Table of Contents
What is Pleco?
Pleco Chinese Dictionary, or Pleco (pronounced as Plee-co) is a popular and extensive digital Chinese dictionaries and it is available as a free download on the iOS and Android platforms. The app lets you search characters and words using handwriting, radical look up, text, voice and even OCR (Optical Character Recognizer, ie search by scanning text). Searching by handwriting and text are by far the most reliable search input methods. If you search by text, you can use either by English or by using a phonetic romanisation in pinyin 普通話拼音 or in jyutping 粵語拼音. You’ll get multiple entries from different dictionaries with written and aural pronunciation in Mandarin and Cantonese. Very useful if you don’t know how to read a certain character or if you know how to pronounce it, but don’t know how to write it!
Other features include:
- Composition of the character in radicals
- Stroke order: How is the character written*
- Words: List of words that contain this character
- Sentences: Example sentences containing this character or word
- Flash cards: Save characters and words, then practice with them
- Ebook reader: Download graded readers, along with ‘click-and-display-word’ functionality*
* These features are either available in limited capacity or not available at all in the free version. It can be accessed with a one-time-purchase add-on.
Why use Pleco?
As a teacher of Cantonese language learners at our local Chinese school, I teach my students to use and read Jyutping 粵語拼音 to help them in their learning journey. Pleco and other digital tools are essential in my lessons. It helps look up words or search for words much easier. Even if you’re a native speaker, it can be very helpful. Sometimes you’re blanked out how to write a certain character. But you if know its pronuncations, you can just type in the pinyin or jyutping to find the character you need.
How to properly set up Pleco?
At its core, Pleco is an Mandarin-English digital dictionary. But it has great Cantonese support. However, without the proper settings, you may get Mandarin-based results instead of the preferred Cantonese equivalent. For example, if you search for bicycle you’ll get 自行車 zi6 hang4 ce1 or 腳踏車 goek3 daap6 ce1 as a result, while you want to get 單車 daan1 ce1 as your preferred search result.
Download Pleco Chinese Dictionary
Get the app from the App Store and Google Play Store. Once installed, your home screen should look something like this (Note: the iOS and Android version has some slight interface differences. I’ll be using the Android version of the app in this guide).
Set up Cantonese settings
- Go to Settings > Languages. Under the Character section, check checkbox for Traditional characters if you prefer to use Traditional characters.
- Under the Cantonese section, check all the boxes, ie: Enable Cantonese, Enable Cantonese search, Auto-generate if missing.
- The Cantonese phonetic system is set to Jyutping (Tone numbers) by default. That is fine.
- Tip: Under the Mandarin section, check the box Show Zhuyin + Pinyin if you’d like to use 注音符號 (bo po fo mo) as well.
Install dictionaries
- Go to Add-ons. Under the Individual Add-ons section, click on Dictionaries.
- Scroll to the section By Name and click on All Free Dictionaries.
- Download the CC-Canto-English Dict and Words.HK Cantonese Dictionary from the list.
Manage dictionaries
- You’re almost ready to go! The only step is to set your preference for which dictionaries should be listed first after you search for entries.
- Go back to Settings, now go to Dictionary Management and click Manage Dictionaries.
- Drag the Words.HK Cantonese Dictionary to the top of the list, followed by CC-Canto-English Dict. These dictionaries will have a Cantonese based entry and is best suited if you want to learn Cantonese.
- You can leave the Pleco C-E, CC-CEDICT and Unihan as they are or remove them if you don’t need them. The former two dictionaries are based on Mandarin or Written Chinese, while the latter gives technial information about the character.
And that’s it! You’re finally properly set up to use Pleco as a Cantonese dictionary!
Downloads
Pleco Chinese Dictionary is a digital Chinese-English dictionary with many free as well as paid features. Get Pleco Chinese Dictionary from the App Store and Google Play Store.
For Android users: Also check out Hanping Cantonese Dictonary (one-time payment for full version), which is also a highly recommended Cantonese-English dictionary. It doesn’t have the extra features like Ebook reader and Flash cards, but it does have a more streamlined dictionary function. Sometimes it finds words that Pleco can’t find. So be sure to check it out as well!