I know that skritter is primarily intended to be used for writing characters but i still feel that it would be a great help to also have character etymology added. I use skritter to help my doughter learn Chinese and I try to explain the components of each character. We both have the same need to understand what we learn. At a minimum it is important to know the radical. It might be just me but I strongly feel that it is much easier to learn a character if I first know the components. There are many sources for this on the net e.g.


http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?searchChinese=1&zi=%E5%9C%8B

And

http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E5%9C%8B

I do have some old database data for a few thousand characters that I collected many years ago that can be used as a start.

I don't know if you've seen my grand plans for component-based recognition, where characters are broken down in the Flash as you write them, with semantic/phonetic contributions from each component displayed in each character, but they're scattered about these forums. Whoa is that ever going to be sweet. Knowing the components is surely the key to insane character learning speeds.

We've had to push back our plans for doing that, though; got more pressing features to put out before we tackle that one.

I'd love to see your data; wanna send me an email with more info?

I would like to second the motion. I have tried studying new characters' etymology as I learn them and it dramatically increases retention, particularly if the etymology helps come up with a good mnemonic.

One simple idea in the short run would be to have the small character display on the left hand side near the definition link to an etymology website for those characters.

James

I find that skrittering is most productive when I keep a couple-three online dictionaries open in tabs and go check defs, etymology, and example sentences for ones I don't know well.

Nicky, I do that too. I love MDBG and zhongwen.com; you can break down the characters into radicals with a single click. Where do find example sentences online?

Nicki, oops :-)

I keep a tab active on MDBG when new characters are being introduced. After my first try at the character, I copy the small character that appears in Skritter, paste it into the MDBG window, and learn more about the new character/word. Learning to write the character when prompted does not always translate into recognizing it for me, so it also helps to put the new character on a flash card.

You can get example sentences several ways: www.yellowbridge.com

www.chinesepod.com

have your tutor sitting at your elbow while you skritter

and another fun way: just google the new word and see what comes up!

I use http://www.archchinese.com
Archchinese has the similar features as yellowbridge.com, but it does not have the annoying ads and page refreshing.

Dict.cn also has example sentences:
http://dict.cn/en/search/

We'll also do example sentences at some point, although that's been getting pushed back like the component decompositions (though not as far).

As jww1066 points out, a link to the character/word on MDBG would be really helpful, and presumably pretty easy to implement. Zhongwen.com would be cool too, but I still haven't figured out how to link to a specific character there.

The thing with linking all these links is that we're planning on turning all the places we'd obviously put them right now into something else fairly soon, and then we'd have no real place to put them.

We'll think about ways to non-clutteringly jam them in there with the next prompt iteration, but cannot promise.

this would be a truly essential feature for me. You guys don't necessarily need recognition. But just after the character is written show the etymology on the left hand side. Is it really that hard to implement in the near future?

When it comes to software development, it's always harder than it sounds. It probably wouldn't be hard to throw something together for the moment, but there's a chance it would, or that it would cause support costs because it's not very good, or that it'd need documentation or look ugly until the real version comes.

But I can ensure that none of that happens, while eking out a tiny bone of satisfaction, by making the characters in the prompt interface an invisible link to MDBG for now (so only people who read this will know about it and get used to it). We will have to wait on showing our real etymologies later.

The invisible link to MDBG is great, thanks.
(I found it by mistake when attempting to copy the character, prior to pasting it in MDBG myself}.
Please keep it there, if at all possible.

Hi Nick, thanks for your patience and communication, even to my thoughtless, uninformed suggestion (I mean this sincerely). You guys are doing great work and imho onto something big. The link to MDBG is more than enough to tide me over until the component-based recognition comes along.

Hey, no problem, Andrew. The idea has proved to be a good one and you helped everyone else learn better by thwapping me with it until I actually put it in. Now I've got a bunch more ideas based on it.

If we're onto one thing that's big, I'd say it's developing based on feedback from users. Not a new idea, but most of the goodness of Skritter comes not from us but from you guys.