Hanzim Features

Dictionary and Memory Aid

• Display characters with same radical, phonetic component, and pronunciation
• Display compounds a character participates in in first and second position
• Look-up by Mandarin pinyin or Cantonese jyutping
• Look-up by radical
• Look-up by English meaning
• Look-up-by-paste, and copy to clipboard functions
• Large Chinese-English dictionary, can be expanded by edit or import
• Narrow focus to most common characters
• "Live" look-up from Chinese text
• Find characters by component, words by pronunciation

For Studying

• Build or import custom word and character lists for study
• Display animated character stroke order
• Speak character pronunciation in Mandarin or Cantonese
• Display historical development of a character's form
• Display character and word flash cards

Release notes

This image shows the main window for the progam. The character displayed by itself in a box near the center is the main character being focused on. Compounds employing it first or second are listed to its right, while those employing it second, third, or fourth are listed to its left. Characters with the same radical are listed in the lower left, those with the same remaining component (character sans radical) are in the middle, those with the same pronunciation are on the right. You can click on any character on the screen to make it the new main character.

The text box just above the main character contains the Mandarin pinyin (or Cantonese Jyutping) representation of that character. You can click in there, type in a new pinyin string, and hit return to pull up the first character in the program's dictionary with that pronunciation.

Selecting a radical from the stroke-count menus instantly brings up the full list of characters using that radical on the lower left, ordered by pinyin.

In "Ying-Han" mode, entering an English word looks up characters and compounds with that meaning.

Hanzim integrates with the rest of your desktop. "Paste" a character from another application to look it up. "Copy" from Hanzim to put the current character on the clipboard for insertion elsewhere.

The slider here sets the minimum relative frequency in common usage for displayed characters. Dragging it to the left restricts Hanzim to the most common characters and compounds. Dragging it to the right allows it to display more or all of its 6,600 character zidian and 22,000 word cidian. The "Random" button selects a random character out of the available set as a testing or study aid. The radio buttons let you switch instantly between simplified and traditional to see which characters differ.

Paste Chinese text into the Hanzim Reader window and mouse over characters / words you don't know to see their definitions. A click brings you straight to the corresponding entries in Hanzim's main window.

The search window can be activated to find characters based on their subcomponents, or words based on their pronunciations. On the left, the set of characters possessing all of the selected components is dynamically displayed. On the right, pronunciations can be typed in with or without tones to find all 2-, 3-, and 4-character words with that pronunciation.

Lists of characters and words can be compiled within the application and saved for future use. A library of precompiled lists built around standard texts and exams is available from the Hanzim server. Downloaded lists can be imported straight into Hanzim, and you can upload lists to the same server for sharing with other users.

Pressing the stroke order button displays an animated drawing of the character in the correct stroke order. Pressing the speaker button plays a recording of a native speaker pronouncing the selected pronunciation of the current character.

Pressing the historical development button button displays a timeline of the development of a character's form and a mnemonic (many drawn, with permission, from Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters) to aid memorization.

In both editions of Hanzi Master you can create or import any number of custom word / character lists. In the Deluxe Edition, you can also display flashcards based on these lists.