289 Dictionary

You might not have thought that a dictionary is cool, but Shuangyi Li is an extremely cool person who found a way to teach herself foreign languages to a level of high fluency while still living in rural China. She didn’t use a traditional dictionary, but did use an electronic dictionary, although only after three months of self-imposed language immersion! ShaoLan shares the story of how she always carried a dictionary to the USA when traveling on business back when she had her own tech startup in Taiwan, and she goes on to teach the Chinese for various different kinds of dictionary, including the traditional, electronic, phrasal and idiom dictionary!

In Chinese, the word for the dictionary is 字典. The first word means “word” and the second character means “documentation.” So, the “documentation” of “words” is a “dictionary”, 字典.