, Longman, FLTRP, Tuttle, SLPH, and Commercial Press.
• Powerful merged search: look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces / tones optional), or English, with support for wildcards and full-text search. And no need to tediously flip between all of those dictionaries to find a word - just type in your search term and instantly get a combined, frequency-sorted result list.
• Links and cross-references: easily look up character components, break down words into individual characters, look up lists of words containing a particular character, and search across all dictionaries for example sentences containing a word.
• Gorgeous typography: see it for yourself in our screenshots - we think we're one of the best-looking Chinese dictionaries around. Alternate Kai/Song/Xing-style Chinese fonts are also available ($).
• PRC/HK/Taiwan-friendly: every part of Pleco supports both traditional and simplified, headword readings can be shown in Pinyin and Zhuyin, and some dictionaries even support Cantonese. (note: stroke order diagrams do support traditional characters, but use PRC order)
• Audio: Hear Mandarin and Cantonese for words and example sentences using iOS' free built-in text-to-speech system. We also offer add-ons ($) with native-speaker Mandarin recordings and higher-quality Mandarin TTS.
• Document Reader: bring in text from the clipboard and tap on words in it to instantly look them up. Upgrade ($) adds support for tap-lookups in text, HTML, DOC, DOCX, PDF, and EPUB files. We also offer graded readings ($).
• OCR: look up words simply by pointing your device's camera at them, or by tapping on them in a still image. ($)
• Fullscreen handwriting: use your device's whole screen instead of just a little box. Extremely accurate and highly tolerant of stroke order mistakes. (enhanced $)
• Flashcards: create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, use advanced memorization techniques like SRS, and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks handwriting and tone drills. ($)
• Stroke Order Diagrams: animations showing you how to draw each character; 500 characters for free, 28,000 in paid ($) version.
• User dictionaries: create new dictionary entries right on your device as you encounter new words. ($)
• No ads.
We also offer famously excellent customer support and an active user community at http://www.plecoforums.com. And we're constantly working to make our products better; our sales and customer base have been growing for two decades across 4 different platforms. You can be confident that we'll still be fixing bugs and adding features for years to come.
Paid add-ons can be transferred to other devices that link to your iTunes account just like any other paid iTunes content; simply install our free app, open up the "Add-ons" screen, and tap on the "Restore Purchases" button to activate your purchase on each device.
Please contact us at support@pleco.com, via the form at http://www.pleco.com/contact.html, or using the in-app "Contact Support" command with any questions - we'll be delighted to hear from you.
What’s New
Version 3.2.74
Bug fixes.
Ratings and Reviews
King of Chinese learning apps
Unquestionably the best and only resource you will ever need for Chinese learning. Despite the small hefty fee you pay for the Main dictionary (which is well worth the price), this app has single handedly helped advance my Chinese learning to a large extent, a whole dictionary easily accessible with a touch of your smartphone in your pocket unlike the old times where I have to manually search each character which was laborious and time consuming. With the integration of web reader, this has allowed me to read Facebook/instagram posts with just one touch (pop up assistance) and this has allowed me to effectively improve my reading and pronunciation skills (click pop up to draw up the word and pronunciation). When I encounter any words in a newspaper I can just scan the character or use pinyin/hand write the character in to look up.
Whoever invented this app deserves an award because this has been the greatest Chinese app ever made, no other app does it better.
Essential and wonderful resource for anyone and anything Chinese
I use this app every day multiple times. I find it essential. It is accurate and well organised. I find it’s adding well worth the extra expense - as is the initial cost of getting a fully-registered copy. I am still exploring its capabilities. I find it’s OCR system a really good addition and I also use this, sometimes many times a day. I used to live quite often in China and I would have been struggling without it. I intend to stay often there in the future where it will improve communication with my wife who is Chinese as well as her relatives and my Chinese friends. Whilst I have been living in the UK, I still use it frequently to understand Chinese messages on such diverse apps as WeChat, Sina Weibo, and QQ. I strongly believe this app has repaid my investment in it many times over in the 9 years or so I have had it.
This is how apps should be
As someone who’s learnt Chinese for many years, this is THE app if you want to learn or improve.
The graded readers add yet another layer of great content - making reading ridiculously convenient, something which has been a motivational barrier for me for a long time.
Flashcards, the wide range of dictionaries, the app being incredibly useful without even spending a dime - you cannot avoid giving this app 5* if you’re being honest with yourself.
To the devs: keep the care and attention, keep the learner at the centre of new features as you have so far - and thanks for helping me learn Chinese all these years, couldn’t have done it without Pleco.
In-App Purchases
App Privacy
The developer, Pleco Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Purchases
- Identifiers
- Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- Pleco Inc.
- Size
- 88.7 MB
- Category
- Reference
- Compatibility
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- iPhone
- Requires iOS 11.2 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 11.2 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 11.2 or later.
- Languages
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English
- Age Rating
- 9+ Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humour
- Copyright
- © 2023 Pleco Inc. and its licensors
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- Basic Bundle £29.99
- Optical Character Recognizer £9.99
- Flashcard System £9.99
- Enhanced Handwriting £9.99
- Stroke Order Diagrams £4.99
- Professional Bundle £59.99
- Mandarin Audio (male) £4.99
- Document Reader £9.99
- Integrate Purchases £0.00
- A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese £39.99