I live and work in China, but my Chinese still needs a lot of improvement, so I wrote a mobile flashcard program to run on my phone to help to improve my language skills. I think it can also help other people who are trying to learn the language, so I'm making it available online for free to anyone who wants to download it.
What does this program do?
- It shows you Chinese vocabulary flashcards on your mobile phone, with Chinese characters and pinyin.
How many words are included?
- There are about 450 words, split into 7 lists.
Can I add my own flashcards?
- Yes, you can add any list in CEDICT format (used by programs such as ZDT and PlecoDict). There are lots of compatible word lists available from the ZDT site. Please see the Adding Word Lists page for instructions.
What phones does it work on?
- It was designed for the Nokia 2610, but it's compatible with phones from lots of other manufacturers that support Java ME and Chinese characters.
What if my phone doesn't support Chinese characters? - Lots of modern phones let you download new firmware with different languages, so check your manufacturer's site or search Google for your model + firmware (e.g. nokia 6300 firmware). If you can't find anything, or if your carrier locked the phone to only allow their own firmware, your best bet is probably to go to your local Chinatown - you'll probably be able to find a small shop there that will install the Chinese language OS on your phone for a small fee.
Are you still developing this program? - Not really - I bought myself an iPhone so I can't run Java ME apps any more. It's possible that I might make some improvements to this program, but I don't have any specific plans to.
What other mobile Chinese learning tools do you recommend?
- If you've got a Windows Mobile or Palm device, PlecoDict is excellent, although it's a bit pricey. Otherwise, I suggest the nciku Mobile Chinese Dictionary (http://m.nciku.com) - it's really comprehensive, with pinyin and lots of example sentences, but you need an internet connection to use it.
Latest Version: Sunday 11th March, 2007
This is the second version of the program. The first difference that you will notice compared with the one I put online last week is that this one supports multiple word lists - it's loaded with seven different "decks" of flashcards that I hope will appeal to more people than just the beginners that the word list in the first release was aimed at.
Five of these seven word lists weren't actually compiled by myself - they were taken from the popular Chinese flashcard/dictionary program ZDT. I've changed the design of the program so that it uses the CEDICT format for its word lists, making it compatible with lists from other free flashcard programs such as ZDT's compilation of downloadable word lists.
The main reason for this change wasn't just to make things more convenient for myself - it was to let people add their own word lists to the mobile flashcard program. Unfortunately the method for adding lists is still a little complicated, but it's better than nothing and I'm sure that people won't have too much difficulty working things out (to cut a long story short, you have to open the Flashcards.jar file as if it was a zip, insert your word list, add the word list's filename to the files.data file and then update the Flashcards.jad file with the new size of Flashcards.jar before transferring the program to your phone).
Finally, I've changed the program's license from "no derivative works" to "share alike", meaning that you're free to add your own word lists and share the altered program with whoever you want, as long as you let other people do the same thing with the changes you make. If anyone is interested in making changes to the actual structure of the problem, I'd be happy to release the source code under GPL v3 - just send me an email and give me a bit of time to make it less ugly.
Other than that, the program still works in exactly the same way as before. It first shows a word in one language - either English or Chinese - and users can then reveal the pinyin and then the word in the other language. All the features of the previous version are still available, including:
Users can choose to go from English to Chinese, from Chinese to English, or to select randomly for each word.
Words can be shown in their initial order or in a random order
The program can automatically remove cards that have been correctly answered a set number of times, either in total or consecutively
Your phone needs to support Simplified Chinese characters, which most phones bought outside China do not - check your phone's language settings; if Chinese is not an option this program probably won't run properly. It also needs to be able to run Java programs, and must support MIDP 2.0 and CDLC 1.1 (if you bought your phone in the last couple of years, it almost certainly supports these).
The program works fine on my own phones (a Nokia 2610 and a Nokia 6300), and according to emails from other users it also works on phones from other brands including Sony Ericsson, but there are lots of handsets out there and it might not work well on all models. In particular, apparently it doesn't play nicely with some more recent Nokia S60 handsets, and you need to be able to run Java ME applications so it won't run on the iPhone. It would be great if you could let me know how it works on your own phone, especially if you have any problems - you can mail me at ironfrost at gmail dot com.
To use the flashcards, just unzip the program and transfer the .jad and .jar files to your mobile phone (it won't work on your computer unless you have an emulator installed). If you want to download the files directly to your phone, the program is also hosted at hostj2me.com - it's less than 20kB. You can also download previous version of the flashcard program from the same site.
If you find these flashcards useful (or even if you don't), you might also be interested in the nciku mobile Chinese dictionary; an online Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary optimised for mobile phones.
