Customer Reviews

Wenlin 2.0: Software for Learning Chinese

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The Wenlin program is my constant Chinese companion. It is simply the best language software I have ever seen. It contains a large online dictionary with both old and contemporary terms. The online dictonary is a students' and dictionary-lovers' delight. Definitions for words and many common phrases with information on related character combinations, stroke order demos for all characters, pronunciation (pinyin AND sound), written character history and breakdown for each item and ability to search stored literature for examples. Move the mouse over any character and you see pronunciation and meaning for the character or for the common phrase under the mouse. Click on the character and you open the dictionary entry for that character. Type control-L and you get a little dialogue that will let you type in a word to translate from English or pinyin. Type in pinyin with a tone number and hit control-T and you get a list of possible characters, most common ones first; hit return and the highlighted character is entered in the text.

Files saved by Wenlin can be read by MS Word for further word processing (you need Chinese fonts for Word). You can cut and paste from a web page or an email into Wenlin and build a translation with the help of the dictionary. I use Wenlin to help me compose emails to my Chinese tutor, then I put it into
Word as an attachment or just use alt-PrtScr to grab the image of the sentence and paste it into the email -- don't have to worry about email or font compatibility that way.

You can work in either simplified or traditional character mode; both styles are displayed. You can input pinyin or actual characters stroke-by-stroke. Stroke entry is best with a graphic input pad, but I can input characters with the mouse and my very clumsy hand and the program guesses my character more times than any other character entry program (including English handwriting recognizers) I have ever used.

The program comes with a lot of online Chinese literature, graded from easy to difficult.

I own several good paper dictionaries, four Chinese courses (Pimsleur, Ni Hao, Integrated Chinese, Connections) and a couple of PDA programs. Wenlin and Pimsleur are the indispensable ones. Wenlin seems expensive, but it is worth every penny. I hesitated to buy it for several weeks because of the price. But in the end, it turned out to be a bargain because of its functionality and quantity of material. If they ever come out with a PDA version, I will spring for that, too. I have bought several language programs for computer over the years. Most have been a profound disappointment. This and the Oxford superlex 3-language dictionary are the only ones I have kept and continue to use.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac and Linux (under wine or Crossover Office). On linux, make sure you have ALSA drivers for wine sound.

I have been using Wenlin since version #1. It is now up to version #3.2.
I use it daily for when I am doing online-chat with people in China. They say something I don't understand, so I cut-n-paste what they wrote into Wenlin and get a very accurate idea of what words I misunderstood.
It goes into word roots, shows how the strokes are made, gives both traditional and simplified characters, and many other things like that.
While it may seem behind the times with its DOS-like user interface, it is not lacking.
It is a little pricy, but worth every cent for the serious student of Chinese.

This by far it the best Chinese software I own. Currently I'm a Chinese language student and I use this software daily. I particularly like the fact that I can look up a character and watch the program write it out for me. This has helped a lot in making sure I'm using the correct stroke order.

There are a lot of positives to this program. Many of which have already been mentioned in previous reviews. Yes, the price is up there, but the benefits outweigh the costs ten fold. This software has been invaluable to my studies.

I'm using it on Vista and have had no problems running it.