About Zigo

Zigo is a Chinese learning app that teaches characters through their components. Search any character or word and Zigo shows you the pieces it is made of, what each piece contributes, and a memory hook for why the whole thing means what it means — so characters stop being random strokes to memorize.

Why I built it

Hi — I'm Charmayne, Zigo's founder. Chinese characters aren't random: they're made of pieces that mean things. I grew up around Chinese but let it slip away — Zigo is how I'm finding my way back, and I built it because I wanted characters to finally make sense. I hope that's what it does for you.

I'm a solo founder and this is early. Messages sent through the app come straight to me — tell me what's broken, what's missing, or just what the first word you searched was. I reply to everything.

What's inside

Zigo's dictionary covers 121,845 entries built on CC-CEDICT, with component decompositions for 9,574 characters, stroke-order data from open stroke databases, 1,823 mapped components with their own meanings and etymologies, and browsable lists for all six HSK levels. Explanations and example sentences are AI-generated from this canonical data, cached, and progressively reviewed.

Counts measured July 2026 — they change only when the source dictionaries are reimported.