Chinese dictionary

Last updated

Dunhuang manuscript (c. 8th century) page from the Yiqiejing yinyi, the oldest extant Chinese dictionary of Buddhist technical terminology Dunhuang Yiqiejing yinyi.svg
Dunhuang manuscript (c. 8th century) page from the Yiqiejing yinyi , the oldest extant Chinese dictionary of Buddhist technical terminology

A Chinese dictionary is a reference work for the Chinese language. There are two main types of Chinese dictionaries: zidian ("character dictionaries"), which list individual Chinese characters and their definitions, and cidian ("word/phrase dictionaries"), which list words (many of which use multiple characters) and short phrases along with their meanings. Because written Chinese consists of tens of thousands of characters, over time editors of Chinese dictionaries have developed a number of ways to organize them for convenient reference.

Contents

Chinese dictionaries have been published for over two millennia, beginning in the Han dynasty. This is the longest lexicographical history of any language. In addition to works for Mandarin Chinese, beginning with the 1st century CE Fangyan dictionaries also been created for the many varieties of Chinese. One of the most influential Chinese dictionaries ever published was the Kangxi Dictionary , finished in 1716 during the Qing dynasty. The list of 214 "Kangxi radicals" [lower-alpha 1] that it collated are still widely used.

Terminology

The general term cishu (Chinese:辭書; pinyin:císhū; lit.'lexicographic books') semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". [1] The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms.

For character dictionaries, zidian (Chinese : 字典 ; pinyin :zìdiǎn; Wade–Giles :tzŭ⁴-tien³; lit.'character dictionary') combines zi ( 字 ; "character, graph; letter, script, writing; word") and dian ( 典 "dictionary, encyclopedia; standard, rule; statute, canon; classical allusion").

For word dictionaries, cidian is interchangeably written ( 辭典 /辞典; cídiǎn; tzʻŭ²-tien³; "word dictionary") or ( 詞典 /词典; cídiǎn; tzʻŭ²-tien³; "word dictionary"); using cí ( 辭 ; "word, speech; phrase, expression; diction, phraseology; statement; a kind of poetic prose; depart; decline; resign"), and its graphic variant cí ( 詞 ; "word, term; expression, phrase; speech, statement; part of speech; a kind of tonal poetry"). Zidian is a much older and more common word than cidian, and Yang notes zidian is often "used for both 'character dictionary' and 'word dictionary'. [2]

Traditional Chinese lexicography

The precursors of Chinese dictionaries are primers designed for students of Chinese characters. The earliest of them only survive in fragments or quotations within Chinese classic texts. For example, the Shizhoupian was compiled by one or more historians in the court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827 BCE – 782 BCE),[ contradictory ] and was the source of the 籀文 zhòuwén variant forms listed in the Han dynasty Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. The Cangjiepian ("Chapters of Cang Jie"), named after the legendary inventor of writing, was edited by Li Si, and helped to standardize the Small seal script during the Qin dynasty.

The collation or lexicographical ordering of a dictionary generally depends upon its writing system. For a language written in an alphabet or syllabary, dictionaries are usually ordered alphabetically. Samuel Johnson defined dictionary as "a book containing the words of any language in alphabetical order, with explanations of their meaning" in his dictionary. But Johnson's definition cannot be applied to the Chinese dictionaries, as Chinese is written in characters or logograph, not alphabets. To Johnson, not having an alphabet is not to the Chinese's credit, as in 1778, when James Boswell asked about the Chinese characters, he replied "Sir, they have not an alphabet. They have not been able to form what all other nations have formed". [3] Nevertheless, the Chinese made their dictionaries, and developed three original systems for lexicographical ordering: semantic categories, graphic components, and pronunciations.

Semantically organized dictionaries

The first system of dictionary organization is by semantic categories. The circa 3rd-century BCE Erya ("Approaching Correctness") is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary, and scholarship reveals that it is a pre-Qin compilation of glosses to classical texts. It contains lists of synonyms arranged into 19 semantic categories (e.g., "Explaining Plants", "Explaining Trees"). The Han dynasty dictionary Xiao Erya ("Little Erya") reduces these 19 to 13 chapters. The early 3rd century CE Guangya ("Expanded Erya"), from the Northern Wei dynasty, followed the Erya's original 19 chapters. The circa 1080 CE Piya ("Increased Erya"), from the Song dynasty, has 8 semantically based chapters of names for plants and animals. For a dictionary user wanting to look up a character, this arbitrary semantic system is inefficient unless one already knows, or can guess, the meaning.

Two other Han dynasty lexicons are loosely organized by semantics. The 1st century CE Fangyan ("Regional Speech") is the world's oldest known dialectal dictionary. The circa 200 CE Shiming ("Explaining Names") employs paranomastic glosses to define words.

Graphically organized dictionaries

The second system of dictionary organization is by recurring graphic components or radicals. The famous 100–121 CE Shuowen Jiezi ("Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters") arranged characters through a system of 540 bushou (部首; "section header") radicals. The 543 CE Yupian ("Jade Chapters"), from the Liang dynasty, rearranged them into 542. The 1615 CE Zihui ("Character Glossary"), edited by Mei Yingzuo  [ zh ] during the Ming dynasty, simplified the 540 Shuowen Jiezi radicals to 214. It also originated the "radical-stroke" scheme of ordering characters on the number of residual graphic strokes besides the radical. The 1627 Zhengzitong ("Correct Character Mastery") also used 214. The 1716 CE Kangxi Dictionary , compiled under the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty, became the standard dictionary for Chinese characters, and popularized the system of 214 radicals. As most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic ones (形聲字), the radical method is usually effective, thus it continues to be widely used in the present day. However, sometimes the radical of a character is not obvious. To compensate this, a "Chart of Characters that Are Difficult to Look up" (難檢字表), arranged by the number of strokes of the characters, is usually provided.

Phonetically organized dictionaries

The third system of lexicographical ordering is by character pronunciation. This type of dictionary collates its entries by syllable rime and tones, and produces a so-called "rime dictionary". The first surviving rime dictionary is the 601 CE Qieyun ("Cutting [Spelling] Rimes") from the Sui dynasty; it became the standard of pronunciation for Middle Chinese. During the Song dynasty, it was expanded into the 1011 CE Guangyun ("Expanded Rimes") and the 1037 CE Jiyun ("Collected Rimes").

The clear problem with these old phonetically arranged dictionary is that the would-be user needs to have the knowledge of rime. Thus, dictionaries collated this way can only serve the literati.

A great number of modern dictionaries published today arrange their entries by pinyin or other methods of romanisation, together with a radicals index. Some of these pinyin dictionaries also contain indices of the characters arranged by number and order of strokes, by the four corner encoding or by the cangjie encoding.

Some dictionaries employ more than one of these three methods of collation. For example, the Longkan Shoujian of the Liao dynasty uses radicals, which are grouped by tone. The characters under each radical are also grouped by tone.

Functional classifications

Besides categorizing ancient Chinese dictionaries by their methods of collation, they can also be classified by their functions. In the traditional bibliographic divisions of the imperial collection Complete Library of the Four Treasuries , dictionaries were classified as belonging to xiǎoxué (小學, lit. "minor learning", the premodern equivalent of "linguistics"), which was contrasted with dàxué (大學, "major learning", i.e., learning that had moral implications). Xiaoxue was divided into texts dealing with xùngǔ (訓詁, "exegesis" similar to "philology"), wénzì (文字, "script", analogous to "grammatology"), and yīnyùn (音韻, "sounds and rhymes," comparable to "phonology"). [4]

The Xungu type, sometimes called yǎshū (雅書, "word book"), [5] comprises Erya and its descendants. These exegetical dictionaries focus on explaining meanings of words as found in the Chinese classics.

The Wenzi dictionaries, called zìshū (字書 "character book"), consist of Shuowen Jiezi, Yupian, Zihui, Zhengzitong, and the Kangxi Dictionary. This type of dictionary, which focuses on the shape and structure of the characters, subsumes both "orthography dictionaries", such as the Ganlu Zishu (干祿字書) of the Tang dynasty, and "script dictionaries", such as the Liyun (隸韻) of the Song dynasty. Although these dictionaries center upon the graphic properties of Chinese characters, they do not necessarily collate characters by radical. For instance, Liyun is a clerical script dictionary collated by tone and rime.

The Yinyun type, called yùnshū (韻書 "rime book"), focuses on the pronunciations of characters. These dictionaries are always collated by rimes.

While the above traditional pre-20th-century Chinese dictionaries focused upon the meanings and pronunciations of words in classical texts, they practically ignored the spoken language and vernacular literature.

Modern Chinese lexicography

The Kangxi Dictionary served as the standard Chinese dictionary for generations, is still published and is now online. Contemporary lexicography is divisible between bilingual and monolingual Chinese dictionaries.

Chinese–English dictionaries

A page from the 1865 reprint of Morrison's Chinese dictionary, the first major Chinese-English dictionary. In this section, words are arranged alphabetically based on Morrison's transcription of Chinese. Morrison-Chinese-Dictionary-p-4.jpg
A page from the 1865 reprint of Morrison's Chinese dictionary, the first major Chinese–English dictionary. In this section, words are arranged alphabetically based on Morrison's transcription of Chinese.

The foreigners who entered China in late Ming and Qing dynasties needed dictionaries for different purposes than native speakers. Wanting to learn Chinese, they compiled the first grammar books and bilingual dictionaries. Westerners adapted the Latin alphabet to represent Chinese pronunciation, and arranged their dictionaries accordingly.

Two Bible translators edited early Chinese dictionaries. The Scottish missionary Robert Morrison wrote A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1815–1823). [6] The British missionary Walter Henry Medhurst wrote a Hokkien (Min Nan) dialect dictionary in 1832 [7] and the Chinese and English Dictionary in 1842. [8] Both were flawed in their representation of pronunciations, such as aspirated stops. In 1874 the American philologist and diplomat Samuel Wells Williams applied the method of dialect comparison in his dictionary, A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language , which refined distinctions in articulation and gave variant regional pronunciations in addition to standard Beijing pronunciation. [9]

The British consular officer and linguist Herbert Giles criticized Williams as "the lexicographer not for the future but of the past", [10] and took nearly twenty years to compile his A Chinese-English Dictionary (1892, 1912), [11] one that Norman calls "the first truly adequate Chinese–English dictionary". [12] It contained 13,848 characters and numerous compound expressions, with pronunciation based upon Beijing Mandarin, which it compared with nine southern dialects such as Cantonese, Hakka, and Fuzhou dialect. It has been called "still interesting as a repository of late Qing documentary Chinese, although there is little or no indication of the citations, mainly from the Kangxi Zidian [Kangxi Dictionary]." [10] Giles modified the Chinese romanization system of Thomas Francis Wade to create the Wade-Giles system, which was standard in English speaking countries until 1979 when pinyin was adopted. The Giles dictionary was replaced by the 1931 dictionary of the Australian missionary Robert Henry Mathews. [13] Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary , which was popular for decades, was based on Giles and partially updated by Y.R. Chao in 1943 and reprinted in 1960. [10]

Trained in American structural linguistics, Yuen Ren Chao and Lien-sheng Yang wrote a Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese (1947), that emphasized the spoken rather than the written language. [14] Main entries were listed in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and they distinguished free morphemes from bound morphemes. A hint of non-standard pronunciation was also given, by marking final stops and initial voicing and non-palatalization in non-Mandarin dialects.

The Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren wrote the seminal (1957) Grammata Serica Recensa with his reconstructed pronunciations for Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. [15]

Chinese lexicography advanced during the 1970s. The translator Lin Yutang wrote the semantically sophisticated Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage (1972) that is now available online. [16] The author Liang Shih-Chiu edited two full-scale dictionaries: Chinese-English [17] with over 8,000 characters and 100,000 entries, and English-Chinese [18] with over 160,000 entries.

The linguist and professor of Chinese John DeFrancis edited the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary (1996), giving more than 196,000 words or terms alphabetically arranged in a single-tier pinyin order. [19] The user can therefore in a straightforward way find a term whose pronunciation is known rather than searching by radical or character structure, the latter being a 2-tiered approach. This project had long been advocated by another pinyin proponent, Victor H. Mair. [20]

Chinese–Chinese dictionaries

When the Republic of China began in 1912, educators and scholars recognized the need to update the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary. It was thoroughly revised in the (1915) Zhonghua Da Zidian ("Comprehensive Chinese-Character Dictionary"), which corrected over 4,000 Kangxi Dictionary mistakes and added more than 1,000 new characters. [21] Lu Erkui's (1915) Ciyuan ("Sources of Words") was a groundbreaking effort in Chinese lexicography and can be considered the first cidian "word dictionary". [22]

Shu Xincheng's (1936) Cihai ("Sea of Words") was a comprehensive dictionary of characters and expressions, and provided near-encyclopedic coverage in fields like science, philosophy, history. [23] The Cihai remains a popular dictionary and has been frequently revised.

The (1937) Guoyu cidian (國語辭典 "Dictionary of the National Language") was a four-volume dictionary of words, designed to standardize modern pronunciation. [24] The main entries were characters listed phonologically by Zhuyin Fuhao and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. For example, the title in these systems is ㄍㄨㄛㄩ ㄘㄉ一ㄢ and Gwoyeu tsyrdean.

Wei Jiangong's (1953) Xinhua Zidian ("New China Character Dictionary") is a pocket-sized reference, alphabetically arranged by pinyin. [25] It is the world's most popular reference work. [26] The 11th edition was published in 2011.

Lü Shuxiang's (1973) Xiandai Hanyu Cidian ("Contemporary Chinese Dictionary") is a middle-sized dictionary of words. [27] It is arranged by characters, alphabetized by pinyin, which list compounds and phrases, with a total 56,000 entries (expanded to 70,000 in the 2016 edition). Both the Xinhua zidian and the Xiandai Hanyu cidian followed a simplified scheme of 189 radicals.

Two outstanding achievements in contemporary Chinese lexicography are the (1986–93) Hanyu Da Cidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Words") with over 370,000 word and phrase entries listed under 23,000 different characters; [28] and the (1986–89) Hanyu Da Zidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters") with 54,678 head entries for characters. They both use a system of 200 radicals. [29]

In recent years, the computerization of Chinese has allowed lexicographers to create dianzi cidian (電子詞典/电子词典 "electronic dictionaries") usable on computers, PDAs, etc. There are proprietary systems, such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese, and there are also free dictionaries available online. After Paul Denisowski started the volunteer CEDICT (Chinese–English dictionary) project in 1997, it has grown into a standard reference database. The CEDICT is the basis for many Internet dictionaries of Chinese, and is included in the Unihan Database.

Specialized dictionaries

Chinese publishing houses print diverse types of zhuanke cidian (專科詞典/专科词典 "specialized dictionary"). One Chinese dictionary bibliography [30] lists over 130 subject categories, from "Abbreviations, Accounting" to "Veterinary, Zoology." The following examples are limited to specialized dictionaries from a few representative fields.

Ancient Chinese

Dictionaries of Ancient Chinese give definitions, in Modern Chinese, of characters and words found in the pre-Modern (before 1911) Chinese literature. They are typically organized by pinyin or by Zihui radicals, and give definitions in order of antiquity (most ancient to most recent) when several definitions exist. Quotes from the literature exemplifying each listed meaning are given. Quotes are usually chosen from the pre-Han Classical literature when possible, unless the definition emerged during the post-Classical period. Dictionaries intended for historians, linguists, and other classical scholars will sometimes also provide Middle Chinese fanqie readings and/or Old Chinese rime groups, as well as bronze script or oracle bone script forms.

While dictionaries published in mainland China intended for study or reference by high school/college students are generally printed in Simplified Chinese, dictionaries intended for scholarly research are set in Traditional Chinese.

Dialects

Twenty centuries ago, the Fangyan was the first Chinese specialized dictionary. The usual English translation for fangyan (方言; lit. "regional/areal speech") is "dialect", but the language situation in China is said to be uniquely complex. In the "dialect" sense of English dialects, Chinese has Mandarin dialects, yet fangyan is also used to mean "non-Mandarin languages, mutually unintelligible regional varieties of Chinese", such as Cantonese and Hakka. Some linguists like John DeFrancis prefer the translation "topolect", which are very similar to independent languages. (See also- Protection of the Varieties of Chinese.) The Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan is an online dictionary of Taiwanese Hokkien. Here are some general fangyan cidian (方言词典; "topolect dictionary") examples.

Idioms

Chinese has five words translatable as "idiom": chengyu (成語/成语 "set phrase; idiom"), yanyu (諺語/谚语; "proverb; popular saying, maxim; idiom"), xiehouyu (歇後語/歇后语; "truncated witticism, aposiopesis; enigmatic folk simile"), xiyu (習語/习语; "idiom"), and guanyongyu (慣用語/惯用语; "fixed expression; idiom; locution"). Some modern dictionaries for idioms are:

Loanwords

The Chinese language adopted a few foreign wailaici (外來詞/外来词 "loanwords") during the Han dynasty, especially after Zhang Qian's exploration of the Western Regions. The lexicon absorbed many Buddhist terms and concepts when Chinese Buddhism began to flourish in the Southern and Northern dynasties. During the late 19th century, when Western powers forced open China's doors, numerous loanwords entered Chinese, many through the Japanese language. While some foreign borrowings became obsolete, others became indispensable terms in modern vocabulary.

Vernacular literature

The 20th century saw the rapid progress of the studies of the lexicons found in the Chinese vernacular literature, which includes novels, dramas and poetry. Important works in the field include:

Chinese learners

Employing corpus linguistics and lists of Chinese characters arranged by frequency of usage (e.g., List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese), lexicographers have compiled dictionaries for learners of Chinese as a foreign language. These specialized Chinese dictionaries are available either as add-ons to existing publications like Yuan's 2004 Pocket Dictionary [32] and Wenlin or as specific ones like

Deficiencies

Victor H. Mair lists eight adverse features of traditional Chinese lexicography, some of which have continued up to the present day: (1) persistent confusion of spoken word with written graph; (2) lack of etymological science as opposed to the analysis of script; (3) absence of the concept of word; (4) ignoring the script's historical developments in the oracle bones and bronze inscriptions; (5) no precise, unambiguous, and convenient means for specifying pronunciations; (6) no standardized, user-friendly means for looking up words and graphs; (7) failure to distinguish linguistically between vernacular and literary registers, or between usages peculiar to different regions and times; and (8) open-endedness of the writing system, with current unabridged character dictionaries containing 60,000 to 85,000 graphs. [33]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ radicals are graphical components of Chinese characters

Related Research Articles

<i>Kangxi Dictionary</i> 18th-century Chinese dictionary

The Kangxi Dictionary is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing, considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters. Wanting an improvement upon earlier dictionaries, as well as to show his concern for Confucian culture and to foster standardization of the Chinese writing system, its compilation was ordered by the Kangxi Emperor in 1710, from whom the compendium gets its name. The dictionary was the largest of its kind, containing 47,043 character entries. Around 40% of them were graphical variants, while others were dead, archaic, or found only once in the Classical Chinese corpus. In today's vernacular written Chinese, fewer than a quarter of the dictionary's characters are commonly used.

The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten is a Japanese dictionary of kanji compiled by Tetsuji Morohashi. Remarkable for its comprehensiveness and size, Morohashi's dictionary contains over 50,000 character entries and 530,000 compound words. Haruo Shirane (2003:15) said: "This is the definitive dictionary of the Chinese characters and one of the great dictionaries of the world."

Japanese dictionaries have a history that began over 1300 years ago when Japanese Buddhist priests, who wanted to understand Chinese sutras, adapted Chinese character dictionaries. Present-day Japanese lexicographers are exploring computerized editing and electronic dictionaries. According to Nakao Keisuke (中尾啓介):

It has often been said that dictionary publishing in Japan is active and prosperous, that Japanese people are well provided for with reference tools, and that lexicography here, in practice as well as in research, has produced a number of valuable reference books together with voluminous academic studies. (1998:35)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanja–Hangul dictionaries</span>

Han-Han Dae Sajeon is the generic term for Korean hanja-to-hangul dictionaries. There are several such dictionaries from different publishers. The most comprehensive one, published by Dankook University Publishing, contains 53,667 Chinese characters and 420,269 compound words. This dictionary was a project of the Dankook University Institute of Oriental Studies, which started in June 1977 and was completed 28 October 2008, and cost 31 billion KRW, or US$25 million. The dictionary comprises 16 volumes totalling over 20,000 pages.

<i>Xinhua Dictionary</i> Chinese language dictionary

The Xinhua Zidian, or Xinhua Dictionary, is a Chinese language dictionary published by the Commercial Press. It is the best-selling Chinese dictionary and the world's most popular reference work. In 2016, Guinness World Records officially confirmed that the dictionary, published by The Commercial Press, is the "Most popular dictionary" and the "Best-selling book ". It is considered a symbol of Chinese culture.

<i>Zhonghua Da Zidian</i>

The Zhonghua Da Zidian is an unabridged Chinese dictionary of characters, originally published in 1915 by the Zhonghua Book Company in Shanghai. The chief editors were Xu Yuan'gao, Lufei Kui, and Ouyang Pucun (歐陽溥存/欧阳溥存). It was based upon the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary, and is internally organized using the 214 Kangxi radicals. The 1915 publication contains more than 48,000 entries for individual characters, including many invented in the two centuries since the Kangxi Dictionary, making it the largest character dictionary of its time.

<i>Hanyu Da Cidian</i> Chinese phrase dictionary

The Hanyu Da Cidian, also known as the Grand Chinese Dictionary, is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang. The chief editor Luo Zhufeng (1911–1996), along with a team of over 300 scholars and lexicographers, started the enormous task of compilation in 1979. Publication of the thirteen volumes began with first volume in 1986 and ended with the appendix and index volume in 1994. In 1994, the dictionary also won the National Book Award of China.

<i>Hanyu Da Zidian</i> Chinese character dictionary (1986–1989)

The Hanyu Da Zidian, also known as the Grand Chinese Dictionary, is a reference dictionary on Chinese characters.

<i>Xiandai Hanyu Cidian</i> Authoritative one-volume Chinese-language dictionary

Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, also known as A Dictionary of Current Chinese or Contemporary Chinese Dictionary is an important one-volume dictionary of Standard Mandarin Chinese published by the Commercial Press, now into its 7th (2016) edition. It was originally edited by Lü Shuxiang and Ding Shengshu as a reference work on modern Standard Mandarin Chinese. Compilation started in 1958 and trial editions were issued in 1960 and 1965, with a number of copies printed in 1973 for internal circulation and comments, but due to the Cultural Revolution the final draft was not completed until the end of 1977, and the first formal edition was not published until December 1978. It was the first People's Republic of China dictionary to be arranged according to Hanyu Pinyin, the phonetic standard for Standard Mandarin Chinese, with explanatory notes in simplified Chinese. The subsequent second through seventh editions were respectively published in 1983, 1996, 2002, 2005, 2012 and 2016.

The Cihai is a large-scale dictionary and encyclopedia of Standard Mandarin Chinese. The Zhonghua Book Company published the first Cihai edition in 1938, and the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House revised editions in 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009. A standard bibliography of Chinese reference works calls the Cihai an "outstanding dictionary".

<i>Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects</i>

The Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects is a compendium of dictionaries for 42 local varieties of Chinese following a common format. The individual dictionaries cover dialects spread across the dialect groups identified in the Language Atlas of China:

Yu Min was an influential Chinese linguist, a 1940 graduate of the Fu Jen Catholic University, Chinese Department, a former professor of Yenching University, and professor of Beijing Normal University. His primary research areas were Chinese historical linguistics, Sino-Tibetan comparison, the study of Sanskrit in Chinese transcription. His collected writings were published posthumously in 1999.

<i>ABC Chinese–English Dictionary</i>

The ABC Chinese–English Dictionary or ABC Dictionary (1996), compiled under the chief editorship of John DeFrancis, is the first Chinese dictionary to collate entries in single-sort alphabetical order of pinyin romanization, and a landmark in the history of Chinese lexicography. It was also the first publication in the University of Hawaiʻi Press's "ABC" series of Chinese dictionaries. They republished the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary in a pocket edition (1999) and desktop reference edition (2000), as well as the expanded ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary (2003), and dual ABC English–Chinese, Chinese–English Dictionary (2010). Furthermore, the ABC Dictionary databases have been developed into computer applications such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese (1997).

<i>The First Series of Standardized Forms of Words with Non-standardized Variant Forms</i> Chinese style guide

The First Series of Standardized Forms of Words with Non-standardized Variant Forms published on December 19, 2001 and officially implemented on March 31, 2002, is a Standard Chinese style guide published in China. It contains 338 Standard Chinese words that have variant written forms. In the First Series, one of the variant written forms for each word was selected as the recommended standard form.

<i>Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian</i> Chinese dictionary

Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian is a dictionary of Standard Chinese created as part of a proposal in the Eighth Five-year Plan of China. It is similar to Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, but with notable divergences. The third edition has entries for 12,000 characters and 72,000 words, with over 80,000 example usages.

Strokes are the most basic writing units of Chinese characters. Stroke-based sorting, also called stroke-based ordering or stroke-based order, is one of the five sorting methods frequently used in modern Chinese dictionaries, the others being radical-based sorting, pinyin-based sorting, bopomofo and the four-corner method. In addition to functioning as an independent sorting method, stroke-based sorting is often employed to support the other methods. For example, in Xinhua Dictionary (新华字典), Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (现代汉语词典) and Oxford Chinese Dictionary, stroke-based sorting is used to sort homophones in Pinyin sorting, while in radical-based sorting it helps to sort the radical list, the characters under a common radical, as well as the list of characters difficult to lookup by radicals.

The GB stroke-based order, full name GB13000.1 Character Set Chinese Character Order , is a standard released by the National Language Commission of China in 1999. It is the current national standard for stroke-based sorting, and has been applied to the arrangement of the List of Commonly-used Standard Chinese Characters (通用规范汉字表), and the new versions of Xinhua Zidian and Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, etc.

Chinese character order, or Chinese character indexing, Chinese character collation and Chinese character sorting, is the way in which a Chinese character set is sorted into a sequence for the convenience of information retrieval. It may also refer to the sequence so produced. English dictionaries and indexes are normally arranged in alphabetical order for quick lookup. But Chinese is written in tens of thousands of different characters, not just dozens of letters in an alphabet, and that makes the sorting job much more challenging.

Grand Chinese Dictionary may refer to:

A Chinese character set is a group of Chinese characters. Since the size of a set is the number of elements in it, an introduction to Chinese character sets will also introduce the Chinese character numbers in them.

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Xue 1982, p. 152.
  2. ↑ Yang, Paul Fu-mien (1985). Chinese Lexicology and Lexicography: A Selected and Classified Bibliography. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. p. xxii. ISBN   9789622013124.
  3. ↑ Boswell, James. 1907. The Life of Samuel Johnson . Isaac Pitman & Sons. p. 822.
  4. ↑ Mair 1998, p. 165.
  5. ↑ Xue 1982, p. 151.
  6. ↑ Morrison, Robert, ed. A dictionary of the Chinese language. Macao: East India Company. 1815–1823. Part 1: Chinese and English arranged according to the radicals (physically in two books: 1, 2); Part 2: Chinese and English arranged alphabetically; Part 3: English and Chinese.
  7. ↑ Medhurst, Walter, ed. A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language: According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms: Containing about 12,000 Characters Macao: East India Company. 1832. Reprint Ganesha. 2006. ISBN   1-86210-067-5
  8. ↑ Medhurst, Walter, ed. Chinese and English dictionary: Containing all the words in the Chinese imperial dictionary, arranged according to the radicals. Batavia: Parapattan. 1842.
  9. ↑ Williams, Samuel, ed. A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, arranged according to the Wu-fang yuan yin, with the pronunciation of the characters as heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy and Shanghai. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press. 1874. Reprint Ganesha. 2001. ISBN   1-86210-021-7.
  10. 1 2 3 Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual . (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 84, 2013. p. 85. ISBN   0674002474.
  11. ↑ Giles, Herbert A., ed. A Chinese–English Dictionary. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh. 1892. 2nd. ed. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh. 1912.
  12. ↑ Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. p. 173. ISBN   9780521296533.
  13. ↑ Mathews, Robert H., ed. Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. 1931. Rev. American ed. 1943. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  14. ↑ Chao, Yuen Ren and Yang, Lien-sheng, eds. Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1947. ISBN   0-674-12350-6
  15. ↑ Karlgren, Bernhard (1957). "Grammata Serica Recensa". Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. 29: 1–332.
  16. ↑ Lin Yutang, ed. Lin Yutang's Chinese–English Dictionary of Modern Usage. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong. 1972.
  17. ↑ Liang Shiqiu and Zhang Fangjie [Chang Fang-chieh] 張芳杰, eds. Far East Chinese–English Dictionary. Taipei: Far East Book Co. 1971. ISBN   957-612-463-8
  18. ↑ Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋, ed. Far East English–Chinese Dictionary. Taipei: Far East Book Co. 1975. ISBN   957-612-041-1
  19. ↑ DeFrancis, John, ed. (1996). ABC Chinese–English Dictionary. University of Hawai'i Press. Also: Defrancis, John (2003). ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary: Alphabetically Based Computerized. ISBN   9780824827663.
  20. ↑ Mair, Victor H. 1986. "The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects". Sino-Platonic Papers 1:1–31.
  21. ↑ Xu Yuan'gao 徐元誥, ed. Zhongwen Da Zidian (中華大字典 "Comprehensive Chinese-Character Dictionary"). 4 vols. Shanghai: Zhonghua. 1915.
  22. ↑ Lu Erkui 陸爾奎, ed. Ciyuan (辭源 "Sources of Words"). Shanghai: Commercial Press. 1915. Rev. ed. 1939.
  23. ↑ Shu Xincheng 舒新城, ed. Cihai (辭海 "Sea of Words"). 3 vols. Shanghai: Zhonghua. 1936.
  24. ↑ Zhongguo cidian bianzuanchu 中國辭典編纂處, eds. Guoyu cidian (國語辭典 "Dictionary of the National Language"). 8 vols. Shanghai: Commercial Press. 1937.
  25. ↑ Wei Jiangong 魏建功, ed. Xinhua zidian (新华字典 "New China Dictionary"). Beijing: Commercial Press. 1953. 10th rev. ed. Beijing: Commercial Press. 2004. ISBN   7-100-03931-2
  26. ↑ "400 million copies of Chinese-character [Xinhua] dictionary". People's Daily Online. 13 February 2004.
  27. ↑ Lü Shuxiang 吕叔湘, ed. Xiandai Hanyu cidian (现代汉语词典 "The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary"). Beijing: Commercial Press. 1973. ISBN   7-100-03477-9
  28. ↑ Luo Zhufeng 羅竹風, ed. Hanyu da cidian (汉语大词典 "Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese"). 12 vols. Shanghai: Cishu chubanshe. 1986–1994. ISBN   7-5432-0013-9
  29. ↑ Hanyu da zidian bianji weiyuanhui 汉语大字典编辑委员会, eds. Hanyu da zidian (汉语大字典 "Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters"). 8 vols. Wuhan: Hubei cishu chubanshe. 1986–1989.
  30. ↑ Mathias, James, Thomas Creamer, and Sandra Hixson. (1982). Chinese Dictionaries: An Extensive Bibliography of Dictionaries in Chinese and Other Languages. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. ISBN   0-313-23505-8
  31. ↑ Wang, Li, et al. 王力古漢語字典 編寫組 (王力 張雙棣 蔣紹愚 何九盈 曹先擢 唐作藩 郭錫良) 王力古漢語字典 Wang Li Guhanyu Zidian. Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing House, 2000. ISBN   7-101-01219-1
  32. ↑ Yuan, Zhu, et al. 2004. Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
  33. ↑ Mair 1998, p. 171.

Online Chinese dictionaries

Further reading

When “10” typed quality set to(10)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.