Heisig custom dictionary or flashcards with full mnemonic detail available?

Hello together,

very nice job! Some years ago when I studied Chinese in Qingdao I wrote my thesis about a similar method how to learn Chinese characters. I found the abstract of my thesis:


An alternative teaching method for Chinese characters

Abstract

This paper introduces an alternative method, based on Character components, how to teach and learn Chinese characters. According to the components meaning of the character the learner creates a story to remember the shape and meaning of the characters.

In order to use this method, the basic character components must be known. I choose HSK 800 A-grade characters as a basis for my research. After selection of the existing components, I made research with help of different character dictionaries on the meaning and origin of the components. After it, I research with help of “Wenlin Software 3.4“ the occurrence frequency among the 3000 most commonly used Chinese characters. To summarize my research information I created three documents according to the group of the components. Group one includes components which can not used as a individual character, group two are components, but at the same time HSK 800 A-grade characters, the third group includes components which can be used as individual characters but not included in the HSK 800 A-grade characters.

One result of my research is that some characters with very high “building characters ability” (often appear as a component in other characters) are rarely used as an individual character. Because of this, these characters are normally not thought in Chinese classes. But these Chinese characters, such as" 田, 隹" or "贝", are important to understand the basic meaning and/or help to give a lead to its pronunciation. No matter which method are used to learn Chinese characters, know the basic components, the basic categories and the characteristic of Chinese characters is the first step to master one of the world's most difficult languages.

Another part of this thesis is a list of examples to show how to use this method. These examples include a lot of subjective ideas; the major purpose is to let people know the main idea of this method. To achieve the best effect of the method is that the learner makes up a story by himself. In this way the learner can connect existing knowledge with a new character, which helps to recall the according information easier and faster from ones mind.

I am preparing for HSK 6 and want to use this method again, very helpful would it to get the "database" into Pleco.

As mentioned above I divided the "components" into 3 categories. The first one includes components which can not used as a individual character:
Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-21 um 10.01.28 nachm..png
Group two are components, but at the same time HSK 800 A-grade characters:
Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-21 um 10.01.43 nachm..png
The third group includes components which can be used as individual characters but not included in the HSK 800 A-grade characters:
Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-21 um 10.02.03 nachm..png

Now I would like to bring it into Pleco as mentioned above, I found the excel-file (attached) used at that time. How could I do it? I read your Github, but not really understand how should I go on. Could you give some hints or support me to convert it?

Best wishes,
Eberhard Janssen

P.S.: If somebody is interested I can share my thesis from that time, but its in Chinese.
 

Attachments

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Last edited:

Peter

榜眼
@c_jack_sparrow
I chose XML, so I could transcribe the text from the Remembering Simplified Hanzi books and mark it up the keywords with suitable tags (like self, cite, etc.). This didn't seem practical using the columns of a spreadsheet. I then wrote a program to discover the relationships between characters and output a Pleco user dictionary txt file.

Since you already have the data in a spreadsheet, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to convert it to XML. I suggest writing a script to convert the spreadsheet columns into the Pleco dictionary format.

用中文写了一篇怎么记住800个汉字的论文,那么厉害!我想读。
 

nerdish

秀才
Peter,

Thanks so much for maintaining the dictionary. It's been getting quite a workout from me lately.

Cheers,
Isaac
 

Lisa

Member
Peter,

Thank you so much for creating this dictionary. This will save me so much work! I have a question: why are there three different .txt files? Do I need to import all three? I am asking because there are a few of the primitives where I have changed Heisig's keywords to something that makes more sense to me. I would like to do a "find" and "replace" in the .txt files before I import them, but do I need to do this in all three files? Also, at the bottom of the entries there are some other words with a shared element to the entry main word. What is the significance of these?
 

Peter

榜眼
You only need to import one file into Pleco. Which file you choose depends on your preference for Pinyin:

rsh-pleco.txt: Does not associate pinyin with each Heisig entry. Pleco will display the Heisig entry in black at the bottom of the search results screen. I personally use this. Example: http://www.plecoforums.com/download/tmp_22375-screenshot_2015-10-18-16-56-22-708406185-png.1929/

rsh-pleco-pinyin.txt: Associates common pinyin pronunciations with each character. Pleco will fold the Heisig entry in with other dictionary definitions.

The other file (rsh-table.txt) is a tab-delimited text file used to create Anki flashcards.
 
Peter helped me with my staff, see #25

I would like to share. Peter answered my request to help me with the convert, works great after importing as a user dict.:

I converted the xls sheets to tab delimited text (bujian-XXX.txt). Then wrote a script (format.sh) that adds formatting and outputs a pleco user-dictionary txt file (bujian.txt).

If you want to regenerate the user dictionary, run:

% ./format.sh > bujian.txt

(should work on linux or macintiosh.)
Cheers


Thx again @Peter!
 

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Peter

榜眼
I thought a dictionary file was a pqb file. Am I missing something here? All I see is a zip which contains txt files.

The .txt file contains the dictionary entries. These can be imported into pleco. I don't distribute pqb files, because the format is undocumented and may change in future.

How do to this? Create a new user dictionary using the Manage Dictionaries menu, and then import the .txt file into this directory. The process is described in the manual. If you need step by step instructions, yell out.
 

eliotargy

Member
The .txt file contains the dictionary entries. These can be imported into pleco. I don't distribute pqb files, because the format is undocumented and may change in future.

How do to this? Create a new user dictionary using the Manage Dictionaries menu, and then import the .txt file into this directory. The process is described in the manual. If you need step by step instructions, yell out.
Dude I figured it out. Thanks a million.
 

eliotargy

Member
Noticed on your rsh-table.txt that you have what look like sound files: [sound:pinyin-cao2.mp3]. Where exactly is the physical sound file and can they be downloaded?
 
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