# Is there a similar book for Chinese?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 2, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124 "2005-05-02T20:30:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124/1 "2005-05-02T20:30:10Z")

</div>

I overheard someone at school today talking about the **Kanji Learner’s Dictionary** for Japanese. One student was raving about the way the dictionary ranked words according to their frequency of usage. Is there something similar for Mandarin Chinese?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2005, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124/2 "2005-05-02T21:20:55Z")

</div>

[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0781808421/002-7554797-3003256?v=glance](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0781808421/002-7554797-3003256?v=glance)

There are other books as well.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2005, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124/3 "2005-05-02T21:40:32Z")

</div>

Awesome, thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2005, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124/4 "2005-05-04T05:28:25Z")

</div>

I don’t know for books–this is the 21st Century, after all–but [Wenlin](http://www.wenlin.com/) (software for learning Chinese) has a feature that lists words by frequency of use.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2005, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-similar-book-for-chinese/302124/5 "2005-05-05T00:38:59Z")

</div>

:smack: I never even thought about possible software! Thank you for that link, **NoCoolUserName** , I will definitely check that one out.