Publisher's Synopsis
Do you often have difficulty finding a particular character in a standard Chinese dictionary? Do you often fail to remember characters, though you have seen and looked them up several times? Don't you think one of the reasons could be that characters that look similar to others are not grouped together? And don't you think that the etymological background of characters (their historical development) could and should be explained better in order to understand the reason for all those dots and strokes? If your answer to these questions is 'yes', then help could be on its way within seconds. The Simplified Chinese Character Dictionary contains several new features that make looking up, learning and remembering Chinese characters more effective and more fun:
- characters are arranged by the phonetic part that in most characters is relatively easy to distinguish. By grouping characters that have the same phonetic into series, it is now possible to study and compare characters that look almost similar;
- any character can be found by stripping it first of its radicals and then splitting the remaining phonetic into components. Phonetic and character can then be found under one of these components;
- more than 5,700 simplified character shapes can be found using the same 3-step method. Examples - with pinyin transliterations - are given of their usage in daily or literary Chinese.
- counting strokes is not necessary, and - once the user is used to the look-up method - most characters can be found within seconds;
- etymological explanations are included, which can help people to understand the historical background of phonetics and characters, moreover, they are very effective in helping to remember them and distinguishing them from others that look similar;
- a 30-page introduction is included, in which the method used for looking up characters is explained step by step and with many examples. It also explains how to distinguish radicals, besides explaining different kinds of radicals. Moreover, the introduction contains a brief overview of the historical development of Chinese characters in general.
