HanziJS

HanziJS is a Chinese character and NLP module for Chinese language processing for Node.js. It is primarily written to help provide a framework for Chinese language learners to explore Chinese.

At present features include:

Character decomposition into components
Dictionary definition lookup using CC-CEDICT
Phonetic Regularity Computation
Example Word Calculations

Future features planned:

Chinese sentence segmentation
Determine regularities and other variables between characters & their components.

Currently the data was generated by Gavin Grover http://groovy.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=cjk-decomp

Install

npm install hanzi

How to use

Initiate HanziJS. Required.

//Require
var hanzi = require("hanzi");
//Initiate
hanzi.start();

Functions

hanzi.decompose(character, type of decomposition);

A function that takes a Chinese character and returns an object with decomposition data. Type of decomposition is optional.

Type of decomposition levels:

1 - "Once" (only decomposes character once),
2 - "Radical" (decomposes character into its lowest radical components),
3 - "Graphical" (decomposes into lowest forms, will be mostly strokes and small indivisable units)

var decomposition = hanzi.decompose('爱');
console.log(decomposition);

{ character: '爱',
  components1: [ 'No glyph available', '友' ],
  components2: [ '爫', '冖', '𠂇', '又' ],
  components3: [ '爫', '冖', '𠂇', '㇇', '㇏' ] }

//Example of forced level decomposition

var decomposition = hanzi.decompose('爱', 2);
console.log(decomposition);

{ character: '爱', components: [ '爫', '冖', '𠂇', '又' ] }

hanzi.decomposeMany(character string, type of decomposition);

A function that takes a string of characters and returns one object for all characters.

var decomposition = hanzi.decomposeMany('爱橄黃');
console.log(decomposition);

{ '爱':
   { character: '爱',
     components1: [ 'No glyph available', '友' ],
     components2: [ '爫', '冖', '𠂇', '又' ],
     components3: [ '爫', '冖', '𠂇', '㇇', '㇏' ] },
  '橄':
   { character: '橄',
     components1: [ '木', '敢' ],
     components2: [ '木', 'No glyph available', '耳', '⺙' ],
     components3: [ '一', '丨', '八', '匚', '二', '丨', '二', '丿', '一', '乂' ] },
  '黃':
   { character: '黃',
     components1: [ '廿', 'No glyph available' ],
     components2: [ '黃' ],
     components3: [ '卄', '一', '一', '二', '丨', '凵', '八' ] } }

hanzi.ifComponentExists(character/component);

Check if a component/character exists in the data. Returns boolean value.

console.log(hanzi.ifComponentExists('乂'));

true

console.log(hanzi.ifComponentExists('$'));

false

hanzi.definitionLookup(character/word, script type);

Returns a dictionary entry object. Script type is optional.

Script type parameters:

's' - Simplified
't' - Traditional

console.log(hanzi.definitionLookup('雪'));

[ { traditional: '雪',
    simplified: '雪',
    pinyin: 'Xue3',
    definition: 'surname Xue' },
  { traditional: '雪',
    simplified: '雪',
    pinyin: 'xue3',
    definition: 'snow/snowfall/CL:場|场[chang2]/to have the appearance of snow/to wipe away, off or out/to clean' } ]

hanzi.dictionarySearch(characters, search type);

Searches the dictionary based on input. Search type changes what data it returns. Defaults to

Search type paramaters:

'only' - this parameter returns only entries with the characters specfied. This is a means to find all compounds words with the characters specified.
null - returns all occurences of the character.

console.log(hanzi.dictionarySearch('雪'));

[ [ { traditional: '下雪',
      simplified: '下雪',
      pinyin: 'xia4 xue3',
      definition: 'to snow' } ],
  [ { traditional: '似雪',
      simplified: '似雪',
      pinyin: 'si4 xue3',
      definition: 'snowy' } ],
  [ { traditional: '冰天雪地',
      simplified: '冰天雪地',
      pinyin: 'bing1 tian1 xue3 di4',
      definition: 'a world of ice and snow' } ],
  [ { traditional: '冰雪',
      simplified: '冰雪',
      pinyin: 'bing1 xue3',
      definition: 'ice and snow' } ],
  [ { traditional: '冰雪皇后',
      simplified: '冰雪皇后',
      pinyin: 'bing1 xue3 huang2 hou4',
      definition: 'Dairy Queen (brand)' } ],
  [ { traditional: '冰雪聰明',
      simplified: '冰雪聪明',
      pinyin: 'bing1 xue3 cong1 ming5',
      definition: 'exceptionally intelligent (idiom)' } ],
  [ { traditional: '各人自掃門前雪，莫管他家瓦上霜',
      simplified: '各人自扫门前雪，莫管他家瓦上霜',
      pinyin: 'ge4 ren2 zi4 sao3 men2 qian2 xue3 , mo4 guan3 ta1 jia1 wa3 shang4 shuang1',
      definition: 'sweep the snow from your own door step, don\'t worry about the frost on your neighbor\'s roof (idiom)' } ],
  [ { traditional: '哈巴雪山',
      simplified: '哈巴雪山',
      pinyin: 'Ha1 ba1 xue3 shan1',
      definition: 'Mt Haba (Nakhi: golden flower), in Lijiang 麗江|丽江, northwest Yunnan' } ],
  [ { traditional: '單板滑雪',
      simplified: '单板滑雪',
      pinyin: 'dan1 ban3 hua2 xue3',
      definition: 'to snowboard' } ],
  [ { traditional: '報仇雪恥',
      simplified: '报仇雪耻',
      pinyin: 'bao4 chou2 xue3 chi3',
      definition: 'to take revenge and erase humiliation (idiom)' } ],

[....] //Truncated for display purposes

console.log(hanzi.dictionarySearch('心的小孩真', 'only'));

[ [ { traditional: '孩',
      simplified: '孩',
      pinyin: 'hai2',
      definition: 'child' } ],
  [ { traditional: '小',
      simplified: '小',
      pinyin: 'xiao3',
      definition: 'small/tiny/few/young' } ],
  [ { traditional: '小孩',
      simplified: '小孩',
      pinyin: 'xiao3 hai2',
      definition: 'child/CL:個|个[ge4]' } ],
  [ { traditional: '小小',
      simplified: '小小',
      pinyin: 'xiao3 xiao3',
      definition: 'very small/very few/very minor' } ],
  [ { traditional: '小心',
      simplified: '小心',
      pinyin: 'xiao3 xin1',
      definition: 'to be careful/to take care' } ],
  [ { traditional: '小的',
      simplified: '小的',
      pinyin: 'xiao3 de5',
      definition: 'I (when talking to a superior)' } ],
  [ { traditional: '心',
      simplified: '心',
      pinyin: 'xin1',
      definition: 'heart/mind/intention/centre/core/CL:顆|颗[ke1],個|个[ge4]' } ],
  [ { traditional: '的',
      simplified: '的',
      pinyin: 'de5',
      definition: 'of/~\'s (possessive particle)/(used after an attribute)/(used to form a nominal expression)/(used at the end of a declarative sentence for emphasis)' },
    { traditional: '的',
      simplified: '的',
      pinyin: 'di2',
      definition: 'really and truly' },
    { traditional: '的',
      simplified: '的',
      pinyin: 'di4',
      definition: 'aim/clear' } ],
  [ { traditional: '真',
      simplified: '真',
      pinyin: 'zhen1',
      definition: 'really/truly/indeed/real/true/genuine' } ],
  [ { traditional: '真心',
      simplified: '真心',
      pinyin: 'zhen1 xin1',
      definition: 'sincere/heartfelt/CL:片[pian4]' } ],
  [ { traditional: '真真',
      simplified: '真真',
      pinyin: 'zhen1 zhen1',
      definition: 'really/in fact/genuinely/scrupulously' } ] ]

hanzi.getExamples(character);

This function does a dictionarySearch(), then compares that to the Leiden University corpus for vocabulary frequency, then sorts the dictionary entries into three categories in an array: [high frequency, medium frequency and low frequency].

The frequency categories are determined relative to the frequency distribution of the dictionarySearch data compared to the corpus.

console.log(hanzi.getExamples('橄'));

[ [ { traditional: '橄欖',
      simplified: '橄榄',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3',
      definition: 'Chinese olive/olive' },
    { traditional: '橄欖油',
      simplified: '橄榄油',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3 you2',
      definition: 'olive oil' } ],
  [ { traditional: '橄欖球',
      simplified: '橄榄球',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3 qiu2',
      definition: 'football played with oval-shaped ball (rugby, American football, Australian rules etc)' } ],
  [ { traditional: '橄欖枝',
      simplified: '橄榄枝',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3 zhi1',
      definition: 'olive branch/symbol of peace' },
    { traditional: '橄欖樹',
      simplified: '橄榄树',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3 shu4',
      definition: 'olive tree' },
    { traditional: '橄欖石',
      simplified: '橄榄石',
      pinyin: 'gan3 lan3 shi2',
      definition: 'olivine (rock-forming mineral magnesium-iron silicate (Mg,Fe)2SiO4)/peridot' } ] ]

hanzi.segment(phrase); - NEW in v0.5.0

Returns an array of characters that are segmented based on a longest match lookup.

console.log(hanzi.segment("我們都是陌生人。"));

[ '我們', '都', '是', '陌生人', '。' ]

hanzi.getPinyin(character);

Returns all possible pinyin data for a character.

console.log(hanzi.getPinyin('的'));

[ 'de5', 'di2', 'di4' ]

hanzi.getCharacterFrequency(character);

Returns frequency data for a character based on the Junda corpus. The data is in simplified characters, but I made the function script agnostic. So both traditional and simplified will return the same data.

console.log(hanzi.getCharacterFrequency('热'));

{ number: '530',
  character: '热',
  count: '31190',
  percentage: '76.4970999352',
  pinyin: 're4',
  meaning: 'heat/to heat up/fervent/hot (of weather)/warm up' }

hanzi.getCharacterInFrequencyListByPosition(position); - NEW in v0.7.0

Gets a character based on its position the frequency list. This only goes up to 9933 based on the Junda Frequency list.

console.log(hanzi.getCharac

Hanzi

Install / Use

README