Using Ninchanese

Get to know the basics and a few helpful tips along the way!
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you don’t find the answer to your question.

Viewing the definitions of Chinese characters and words (vocab)

So you’ve discovered or learned a new word in Chinese and want to know more about? There’s a very simple way to see more about a word: its word page.

What information can you see on a word?

A word page is your one-stop shop for everything you’ve wanted to know about a Chinese word. You’ll be able to see:

All the word’s definitions
Example sentences to see the word used in context. There’s one example sentence per meaning, so you can see how that word is used, regardless of its context.
The word’s traditional form (or simplified form if you’re in traditional)
Stroke order animations. These little animations allow you to observe the character or word’s strokes, so you can familiarize yourself with how this character is written by hand and, most importantly, in what order.
Character decomposition: in addition to strokes, you can usually break down a character into components, which we show you here. Learn more about components by reading this page.
See compounds, i.e other Chinese characters that contain this character.
See related words: related words are words that contain the word or character you’re looking up
See related idioms

How to view a word’s definitions (and more)

The first thing to know is that most words in Ninchanese are clickable. This means that if you click on them, they take you straight to their corresponding word page. Easy.

There are also several areas in Ninchanese from which you can access a word’s definitions and word page.

Let’s start with looking up the word you want to view using the search function:

When on Ninchanese, click on the magnifying glass icon. It’ll open the search page.
- Tip: Alternatively, type app.ninchanese.com in your url bar, and then, instead of pressing enter, press tab. You can enter your search there directly.
You can enter your search in English, Chinese characters, and pinyin (with or without tone marks)
Once you’ve found the word you were looking for, click on it to access its word page. Simple.

Next, here’s how to easily access the word pages of the words you’re learning or reviewing in the vocabulary stages:

Go to a vocabulary stage and play
Click the green Help button on the left-hand side of the screen
When clicked, this Help button opens up the word page of the previous word you’ve been prompted to answer, That is to say, the word you see displayed in the lower part of the screen. If you saw information on the word you’re supposed to enter information for, that’d be cheating, don’t you think?

Another way is also to click on the words you’ve learned to discover more about them when viewing your word list.

Happy learning!