App Profile: CJKV Dict

Hugh Chisholm

Rating: 5/5

This app does something very special and (as far as I can tell) unique, in the App Store: it allows you to look up a character used in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, and then interpolates between their written forms and meanings to show you how the character is used differently or similarly across the four languages. This is useful for people who, for example, know Chinese and are learning Japanese, where characters have been borrowed over time and the meanings or written forms have diverged. Thank you for this very useful tool for multi-language learners, and thank you especially for including Cantonese! My only suggestion, perhaps as paid features, would be: 1) to add buttons next to each pronunciation to have the iPhone speak the word in each language, in order to practice speaking; 2) to allow users to choose fonts for displaying characters in each language, in order to practice writing.