hanzi.ac is a Chinese–English dictionary for people learning Chinese. It is built around the HSK vocabulary, and every word page brings together what you need to learn a word: pronunciation, meaning, how to write it, and how it is used.

Searching

Type into the search box at the top of any page, or press / to jump to it. You can search with:

  • Chinese characters, simplified or traditional: 银行, 銀行
  • Pinyin, with or without tones: yinhang, yin2hang2, yínháng
  • English: bank, to eat
  • A Chinese phrase or sentence: 我想喝咖啡 is split into the words it contains

Clicking the empty search box lists your recent searches. They are stored in this browser only; remove one with ×, or all with Clear all.

More on pinyin input in typing pinyin.

Reading a word page

Each word page has the same sections:

  • Headword and badges — simplified and traditional forms, HSK 3.0 and HSK 2.0 levels, part of speech.
  • Meaning — pinyin coloured by tone, a play button for audio, numbered definitions and the measure word. Words with more than one reading show each reading separately.
  • Stroke order — an animation for every character. Press Write to practise tracing it.
  • Characters — each character’s pinyin, meaning, radical, number of strokes, components and origin.
  • Example sentences — real sentences with pinyin above each word and an English translation. Tap any word in a sentence to open its page.
  • Related words — other HSK words that share a character.

Studying by HSK level

The HSK word lists list every word by level, most frequent first. Working through one level at a time — reading each word page and its example sentences — is a simple study plan. See HSK levels explained.

Audio

Audio is generated in your browser by a Mandarin speech model. The first play downloads the model once (about 340 MB); after that it is stored on your device, along with every clip it generates, so a word or sentence played once plays instantly the next time. The speaker button at the top of every page opens the pronunciation settings: voice, speed, how many times each word is played, and the option to use your device’s own voice instead. Press P on a word page to play the word.

Theme

The button at the top right switches between light and dark. By default the site follows your device setting.

Data

Definitions come from CC-CEDICT, example sentences from Tatoeba, and stroke data from Make Me a Hanzi. Full details are on the data sources page. To report a mistake, email [email protected].