Toktogi: A Korean-English pop-up dictionary

For a couple years, I was a faithful user of Naver’s English Dictionary extension for Chrome, which works by bringing up a side panel window with the definition of any Korean word that you double-click on.  It was nice, but I have a bad habit of highlighting and unnecessarily clicking on words while reading stuff online, so more often than not, I’d end up triggering the extension on an English word or a Korean word that I already knew.  That meant many instances of loading multiple windows, having to exit out of those windows, using up memory, and slowing down my internet speed.  Eventually I got to a point where I could understand 80% of the content I was reading on the internet (i.e. manhwa, celebrity interviews), so I deleted the extension and got by using context clues and the Daum dictionary webpage when needed.

The problem is, I’ve basically reached a vocabulary plateau with Korean because I keep reading the same type of thing time and again.  So lately, I’ve been making an earnest effort to read more diverse content…. but that meant having to look up a lot of new words.  Instead of going back to the Naver extension or choosing to laboriously look up each word I was unfamiliar with on the dictionary webpage, I’m utilizing a really awesome new Korean-English popup dictionary extension for Chrome.

This extension is super convenient.  All you do is hover your mouse over a Korean word and the English definition pops up in a tiny blue box below it.  No new browser opens, there’s no delay, and you can toggle the extension being on/off on a page quite easily.  This lets me read more quickly and smoothly than I ever have before.  Overall, there’s really not much to criticize.  As of now, the definitions only appear in English and there’s no way you can toggle to Korean definitions (sometimes I find it easier to understand the nuance of a word when I read the definition in Korean), nor can you look up the Korean equivalent of an English word, but the extension is still rather new so I’m sure there’s room for improvement and refinement in the future.  Now I really have no excuse to not read more Korean.

EDIT:  Here’s a link to the extension in the Chrome Web Store.