July 22, 2009

Using JEDict and Heisig Together

JEDict is a powerful tool. I'm an especially big fan of the kanji features. in the top right of the kanji search, you can see an animated stroke order diagram. Above that is the constituent parts of the kanji. The beauty of this is that not only does it help you to make mnemonics, but you can click and drag these components to either the search bar (near the top) or the building bar (near the middle.
For instance, while looking at 浸, a very wet kanji, I decide that I want to drag some elements and see what other kanji have a similar makeup. Below is an example where I've done that:

Then you'll notice that at the bottom there is a customizable list of indexes and info, above the common English glosses of the kanji's meanings. Heisig is available, so I sometimes copy and paste that number into a PDF version of the book Remembering the Kanji, like so:


Here's another example where we take the kanji for chair...


And see all the other kanji where it's main radical, 奇, shows up. This is great for creating your own meanings for primitives/radicals when Heisig just ain't doing it for you.

The PDF in this case is Remembering the Kanji 3.
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JEDict is Mac OS X only though. My question for you, Dear Reader, is: do you know a Windows or Linux equivalent to this kanji tool with similar drag-and-drop ease of use?

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