Help and glossary
What the labels, readings and map views mean, in plain words.
Finding things
Type Chinese characters, pinyin (with tone marks or numbers, for example xìng fú or xing4 fu2), Jyutping, or an English or German word into the search box. Use Meanings in to choose English or Deutsch for the definitions, and the language chip (for example “Mandarin · 繁體”) to choose Mandarin or Cantonese and Traditional or Simplified characters. These three choices are independent of each other.
Press F to cycle through Focus mode, which hides the page furniture so the entry and map get the screen. In Focus mode, / brings the search box back.
Scripts and readings
- Traditional (繁體) and Simplified (简体)
- Two sets of character forms. Many characters are the same in both; the entry says “Same in 繁/简” when they are. When they differ, zimai shows the form you chose and keeps the other one as a link, because one Simplified character can stand for more than one Traditional character (for example 发 for 發 and 髮).
- Pinyin
- The standard Latin spelling of Mandarin. Tones are written either as marks (xìng) or numbers (xing4); both work in search.
- Jyutping
- A Latin spelling for Cantonese, with tone numbers 1 to 6 after each syllable. Use the language chip to look up Cantonese readings.
- Sense-linked readings
- A character can be read more than one way (行 is háng in 銀行 and xíng in 旅行). zimai attaches each reading to the meaning it belongs to, instead of listing readings without context.
- Usage scope
- A note under a reading that says where the reading applies and what the source does not cover.
How a character is built
- Radical
- The part of a character used to file it in a traditional dictionary. “Radical · 75” means Kangxi radical number 75 (木, wood), from the 214 radicals of the Kangxi Dictionary.
- Strokes and residual strokes
- Strokes is the total number of pen strokes. Residual strokes is the number left after you remove the radical.
- Component
- A visible part of a character, for example 氵 (water) and 每 inside 海. A component may be a radical, a character in its own right, or only a building block.
- Direct parts and “No finer recorded split”
- Direct parts are the first-level components of a character. “No finer recorded split” means the source records no smaller parts for that piece.
- IDS
- Ideographic Description Sequence: a short code from Unicode that describes how a character is put together, for example ⿰氵每 for 海 (water on the left, 每 on the right). zimai takes its graphical decompositions from the BabelStone IDS data by Andrew West.
Entries and sources
- Dossier and Source
- A card marked Dossier opens zimai’s own character record, with components, readings and sources. A card marked Source is listed from a source dictionary without that fuller record.
- CC-CEDICT, HanDeDict, CC-Canto
- The word dictionaries behind the definitions: CC-CEDICT for Mandarin to English, HanDeDict for Mandarin to German, and CC-Canto for Cantonese. The entry names the dictionary each meaning comes from.
- Unihan
- The Unicode Han Database, the source for stroke counts, radicals and some readings. “PRC data” marks stroke counts that follow the People’s Republic of China standard forms.
- Full details
- See Sources & editions for every dataset and edition, and Credits & rights for licences.
Questions and corrections
Found a mistake, or missing a language or word you need? Write to contact@zimai.app.
The connection map
The map shows how entries relate: characters that share components, words that contain a character, and similar readings. Click or tap a card to open it, and use Show on map on a meaning to centre the map on it.
- Constellation
- The default arrangement: the entry you opened sits in the middle and related entries are placed around it.
- Hop layers
- Related entries grouped in rings by how many links they are from the centre (one hop, two hops, and so on).
- Relation lanes
- Related entries grouped by the kind of relation, such as shared component or shared reading.