Pleco dictionary buying recommendations

shaoguan

举人
I see in pleco that
1614605708248-png.3504
got a pronunciation : ㄓㄨㄤ - zhuāng .

Why is that so ?
Is it possible to have a pronunciation but no meaning ?

I am willing to buy a dictionary that provide meaning for obscure character/components.
 
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Shun

状元
Hello shaoguan,

that's an interesting question, though what I've heard for many of these up to 50,000 extra-rare characters is that there is no research consensus on their history or meaning, and often wild personal guesses abound instead. There may be a Chinese dictionary work that gathers the results of such research; someone else on the forums may know one. In any case, for a dictionary to be included in Pleco, it's got to have critical mass/to sell well, or it would have to be very expensive. :)

It's common for characters to be recorded in Pleco with pinyin only, without any indication of their meaning, because Pleco includes a Unicode dictionary with basic classifying information on each character included in the Unicode character set. I believe Pleco includes even more characters than what Unicode provides. You should be able to tell by the different font used for such characters in the dictionary listing.

Hope this helps,

Shun
 
⿱立月 isn't in any Pleco dicts apart from Unicode, which is freely available and doesn't really add much info on this specific character.

There is a little more info on zdic, which you can take a look at (i.e.: 请参考“景”字).

Wiktionary also has some additional info as well (i.e.: is a variant form of 樁).
 
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shaoguan

举人
Hello shaoguan,

that's an interesting question, though what I've heard for many of these up to 50,000 extra-rare characters is that there is no research consensus on their history or meaning, and often wild personal guesses abound instead. There may be a Chinese dictionary work that gathers the results of such research; someone else on the forums may know one. In any case, for a dictionary to be included in Pleco, it's got to have critical mass/to sell well, or it would have to be very expensive. :)

It's common for characters to be recorded in Pleco with pinyin only, without any indication of their meaning, because Pleco includes a Unicode dictionary with basic classifying information on each character included in the Unicode character set. I believe Pleco includes even more characters than what Unicode provides. You should be able to tell by the different font used for such characters in the dictionary listing.

Hope this helps,

Shun

Thanks for your insight Shun !

I conceptually find weird that Unicode got a pronunciation but not a meaning.
Maybe I will try to contact them !


@ACardiganAndAFrown

Thanks for your guidance on this kinda obscure subject :)

EDIT

Per wiktionary it is in Hanyu da Zidian but this one was not digitally available in 2017 :

I don't know if that has changed.
 
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Shun

状元
Hi shaoguan,

sure. If I enter the word as you posted it, I get:

3AD61225-3217-4FEC-9326-D8BD1B1BAA32.png

If I search for other Traditional variants, I get almost all dictionaries:

6EAE0239-6199-4D98-BC84-BFF6DB43037A.png

So when you feel the dictionary display is a bit scant, you should search again for pinyin "zhongqing" or combined "zhong情" to find other dictionary definitions.

Hope this helps,

Shun
 

shaoguan

举人
Hi Shun,

I did not think about variants !

I am using direct definition links with the Pleco API in my Anki decks so I wish I could have a more convenient solution.
Anyway thanks very much Shun

shaoguan
 
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