The link to NCIKU.com from this site has been up since the beginning and has had several thousand clicks. This is pretty cool as nicku is pretty awesome and anybody trying to study Chinese should definitely have it in their toolbox.

I first ran into nciku on Sinosplice.com, a site that, despite its obvious popularity, I find patronising. (I must be the odd one out.) The Sinosplice post is about how we should all say ‘NCIKU’, because it clearly isnt a pronounceable name. Pasden argues that it comes from the Chinese name for the site 词酷 or cíkù. The ‘n’ is for the nth number. n词酷 then means ‘cool gadzillion words’ or some such, and one should said ‘n-cíkù’. n词酷 is much more than dictionary though. It is a thorough language tool, and while they plan to expand into other languages, its power and versatility will probably shine most with Chinese.

The mobile search too – http://m.nciku.com

n词酷 is owned by Korean search engine market leader NHN, who, since conquering Korea want to colonise elsewhere. Rather than plowing on into Japan and China with their own brand, they are testing waters with a new product – n词酷. This helps explain the main interface on n词酷 – a search bar. There is no need to define what language you input – it will automatically recognise English, pinyin and of course both simplified and complex Chinese characters, n词酷 then simply runs a search of its daily updated database. Listed in the returns are definitions, translations, pronunciations both phonetic and spoken, and examples showing usage. Pretty much everything is clickable, wikipedia style, taking you onto public dictionaries, etymology and more.

Pretty novel as well is the handwriting entry tool. Nothing very special about that in itself but this one is built for us paleface who might not know the stroke order of a character. Just ‘draw’ it, and n词酷 will offer suggestions, then show you what the meaning is, how to use the character, and there is an animated pop-up showing you the real stroke order. No more conting srokes or trying to figure out the radical in order to look up a character.

n词酷only started in 2007 and already has an Alexa rank (in China) of about 1600 – ie the 1500th most visited website. In just 2 measly years. They must be getting something right.