Too Many Tabs: April 2011

I like Zhongwen.com, which is wonderful and was way ahead of its time, cleverly avoiding character-set hell with image maps. But it could be more linkable.

With this bookmarklet, you can quickly look up a character etymology via its sound:
Lookup pinyin in Zhongwen.com for 漢字 etymology
These etymologies, inaccurate or fanciful as some of them may be, are great if you are looking for a way to remember a character.

I wish a lookup would produce the full Zhongwen.com site view, with all the frames, including general info and links, not to mention ads.
At some point I'd like to get in touch with the author Rick Harbaugh to see if there's a better way to link to his site.

Examples of etymologies:
聽 tīng - to listen = ear + virtue = heart + straight = ten + eyes (see true)
漢 Hàn - Chinese = water + clay = yellow + earth
法 fǎ - law = as water goes = secret earth (ok that last is my fancy from the MDBG character decomposition)

UPDATE May 9th: I recently realized Skritter links to Zhongwen.com via the Big5 version of a character:
勞 láo