JSQ, LLC

I was caught completely by surprise tonight when I received the "Ready for Sale" e-mail for LianXiShuZi.  Being so close to Thanksgiving, I figured I would be waiting a while for it to become available.  I'm hopeful folks find it as useful as I have while developing and testing it.  If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know. 

LianXiShuZi ("Practice Numbers") is now available on the iTunes App Store.  LianXiShuZi helps you practice reading, writing, and listening to Chinese numbers.  You can find more information by following the LianXiShuZi link.

While I wait on LianXiShuZi to be approved and continue developing another learning application, I thought I'd take some time to make some improvements to DianHua Dictionary.  Today I experimented with limiting search results to exact matches to see what the performance difference might be.  Most searches are at least twice as fast so this feature will make it into the next version of DianHua Dictionary.  In cases where an exact search doesn't yield the desired results, you can activate the normal exhaustive search using the "More..." item at the end of the list of results.

Where this feature pays off the most is in searches for traditional or simplified characters.  Instead of an exact match in that case, I allowed 2 character results to be displayed when only one character is included in the search term.  The speed improvements are more dramatic than English and Pinyin searches, and the results are more useful.

Tentatively named LianXiShu, my new application helps you practice Chinese numbers.  As most any beginning Chinese student knows, Chinese numbers are fairly straightforward.  There are no special numbers between 0 and 100.  You simply combine 1-10 to make all of the other numbers.  Unfortunately, it's not so simple when you pass 100.  There are extra 0's and the major divisions do not fall at each multiple of 10.  The purpose of LianXiShu is to help you go from the point of understanding Chinese numbers to knowing them as well as you do English numbers. 

As a native English speaker when you hear "eleven thousand one hundred ten", it's easy to visualize the number "11,110".  Now what if you hear "yi wan yi qian yi bai yi shi"?  Going further, what if you read  "一万一千一百一十"?  Or, what if you want to type the number "112"?  LianXiShu is built to help you make "十" as recognizable as "10".

Reading Practice shows you the simplified characters for a number, and you have to type in the numeric equivalent.  

Writing Practice is the reverse of reading.  LianXiShu gives you a number and requires you to enter the Simplified Characters for the number.  With the iPhone's keyboards, you have the choice of doing this by drawing characters or by entering the pinyin and selecting characters from the popup.

Finally, Listening Practice provides audio of a native Chinese speaker for the numbers 0-100.  After 100, LianXiShu combines numbers to build numbers up to over 2 billion.  The cadence and a few of the tones on these numbers aren't perfect (yi changes tones depending on the subsequent tone), but it's still good practice at understanding bigger numbers.  Listening practice can also act as a quick conversion tool as it will show you Simplified Characters as you type in your answer.

Each of the 3 interfaces sports its own range so that you can limit your practice to what you want to learn.  

If you are interested in helping test this learning application or another we have on the way, please register on the site and drop me an e-mail with your iPhone or iPod touch device ID.