Ever since my Japanese-learning friend bragged about pop-up dictionary Rikaichan or something, I’ve been looking around for something similar for Korean, in vain… Until now. Seriously, why didn’t anyone tell me about it?
A free Chrome add-on (though I’m pretty sure that other browsers have it too) allows you to double-click on a Korean word and have its dictionary entry opened right away, in a little pop-up window. Easy-peasy, and you’re not even leaving the page you’re on.
Pretty neat, right? And it’s a diverse and customizable tool, through the “Options” menu (right-click on the add-on’s icon, at the upper-right of the browser).
기본사전:
That’s the little dictionary you could access through the add-on’s (removable) icon. It’s convenient if you’re writing something, for example. You could choose :
- Naver / Daum
- English / monolingual / 한자 / Japanese / Chinese / French (Naver only)
- main page / remember last search
표시 방법:
Configure the clicking options. I do recommend to disable the plain double-clicking and go for a setting where you have to use the keyboard too. Otherwise the pop-up will appear when you don’t want it and it gets really annoying on pages in English where you couldn’t care less about a Korean dictionary entry, and even on pages in Korean when you’re just trying to select a word.
- 단어에 더블클릭 : double-click on the word
- 단어에 Ctrl+더블클릭 : Ctrl + double-click on the word
- 단어에 Command+더블클릭 (Mac OSX) : Command + double-click on the word
- 단어에 Alt+더블클릭 : Alt + double-click on the word
- 사용하지 않음 : deactivate
표시 위치:
Choose where you want the pop-up window to appear.
선택단어 언어인식:
The most important part ! Choosing the pop-up dictionaries. (I don’t get the UTF-8 and non-UTF-8 thing, though…)
- English to Korean, Daum / Naver / French to Korean, Naver (most useful to Korean users, I guess)
- Korean to English, Daum / Naver / monolingual Daum / Naver (the latter is great for more advanced learners)
- various 한자 options (didn’t investigate that yet)
- Japanese kana (probably never will investigate that)
I do know that such resources could give an illusion of high understanding, therefore making some people feel that they don’t need to memorize vocabulary anymore, but I for one will be motivated to read longer texts in Korean without being put off by the amount of unknown words to painstakingly look up. (Yes, admittedly, copying, switching tabs and pasting isn’t as bad as browsing a paper dictionary, but still. I’m talking about double-clicking here.) And of course, I still have Anki to stop being lazy and be sure I don’t forget anything worthy.
Thanks for posting about this. I’m going to add it to my browser.
It’ll save me time when I’m reading stuff I only half understand.
Oh my gosh, how awesome! Thanks for letting us know about this.^^
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JEANNE, I FEEL LIKE SINGING. Thank you so so so so so so so much. This is so incredible. Just wanted to thank you again haha. You’re so lovely for posting all the info about the options too.
Chantelle: I’m glad you like it!
Archana: Thanks to you! Now I feel like singing too! Seriously, I’m glad that my blogging is useful to someone else out there. Thank you for your appreciation.
I shared the link to your post on my tumblr and other people were just as excited as well!! This is seriously the best discovery ever for us Korean learners. <3
This is neat, considering how much i rely on online dictionary these days.
Thanks for sharing this. =)
Btw thanks for adding me to your blogroll~ hope you don’t mind me adding you to mine.
Thank you so much for this
This is very interesting.
Love your blog. Shall add you on my list
Keep blogging!!!
–KAT
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Oh, wow very cool! I’m going to post about this^^
Eh, that’s very neat. Didn’t know Chrome had a plug-in like that. I might use it, when I decide to pick up the pace in 韓國語勉強。
I think these types of plugins slow me down, a lot. Happened a lot, in learning 日本語。(~still am learning)
I end up reading a lot and not actually remembering the words. Sort of like, reading the English version of a foreign novel… get the general meaning or concept and not the depth. In the end, I stopped them all together.
I think it’s best to look them up, later… once the reading speed bumps up. I bump up my reading speed by learning nouns and adjectives.
(Verbs are hard to comprehend in chunks.)
Difficulty Meter: Easiestーー＞Hardest
Nouns ＞ Adjectives ＞ Verbs ＞ Adverbs
The more words you know the faster you can read. For instance, I know ~4000 vocab and 550漢字。 ~1/3 of my vocabulary are words comprised only of compound nouns. Most of which are only 漢字 that I know.
Such as,
「分子科学研究所」Molecular Science & Research Facility or Institute.
「耳鼻科学」Otolaryngology.
「乗合自動車」Bus. バス
「二原子分子」Diatomic Molecule
「帰国子女」Returnee child (returning to their home country).
I don’t actually need to learn these words but, they are good to know.
These words really sped up my reading skills in Japanese. I able to learn a max of 1000 (700~990) of these in a week. That’s if I have time. : (
So, you should keep up the good work. I just, think it’s way faster to study vocab. Your post are always helpful. hehe
それじゃ、バイバイ。（＾＿＾）＜ーー僕の笑顔
Of course, in the long run, you can’t become fluent in a language if you rely solely on such tools. As I said, it gives you an illusion of high understanding when you really don’t know that much vocabulary, and indeed, already knowing the words is way faster.
(That’s why I diligently use and recommend Anki to learn vocabulary, and for sentence mining, because memorizing words out of context could backfire.)
However, such a tool could definitely be helpful, and equate to a lot of time saved in instances where you would have to look up the word anyway, provided that the goal there is to rely less and less on dictionaries (may it be a pop-up one or not). And of course, to achieve that, (at least some) words should be added to Anki.
Thank you for your comment! (Why do people write to me in Japanese so often, though? I never even got myself to learn the kana yet, and I know at most ten words!)
Lol, かな… remember when I first started learning them… （＾＿＾）
Still can’t write katakana in order. Though, I can read them. xD
Yeah, I have a 韓國語辞典 with ~5000 words… I think, Korean dictionary & phrasebook by Jeyseon & Kangjin Lee. I haven’t looked at the phrase part yet… those only help when one can understand a lot. : /
I use it with these two sites. There are several more, but these are the most useful.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EB%B6%84
ezcorean.com
Using ezcorean for the frequency list… but the site drops a lot.
I have a somewhat organized/functional list and the wiktionary to cross reference definitions.
In the end, it’s a very stable method for learning vocab. Just as good as using Tagaini Jisho for Japanese. The only dictionary I use for japanese.
Very soon, I’ll be doing the same with Mandarin. （＾＿＾）
I already found the vocabulary lists… just have to wait a while for a paper dictionary. Have to view and listen to more media, to get a feel for speech.
「Keep up with the interesting posts」
Thanks for the info ^^