FlashCan: Cantonese Electronic Flashcards

As someone learning to speak Cantonese, I've found one of the hardest aspects is trying to remember the vocabulary. (As a musician, the tones seem to come somewhat more easily.)

To that end, I wrote a flashcard program. Right now it isn't much and the dictionary file has all of 253 entries, but that will change over time. I'm adding the vocabulary to it as I work through the Teach Yourself Cantonese book, and as of 7th June the program also supports searching although only at a very basic level.

   

You can download the Windows standalone binary, the Tcl/Tk source code and the dictionary file. You only need the dictionary and either the Tcl source or the Windows binary. The dictionary is a separate download as it can be updated independently of the application.

The program is currently at version 0.7.0 and the dictionary file only includes the vocabulary from the first five chapters of the book. Whether you're running the Windows binary or the Tcl/Tk source on Windows or other platforms, the program expects to find the flashcan.dat file in the same directory. Detailed technical information is over here.

Requirements: The Windows binary should work with Windows 98/NT4 and later. Running the Tcl/Tk source as a script requires Tcl/Tk 8.3 (or later) for your platform.

FlashCan is copyright ©2005-2007 Michael McConnell, and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, version 2.

Updates:
14 February 2007: Ver 0.7.0. New Reverse Quiz mode (asks English words, choose the Chinese answer).

12 February 2007: Ver 0.6.5. Quiz mode enhanced to allow revision of problematic questions.

05 April 2006: Ver 0.6.0. User request feature: Can now disable display of romanisation in flashcard and quiz modes.

01 March 2006: Ver 0.5.2. User request feature: Added support for Mandarin pinyin. (I don't have a Mandarin dictionary file, though).

24 October 2005: Ver 0.4.4. Added an option to show the unicodes. Dictionary file updated to include Chapter 5.

15 July 2005: Ver 0.4.2. Difficult mode now fits on a 1024x768 screen. Just!

14 July 2005: Ver 0.4.1. Enhanced the quiz and find options.

12 July 2005: Ver 0.4.0. This now includes a quiz mode.

10 June 2005: Updated flashcan.dat to include the vocabulary from the first dialogue of Chapter 4.