Not sure if this has been thought of or now, nor if it's really feasible or worth the effort, but it would be really cool if there were an indicator on the word popups for single characters regarding whether or not that character is useful as a single character word. I'm finally bucking up and getting rid of single characters in my studies, but I want to hold on to the ones that are useful on their own. So, without meaning to ask for something overly complex (I have no idea how much work this would take, probably a lot if the info's not readily available and compiled somewhere), I think this could be a pretty cool feature to implement.

I have thought of this. Luckily I always have someone around when I Skritter who is a native speaker. The easiest way I have thought of is, if the word can be used alone as a word, the first example of the 4 should be the character by itself.

@dfoxworthy that's a great idea.

When we are at it, to propose crazy new ideas... here is mine: Would it be possible to have an application that you have to actually pronounce the word when you are learning the reading and the computer registers your reading and gives you marks, similar to writing, if it was really correct?

I think I am cheating from time to time... and in general when it is about reading I never say the word aloud, but just to myself... which I guess isn't really 100% the same as being able to pronounce the word.

I guess in Chinese with all your strange intonations correct pronounciation (as opposed to correct classification of pronounciation) might be even more important than in Japanese where the most difficult, at least for me is to distinguish between long and short and きゅ and きょ.

Just an idea... and more work for our skritter programmers.

Personally I'd prefer a different method for indicating if the character was individually useful, since putting the character at the top of the "related words" list would bump off one potentially useful related word. Your idea makes a lot of sense for ease-of-understanding and streamlining, but I don't like the cost - just me.

However, I think the most immediate question is whether or not there's a readily available resource that indicates this that could be folded into Skritter to give the base data for such a feature. Anyone have any insight?

I think it sounds like a bit of a minefield. There are a few characters which are used as words entirely on their own, which would be simple enough to identify. Particles mainly. Eg 岂, 咯, 得. There are also a few ones which are actually more like words, which as far as I can see aren't used in compounds (or are used in compounds, but to give a different meaning rather than doubling up the meaning) eg 搁, 得 (as dei).

The vast majority of characters have doubled up compounds for the same meaning. Looking at it from the other side, a very large number of these doubles in everyday speech are whittled down to one character. eg 捕捉，追求. I think separating out the latter into which are generally used alone could be done if you had a list, but there would be a hell of a lot of them, and that wouldn't help much. If it's a double meaning compound then often both characters can be used alone.

An example of when characters can be used alone, but still be completely useless for general speech is 蝴蝶. A teacher I had once said with regards to a 蝴蝶, 蝴 could be used alone to mean butterfly (in something written for example), but 蝶 was actually meaningless on its own. You're not going to get much benefit from knowing that 蝴 can be used just as 蝴. If you see it written, you'll get it from the character anyway...

So basically, a whole lot of characters are useful as single characters. Immediately useful to you in whatever level of speaking you're at, perhaps not (never mind use in literature).

Disclaimer: I've got no qualifications, and far less an understanding than someone like pts has. So I might be wrong on any count here. In fact, I probably am wrong on at least one count.

I usually check the sample sentences, often if the character can be used on its own it is used in one of the sentences.

In the past 100 years, there was a lot of discussions about 联绵词/连绵词 - a single inseparable word that is composed of two syllables. 咖啡 and 蝴蝶 are two such words. It’s thought that it is futile to study the individual characters of these words, but instead should always study the word as a whole as the individual characters of these words have no meaning of their own.

In recent years, there are also voices to the contrary. Some scholars argue that whether one can find a meaning for these characters solely depends on one’s competence in Chinese, especially in classical Chinese. So, although 咖 and 啡 are indeed meaningless in their own, they have found out the meaning of 蝴, which was once thought to be meaningless. 蝴 actually refers to the antenna of insects. Thousands of years ago, the Chinese could not distinguish between mustache (胡子/胡须) and antenna and wrongly named the antenna of insects as mustache of insects 蝴. Then 蝴 was added before 蝶 to distinguish between a butterfly and a moth. In those days, the only difference between a butterfly and a moth was that butterfly had two long bristles (antennae) while moth had two outstanding eyebrows. 蝴蝶 referred to the kind of butterfly with two long bristles. So in conclusion, there are not many characters that do not have their own meaning and cannot be used alone.

But Chinese has evolved over the years. Modern Chinese uses mainly compound words. Imho, for those studying only modern Chinese, the need for single characters is not very great. Just as most will study the most frequently used words first. So they can also delay the study of single characters until the need arises. When they move into classical Chinese or poetry (诗词), then they will appreciate the importance of the single characters.

pts, that was even more brilliant than usual. My teacher didn't even come close to that level of depth or intrigue when explaining it.

Much in your debt!

We don't have any more information about whether a character is used alone than you can get by looking at the sample sentences for it, which isn't all that much. As pts points out, it's not usually a clear distinction. So I would go by vocabulary lists which just list single characters when they're used as words, and then you won't end up with those that often aren't.

susannekeiser, it is possible, but when I've suggested similar ideas before (we'd start off with just recognition and displaying of tonal contours), I didn't get a lot of interest. I would recommend actually saying the syllables aloud, instead of just in your head.