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A Chinese radical or indexing component is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator similar to a morpheme,though sometimes it may be a phonetic component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases the original semantic or phonological connection has become obscure,owing to changes in character meaning or pronunciation over time.
The National Languages Committee was established in 1928 by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China with the purpose of standardizing and popularizing the usage of Standard Chinese in the Republic of China. The Committee was known in English as the Mandarin Promotion Council or the National Languages Promotion Committee until 2003,but the Chinese name has not changed. The phrase Guoyu typically refers to Standard Chinese,but could also be interpreted as referring to "national languages". The reorganization of the Executive Yuan made the duties of the National Languages Committee be transferred to the Department of Lifelong Education's fourth sector from 2013.
The Four-Corner Method is a character-input method used for encoding Chinese characters into either a computer or a manual typewriter,using four or five numerical digits per character. The Four-Corner Method is also known as the Four-Corner System.
The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese:康熙字典;pinyin:KāngxīZìdiǎn,published in 1716,was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710 in order to improve on earlier dictionaries,to show his concern for Confucian culture,and to foster the standardization of the writing system. The dictionary takes its name from the Emperor's era name.
The 214 Kangxi radicals,also known as the Zihui radicals,form a system of radicals of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditional Chinese characters by radical and stroke count. They are officially part of the Unicode encoding system for CJKV characters,in their standard order,under the coding block "Kangxi radicals",while their graphic variants are contained in the "CJK Radicals Supplement". Thus,a reference to "radical 61",for example,without additional context,refers to the 61st radical of the Kangxi Dictionary,心;xīn "heart".
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) says:"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)
Tetsuji Morohashi was an important figure in the field of Japanese language studies and Sinology. He is best known as chief editor of the Dai Kan-Wa jiten,a comprehensive dictionary of Chinese characters,or kanji.
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.
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 (徐元誥),Lufei Kui (陆费逵),and Ouyang Pucun (歐陽溥存/欧阳溥存). It was based upon the 1716 Kangxi Zidian,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.
Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han Dynasty,which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language,and this article discusses some of the most important.
The Hanyu Da Cidian 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.
The Hanyu dazidian is a reference work on Chinese characters.
Taito,daito,or otodo is a kokuji written with 84 strokes,and thus the most graphically complex CJK character—collectively referring to Chinese characters and derivatives used in the written Chinese,Japanese,and Korean languages. This rare and complex character graphically places the 36-stroke tai䨺,meaning "cloudy",above the 48-stroke tō龘 "appearance of a dragon in flight". The second most complicated CJK character is the 58-stroke Chinese biáng,which was invented for Biangbiang noodles "a Shaanxi-style Chinese noodle".
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 LüShuxiang 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.
Radical 38 or radical woman (女部) meaning "woman" or "female" is one of the 31 Kangxi radicals composed of three strokes.
Zhonghua Zihai is the largest Chinese character dictionary available for print,compiled in 1994 and consisting of 85,568 different characters.
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".
The Ciyuan or Tz'u-yüan was the first major Chinese dictionary linguistically structured around words instead of individual characters used to write them. The Commercial Press published the first edition Ciyuan in 1915,and reissued it in various formats,including a 1931 supplement,and a fully revised 1979–1984 edition. The latest (3rd) edition was issued in 2015 to commemorate the centenary anniversary of its first publication.
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 Hawai'i 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 Chinese–English/English-Chinese Dictionary (2010). Furthermore,the ABC Dictionary databases have been developed into computer applications such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese (1997).
References
- ↑ Zhongwen da cidian bianzuan weiyuanhui (中文大辭典編纂委員會).1962–1968. Zhongwen da cidian (中文大辭典). 40 vols. Taipei: Zhongguo wenhua yanjiusuo (中國文化研究所). 1973. Rev. ed., 10 vols.
- ↑ Teng, Ssu-yü and Biggerstaff, Knight. 1971. An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works, 3rd ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 133. ISBN 0-674-03851-7
- ↑ Rouzer, Paul (2007). A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese. Harvard University Asia Center. p. xix. ISBN 9780674022706.
