CWS: Chinese Dictionary + Pinyin Annotator
Extension Actions
Chinese words separator + Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionary + Pinyin annotator + Pin1yin1 IME
Chinese words separator + Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionary + Pinyin annotator + Pin1yin1 IME
ๅ CWS is best pronounced as Swiss. As in CWS army knife!
โก The fastest Chinese dictionary. ๐ Lookups are instant!
ENโไธญ Look up the Chinese words for English words as well, plus access other great tools for learning Mandarin Chinese.
๐ค The most configurable Pinyin annotator, and Zhuyin annotator too!
๐ Why use Chinese words separator? "A study from 2008 showed that if spaces are placed after what are commonly regarded as words in Chinese, Chinese native speakers' reading actually becomes faster and easier." -- Julesy ๐บ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCSe3dgGVMQ
๐ If the introduction of spacing provides measurable benefits for native Chinese readers, these benefits are likely to be even more pronounced for non-native readers.
๐งฐ Learn Chinese by reading ๐, listening ๐ง, and practicing speaking ๐ฃ๏ธ with CWS! Oh, and you can practice writing ๐ with it too!
๐ค Can be used by native Chinese speakers to learn English as well.
๐จโ๐ซ Your personal pinyin tutor for every web page.
๐ Say goodbye to guessing games. Hello, effortless reading and learned words tracking!
๐ Turns any web page into your personal Chinese lesson. Never run out of reading material again! ๐
๐ Text-to-speech: Can read aloud sentences, phrases, words, characters, or pinyin/zhuyin. Audio can be played at a normal pace or adjusted to a slower or faster speed to help you master pronunciation and improve listening comprehension.
๐ก Suddenly remember a Chinese word (or need to quickly find the Chinese word for an English phrase) that isn't on the page? CWS has a searchable dictionary (๐ icon in the CWS toolbar pop-up). You can also use your device's microphone ๐๏ธ to search by voice instead of typing!
๐จ Set your own learning priorities by color-coding and/or annotating words with Pinyin (or zhuyin/bopomofo), HSK levels, or Familiarity.
โฌ Already know how to pronounce most words and just need tone reinforcement? Color-code or annotate the Hanzi (Chinese characters) with tone marks!
Just want to learn spoken Chinese without learning Hanzi right now? Make CWS convert Hanzi to Pinyin automatically!
๐ฏ The learner decides what to learn based on their priorities, not the tool.
ๅ Words separator for web pages and dictionary lookup.
ๅ Demystifies Chinese readability through word separation and pinyin/zhuyin annotation.
๐ Demystifies Chinese characters by breaking them down into their component characters, simply right-click any character in the dictionary!
โก๏ธ Mine sentences from an imported Offline Sentence Miner.
๐ Mine sentences from 10+ online mining sites.
๐ Mined sentences are automatically saved to your Learning Tracking Sheet in Google Sheets.
๐ด Create Anki flashcards easily by importing the CSV file exported from your Google Sheet.
๐ ๏ธ Learners can add their favorite sentence mining sites without needing developer updates!
๐ Hover less, read more using the extension's Sentence Mode Dictionary, saves a ton of time!
๐ Look up meanings of Chinese words or phrases while browsing the web.
๐ Look up Chinese equivalents for English words or phrases while browsing.
๐ Easily adjust Hanzi font size and styling to make reading more relaxing for your eyes.
โจ๏ธ Enhances tone memorization using pin1yin1 IME input.
โ๏ธ Highly configurable yet easy to use!
๐ Can remember up to 3 visited websites for each word (enable in the Recall and Rewrite modules).
๐ฏ Catches tricky garden-path words even when using keyboard shortcuts for word navigation. Unlike other Chinese dictionaries, CWS keyboard navigation won't skip over garden-path words!
๐บ When your computer has built-in AI and your browser supports it, dual subtitles are available for leading video platforms like Netflix, YouTube, Viki, iQIYI, etc.
๐ Read the complete functionalities of CWS at: https://chinese-words-separator.github.io/
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๐ HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY:
Go to any Chinese web page ๐.
Hover your mouse cursor over any Chinese words (including mixed terms like 3Q or AAๅถ) to pop up a sticky note-style dictionary with English translations and Pinyin/Zhuyin(ใใจหใงใฃ).
On phone or tablet ๐ฑ, simply tap the Chinese word or sentence!
ๅ HOW TO USE THE WORD/CHARACTER SEPARATOR IN THE DICTIONARY:
Right-click the word/character in the dictionary.
On phone/tablet, ๐ฒ swipe the word or character to the right.
ๅ HOW TO USE THE WORDS SEPARATOR ON A PAGE:
Choose your level: Beginner, Lower-intermediate, Intermediate, or Advanced, or configure custom settings in More Settings (โ๏ธ icon in the CWS pop-up toolbar).
๐ฑ ANDROID INSTALLATION:
Note: Kiwi browser is discontinued since January 2025, some of Kiwi's code is now integrated to Microsoft Edge Canary Android browser. Follow the instruction here to install extensions on Microsoft Edge Canary Android browser: https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next. CWS's extension id on Microsoft Edge Add-ons store is peglphdebebicogkcpinemlaanfabeip
๐ OTHER LANGUAGES:
For Chinese-Vietnamese ๐ป๐ณ, Chinese-French ๐ซ๐ท, Chinese-German ๐ฉ๐ช, or Chinese-Hungarian ๐ญ๐บ definitions, follow these instructions:
https://github.com/chinese-words-separator/chinese-words-separator.github.io/issues/27#issuecomment-2235239809
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๐ LATEST VERSION OPTIMIZATIONS:
โก Ultra-Fast Word Separation:
The word separator processor now uses a tiny 160 KB memory lookup! Previously, reading HSK levels from a large file caused memory usage to spike up to 100 MB. Now HSK info is embedded directly into the code.
๐ Lightweight Memory Footprint:
CWS dictionary memory usage can now drop to just 26 MB! Even with around 175K words (compared to 120K in other dictionaries), you can make CWS extremely lightweight by having it read definitions from the database rather than files.
To enable: Go to CWS Settings โ๏ธ and tap the *Save the dictionary to database* button. Memory footprint drops from 108 MB to 26 MB!
๐ Version History: https://chinese-words-separator.github.io/versions.html
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๐ DICTIONARY SOURCES:
CC-CEDICT - Over 120K words ๐
CedPane - Over 70K words (plenty of proper nouns & names) ๐ท๏ธ
๐ค WANT TO CONTRIBUTE?
Contribute general word definitions to CC-CEDICT: https://cc-cedict.org/editor/editor.php?handler=ListChanges
Contribute names & proper nouns to CedPane: https://github.com/ssb22/CedPane
๐ค WHY THE NAME "CHINESE WORDS SEPARATOR"?
This tool started with a single focus: helping learners bridge the gap between individual characters and modern multi-character words. Since accurate word segmentation is the foundation of Chinese literacy, it became the perfect engine to build upon!
Today, CWS is not just a Chinese words separator, it's a full-featured learning suite:
โก Instant Dictionary: Quick Pinyin and definitions without leaving the page.
๐ Vocabulary Tracking: Mark and monitor learned words.
๐ Frequency Analytics: See statistics on commonly occurring terms.
๐ Familiarity Detection: Tracks how well you know each word.
๐ง SRS for Recalling word (Recall), Calligraphy (Rewrite), and Speech (Respeak)
Latest reviews
- Livia
- Amazing tool. My favorite feature is having the english translation only below unknown words when watching videos. Without this extension, I probably would have given up on learning chinese. Thank you to the developers
- Eliza
- --Update 18/09/24 Developer replied that it is possible to remove Hoverless Video Dictionary by setting annotation to 0pt. However, when I open the VWS settings while in YT, the only option to change Hoverless Video Dictionary is from 50% up to 150%. Finally, the extension seems to be crashing YT since the past few days. I don;t know if an update caused it. The only other extension I use is "Youtube Double Subtitles", but at first it had no issues, now Youtube (and technically my whole browser) crashes. --Original review I love this extension to use as a dictionary. I just wish I could disable the YT subtitle translations in some way or another.
- Sim
- By far one of the best dictionaries. However, it seems that whenever I am using this while YouTube is playing a video, the video will always get paused when the pop-up for the dictionary appears, not sure how to fix this.
- Braulio
- This extension is absolutely clutch. I just found out that if you anti-click a character in the dictionary, it breaks down the character into its components, which you can then further anti-click all the way to its base components. It also works on videos with subtitles that can be toggled on or off. It would be nice if it could translate sentences within the same page. The audio doesn't work on the mobile version. And for some reason the mainland Chinese voice is different on my home computer than it is on my school's library computers.
- Chilling
- I have no word for this extension, it is just soooooo good! I hope more language translations will be available in the future!
- Ronald
- Hi, my Google account's language is in Chinese. While watching YouTube, I would sometimes scroll around and check stuff. I usually would mouse-over text elements in Chinese. This toggles the voice-over feature of this add-on. And because this feature requires the use of the audio driver, the YouTube video I watched would go into pause in order to let the add-on use the audio driver. I had to keep unpausing the video when this happens. Muting the read-aloud feature doesn't work. There's no way to disable this other than to disable the add-on. Please include a way to fully disable the read-aloud feature.
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- ๆฏๅฆๅฏไปฅๆทปๅ edge่ชๅธฆ็่ฏญ้ณ๏ผ็ฎๅๅชๆไธค็ง่ฏญ้ณๅฏไปฅ้ๆฉ
- Diana
- This tool is unexpectedly incredible. Serious kudos to the designers.
- Max
- This is one of, if not the best extension for Chinese learners available for Microsoft Edge, I recommed 100%. Kudos to the developers for the amazing job!
- Ian
- it is more useful than I expected. Saves a lot of time