muckefuck | (Reply)

From:

lil-m-moses.livejournal.com

I'll take the liberty of recommending a few things:

Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary - put out by the people who run http://www.zhongwen.com (another good resource), it has some 6 or 7 different ways to look stuff up. If you get only one dictionary, this is a good one to choose (though it can take a little longer to get to what you're looking for since most of those ways are simply cross-references). Offers both traditional and simplified characters, though traditional is the common standard.

Concise C-E/E-C Dictionary - This is the most thorough dictionary I own. It offers English or Pinyin lookups, but there are often multiple definitions with miminal explanations, and proper usage isn't always clear from the definition. Simplified-primary, but traditional is almost always given in parentheses.

The Starter Oxford Chinese Dictionary - A great dictionary for beginners, with large and colored type, the most common definitions, and clear usage examples. English and Pinyin lookups, but only simplified characters, IIRC.

The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English/Chinese - Lots of useful nouns and adjectives that might not be covered in typical beginning Chinese classes. Traditional characters, but only offers English and characters, no pinyin or other pronunciation guides (as it's intended for Chinese people learning English). I'm finding it a good exercise to fill in the pinyin, though it is at times exceedingly tedious and frustrating. My Chinese teacher also takes issue with some of their choices for the Chinese words, saying they're archaic, or not the most commonly used terms.

Reading and Writing Chinese: A Guide to the Chinese Writing System - This book looks at the structure and a little etymology of an assortment of common characters. Not strictly a dictionary, but can help teach reading and writing.

Chinese Character Flashcards 888 - A reasonably good set of flashcards of the 888 most common characters. Simplified-primary, but traditional is nominally included.

Good luck, and please let me know if you find something else that looks like it'd be fairly useful.

I also make use of a couple of websites fairly frequently in addition to zhongwen.com. http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html is great for looking up single-syllable words (and with the UTF option, you can copy characters into other docs rather than having to look up the code or enter it via another means). http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm has links to a lot of other good resources in various categories.