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crossmr
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Location: Hwayangdong, Seoul
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 Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:20 am Post subject: Iphone/Touch Ko/Eng dictionary |
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The Cole zhu dictionary is often recommended but frankly it is pretty sub par.
The YBM dictionary is 30% off right now, and while more expensive than the cole zhu it is head and shoulders above.
it is useful for both translation and study. Even for English speakers.
Looking up Korean verb endings like ㄹ걸 results not only in an english explanation of what it means (the cole zhu one provides korean only) it lists many example sentences so that you can fully grasp its use and various meanings. It does this for pretty much all words.
it also has a very extensive english idiom section with full korean explanations. Handy if you're trying to explain a difficult idiom to a Korean and they're not quite getting it.
It also has some random vocabulary learning features, but a dedicated flashcard program is better for that. See Flashcards from Jason Wentworth
Regularly 24.99, but on sale for who knows how long for 16.99 for the English/Korean/English version not just the English/Korea version.
one thing I hope they'll do is add proper korean adjective quick links and consider native recordings of Korean words. They have them for all the English words (well most) |
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GwangjuParents
Joined: 31 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:33 am Post subject: |
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How good is it for just plain English to Korean?
That's all I need.
I don't need anything fancy. |
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crossmr
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Location: Hwayangdong, Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:36 am Post subject: |
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| GwangjuParents wrote: |
How good is it for just plain English to Korean?
That's all I need.
I don't need anything fancy. |
Good. And it includes tons of examples in the english to Korean so you can really understand the various meanings and see some example sentences.
Lots of headwords, and overall a much better user experience than the cole zhu one. The only thing it is missing is quick links on conjugated adjectives, but you copy/paste those and search for them independently if you really need to. |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Also noticed there are some other dictionaries with decent review in the App Store (Prime, Nexus, etc.). Anybody try these yet?
I also notice that some dictionaries get mainly positive reviews in Korean while others get mainly positive reviews written in English. |
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crossmr
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Location: Hwayangdong, Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:26 am Post subject: |
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| bangbayed wrote: |
Also noticed there are some other dictionaries with decent review in the App Store (Prime, Nexus, etc.). Anybody try these yet?
I also notice that some dictionaries get mainly positive reviews in Korean while others get mainly positive reviews written in English. |
No. Most of the dictionaries range from $10-$20, so I'm not going to be buying tons of them.
I bought the cole zhu one and was thoroughly disappointed. Its made by a chinese guy who just bought a word list somewhere. So there are no real features. I find that when you try to scroll a definition every single word being hot linked causes it to constantly try to change the page and the Korean adjective links fail and the dictionary has no contingency plan. I exchanged emails with someone from the company awhile back and it seems like they have no plan to ever fix that.
Example: Search for tall gives you 높은. On my cell phone if I link that, of course it can't find it because its not the dictionary form of the word. So instead it gives you a list of close words and lets you pick one. So you can choose 높다. Cole Zhu just fails and says it can't find it and gives you no chance to find it. Because it's hot linked it's nearly impossible to copy and paste it. There are a lot of important Korean words (like verb endings) that don't have English definitions. The best I got on that was "we're looking to buy a different word list"
This one doesn't hot link those words, but I think they're working on it. They seem to take suggestions and actually update and implement them. With the YBM one at 16.99 it seems like a good time to buy it. It puts it squarely in the middle of the price range. It has so much extra information in the definitions. The amount of info for the translation of "Go" alone is worth the price of admission. They have so many usages with multiple examples that you could read the thing for 20 minutes.
Also a lot of the dictionaries under $10 seem to have a really small number of head words so I can imagine you ending up finding them lacking. The YBM contains a combined 330,000 headwords, total 810,000 words.
with hundreds of thousands of examples as well.
A lot of dictionaries don't seem to have their extensive example sentences. The 1.99 clickgamer ko/en dictionary only has around 180,000 "entries" no idea if they mean headwords or something else.
The "limited time offer" $5 PlanetDrivers En/Ko dictionary only has 50,000 "entries"
$5 mchahm, only 25,000 headwords.
$10 "basic" dictionary only covers "20,000" words. I wouldn't touch a dictionary under $10 at all. |
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jonpurdy
Joined: 08 Jan 2009
Location: Ulsan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:31 am Post subject: |
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+1 YBM
Worth the money for sure. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 2:32 am Post subject: |
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My beef with the YBM dictionary is that yu type in a Korean word to get the English translation, and there might be like 5 words, all with the Chinese "hanja".
I have no idea which word it is. I don't know hanja. How the hell am I suppose to know which definition I need? |
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crossmr
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Location: Hwayangdong, Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:16 am Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
My beef with the YBM dictionary is that yu type in a Korean word to get the English translation, and there might be like 5 words, all with the Chinese "hanja".
I have no idea which word it is. I don't know hanja. How the hell am I suppose to know which definition I need? |
they added a quicklink last summer for most words. You can click through and check it.
I also got an email from them saying they've got an update in the pipes right now to improve the feature. They're testing it and will submit it soon. |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:53 am Post subject: |
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| crossmr wrote: |
| pkang0202 wrote: |
My beef with the YBM dictionary is that yu type in a Korean word to get the English translation, and there might be like 5 words, all with the Chinese "hanja".
I have no idea which word it is. I don't know hanja. How the hell am I suppose to know which definition I need? |
they added a quicklink last summer for most words. You can click through and check it.
I also got an email from them saying they've got an update in the pipes right now to improve the feature. They're testing it and will submit it soon. |
You're not by any chance getting a commission for this, are you?  |
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crossmr
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Location: Hwayangdong, Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| bangbayed wrote: |
| crossmr wrote: |
| pkang0202 wrote: |
My beef with the YBM dictionary is that yu type in a Korean word to get the English translation, and there might be like 5 words, all with the Chinese "hanja".
I have no idea which word it is. I don't know hanja. How the hell am I suppose to know which definition I need? |
they added a quicklink last summer for most words. You can click through and check it.
I also got an email from them saying they've got an update in the pipes right now to improve the feature. They're testing it and will submit it soon. |
You're not by any chance getting a commission for this, are you? |
No. I sent them an e-mail to ask them about the quicklink feature because it wasn't quite what I wanted. I'm hoping they'll add the korean adjective quicklink like my cell phone has. It is about the only thing that makes my cell phone a little better right now. they replied and told me they hadn't quite solved how to do it yet. I also mentioned to them there was a bug in the quicklink for words like "mountain" which linked to a word with multiple entries, it was linked to the wrong one. They said they'd fixed that and the update was in the testing phase. |
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