Cantonese Revision Aids
Update History 2004
2005 updates available here.
2004
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30th December 2004
News of the aftermath of the Tsunami grows ever more horrific and our hearts go out to anyone who has been affected by this global disaster.
If you wish to send a donation towards the relief effort but don't know how, this Google page should be of help.
There are also many useful links in this thread of our forums, including information about the status of specific hotels etc. -
24th December
I'm likely to be absent for a few days, but I'd like to wish you all a peaceful and happy holiday.
I'll be back by the New Year, hopefully with some useful and interesting updates to the site!
11th December
I'm pleased to say the character database has now reached 1000 characters! You can see the latest additions from the usual page. -
5th December
Many thanks to icycloud for posting about 200 simplified forms of characters already in our database. It is now possible to see all the traditional characters that have simplified forms on a single page. -
4th December
I've been away on holiday and have generally been very busy so there haven't been any notable site updates for a while. I have added the ability to search for simplified characters in the database though.
Also, thanks to Marcus for sending me a Dim Sum menu with English and Chinese on it. A link has been added to the Dim Sum section. -
17th October
The site has had some problems lately, but the support and encouragement I received from everyone was fantastic, thank you all very much!
A big thanks has to go to my service provider too, Designer Servers (DSVR). They have been extremely helpful and it is their servers which keep this site running as smoothly as it does.
I realised that I never published Radagasty's translation of the Once Upon a Time in China (Wong Fei Hung) theme song. I've now rectified this and it sits proudly (but alone) in the new Songs section.
There is also a new section, Chinese Riddles. Admittedly it is somewhat spartan at present, but it will grow in time. -
12th October
Welcome to our newest dictionary editor, Carson.
The dictionary is also now on version 0.9.3 - one day it might even reach version 1! -
10th October
We have an excellent review of a Chinese/English MD8200 Electronic Dictionary, courtesy of Raymond Siu.
Thanks to my dad, Cooking pages 1,2 and 3 now have MP3 audio files.
The online dictionary continues to grow - take a look at some new stats. It also needs a proper name, so if you have any suggestions, please post them here. -
6th October
Broken links to some sound files fixed in the Jyutping Pronunciation page - thank you for reporting this Cherry!
Dictionary now on version 0.9.2. The notable new feature is that now editors can check other editors' entries that have been marked as "unsure".
There is also now a list of editors. -
2nd October
I haven't been learning very much Cantonese lately, but I hope to remedy that soon.
Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes by the way!
Many thanks also to our two latest dictionary editors, 14K Guy and Rice Bowl.
Oh, dictionary definitions should now be formatted slightly better now. -
19th August
This site is now an affiliate of NJ Star Software, please see this product page.
This and That page corrected, thanks Eric! -
15th August
One of our forum regulars and dictionary editors, Claw, has kindly contributed an excellent lesson on Cantonese Sentence Particles. Go and read it, now!
Are you a Linux user? If so, one of our vistiors is having problems viewing the site. Please read this thread to see if you can help. -
8th August
Welcome and thanks to beLIEve, our newest dictionary editor!
Recently, most of my new additions to the site have been via the forums and refining the dictionary. When I get time though, I'm planning plenty of new sections to the main site. -
30th July
How to use this Website has been updated.
The dictionary now remembers unsuccessful compound word searches, so our editors can see what people have been searching for and possibly add the missing terms in.
Printable tests now don't output the navigation header when printed. This should hopefully mean everyone can fit a test on one sheet of paper. I've extended this CSS code to all the revision sheets too, as they are also designed to fit on a single sheet. -
26th July
The Dictionary now shows word or character description in page title, which should help when site pages are displayed in search-engines. -
25th July
Added a search bar to this page, courtesy of Google. Hopefully this will allow the whole site to be searched easily, but I haven't tried it yet!
22nd July
More improvements to the dictionary continue to be made, although the best improvements are still to come! -
18th July
I'd like to welcome our newest dictionary editor, Claw.
There are now 1800+ words in the dictionary and our editors have added jyutping for virtually all the entries! -
13th July
The forums are currently being used to test a new feature, "word of the moment". Just go to the forums and look in the top left corner. The word shown there is currently set to change every hour. -
12th July
I've been away so apologies to anyone that has mailed and not yet received a response. -
4th July
I may be without e-mail for the next week, I'm not sure yet, so if you contact me please be patient.
We now have another editor for the site dictionary, many thanks Derek! -
3rd July
1650+ compound words and 840+ characters in the dictionary now.
28th June
We now have a Featured Threads page, to archive posts in the forum which we found especially useful. Send in your nominations via this post!
Over a hundred new words have been added to the site dictionary in the past week.
The search database feature has been subtly improved when searching for a single character.
How to view Chinese Characters on your PC updated. -
24th June
Well first Spain, then Italy and Germany (sorry dr.slump and Helmut) and now England have been booted out of Euro 2004. I can't believe I've wasted so many hours watching stupid games of football just to watch us get knocked out by penalties yet again!
I could have been putting my time to better use, like learning Cantonese or something...
In better news, grateful thanks go to Jason (http://jtoy.net) for his kind loan of some webspace to host the images and sounds for this site. More Info...
Also, most of the 1400+ compound words in our online dictionary have now had their Cantonese pronunciation added. Many thanks to our hardworking editors for doing this, it is incredibly helpful for areas such as the compound word test.
I'm in the process of reorganising the level 1 and level 2 words in the dictionary, based on comments and my own experience in struggling to learn how to read Chinese.
Finally, There are a few more new sections I'm working on too so watch this space over the next week or so! -
20th June
Ongoing new section, Cantonese Around The World (please read this and add your country's entry in!) -
16th June
There has been a fair bit of work behind the scenes to the Online Database. There are now 80 sets of similar looking characters, 1300+ compound words and 700 individual characters.
Updated the Fonts page with a graphic showing why people should download the nice AR PL KaitiM Big5 font. -
15th June
Images and sound files are currently loading extremely slowly across the whole site. This is because I am using an offsite server for media files to try and save on bandwidth costs and the server I am using would appear to be rubbish (UK NTHell service).
If anyone could donate the use of 100Mb of fast, reliable webspace for images and MP3s it would be extremely helpful.
Actually, a company did once donate 500Mb of space but after a while the server just vanished into the ether and I couldn't get in touch with them - since then I've been using free space. The bandwidth requirement for media files from the site is approx 5Gb per month. Comment on this article... -
14th June
The compound word list now shows the jyutping pronunciation in blue (where it is available). Speaking of which, we are slowly adding the jyutping to the 1270+ words in the database.
Yet more improvements to the printable tests!
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11th June
The printable compound word test has been improved again.
I'd like to welcome our newest editor, tym, who has kindly joined the volunteers who add words to the online database. Without our editors the online database would be pretty much useless. At the time of writing over 1260 compound words have been added!
Individual characters in the database now show if they are Cantonese dialectical forms. -
10th June
The printable tests have been improved.
Fixed a bug in the "Don't confuse with" character detail view.
Lots of words have been added and reclassified in the online DB. -
5th June
I have been working hard to try and convert the forums to unicode. Help test my endeavours by reading this post. Today is an historic day because for the first time ever this front page is now being output in unicode!
UPDATE: All of the site forums have now been converted to unicode. For the technical details of how I did it you can see some of my PHP code. -
1st June
A Parental Advisory has been added.
The forums are undergoing a unicode trial.
The site dictionary is still getting better - wow!
I now have an Amazon wishlist - so I can avariciously window-shop in the hope that someone will use it to send me a present
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28th May
The compound word dictionary has been improved.
Read More... -
27th May
New section: "This and That"
The Dictionary continues to mature.
If you want to help it grow please
read this.
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15th May
'Classifiers', pages 1 and 2 have been updated.
A few new characters have been added to the database, some of which should definitely have already been in there
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11th May
Wow, our editors have been busy and pushed our compound word total to over 1000 without me noticing!
I have converted over a hundred pages of this site to use unicode. At the same time, the code of the pages now uses more PHP which will make the site easier for me to maintain in the future. There is a Geek Easter Egg for anyone who examines the HTTP this site generates now
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30th April
Well Spring is in the air and the smileys in the chat room and forums have gone forth and multiplied
More details... -
20th April
A contact form has finally been added for people that want to mail me but don't have access to a mail program. -
29th March
Well March wasn't really a very good month for me. I managed to pull the ligaments in my foot, injure my back and catch cold. Note all of this happened as soon as I started trying to do more exercise! Health tip: just lounge around and watch TV, it is far less damaging to your body!
In Cantonese news, I have started learning some useful grammar rules so look for some updates to the Intermediate section soon... -
9th March
I've had a stinking cold for the last week so if you have mailed me please wait a few days for a reply
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22nd February
I have moved the donation section from "How to Help this Website" to a new page. -
18th February
The list of Commonly Confused Characters is now available for viewing (and editing if you are an editor)
Other improvements are mainly to help our editors improve the dictionary. Discuss...
A Privacy Statement has also been added. Discuss... -
14th February
OK, I know I'm writing this in advance but
"情人節快樂!" to all the ladies who visit this site! Valentine's cards, messages of love, saucy pictures and the like should be sent to the usual address or the forum
.
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12th February
A small but useful addition for us learners is a new type of printable test that tests your knowledge of compound words. The bottom test on that page uses the compound word database that our volunteers keep adding to.
comment on the test...
7th February
The first part of (hopefully) an ongoing section about Hong Kong is now up - The Hong Kong MTR (underground) -
5th February
Our online dictionary now has a neat new feature. When viewing a character it will show you characters that look similar. This should help us beginners to learn characters which are commonly mistaken with each other.
See an example... -
31st January
Another improvement to our compound words list viewer. We can now choose to only show spoken Cantonese or written Chinese words.
New characters have also been added as well as new words.
A new tongue-in-cheek essay has been added called "The Chinese Alphabet". Thanks to dr.slump for the idea! -
27th January
The online dictionary continues to grow. There are now over 500 characters and over 400 compound words in the database. See the statistics...
Even better, you can now search the dictionary. -
16th January 2004
I hope everyone had a happy new year. There is exciting news for the first site-update of 2004; I am currently trying out a new chat room which will allow everyone to chat in realtime using Chinese (or any other language).
I can't promise it will stay here permanently as I need to evaluate the cost of running it but you can read more info and try it out.
2003 Updates available here.
