75-422: The Ciyuan or Tz'u-yüan was the first major Chinese dictionary linguistically structured around words ( ci 辭 ) instead of individual characters ( zi 字 ) 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
150-702: A weidinggao (未定稿 "draft manuscript") Ciyuan was completed, but the anti-intellectualism of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) halted compilation. Work resumed in 1976 as a cooperative effort between the Commercial Press and language scholars in the provinces of Guangdong , Guangxi , Hunan , and Henan . The revised Volumes 1 through 4 were published in 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1984, respectively. The revised edition Ciyuan contains 12,980 head characters, under which are 84,134 definitions of phrases, totaling 11.3 million characters. Volume 4 has
225-466: 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
300-534: A dictionary of discrete characters would have separate entries for zi ( 字 , "character") and dian ( 典 , "canon; standard"), it would not enter the compound zidian ( 字典 , "dictionary"); a dictionary of words would include entries for zi , dian , and zidian . The Chinese language, both written and spoken , is primarily made up of words and phrases, not independent characters. The dictionary title ciyuan 辭源 – which combines ci 辭 "take leave; decline; diction; phrase; word" and yuan 源 "source; cause; origin" –
375-583: 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
450-520: A few representative fields. 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
525-436: A foreign language . These specialized Chinese dictionaries are available either as add-ons to existing publications like Yuan's 2004 Pocket Dictionary and Wenlin or as specific ones like 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
600-760: A major Chinese publishing house, issued the original Ciyuan in two volumes totaling 3,087 pages, available in large, medium, and small sizes. It contained approximately 100,000 entries, with dictionary order by individual character head entries arranged by radical and stroke , using the traditional 214 Kangxi radicals . Phrase and compound entries are grouped under their first character, arranged firstly according to their number of characters, and secondly according to their radicals. The Ciyuan included not only Chinese characters and phrases, but also chengyu idioms, classical references, and encyclopedic terms, such as Chinese and foreign personal and place names, book titles, and modern scientific terms. Its preface explained
675-455: A number of important terms; for example, "under the character "wei" ([委] "entrust; committee"), the original edition had 49 compounds, while the revised edition deletes 12 of these but adds 29 more". Since citations in the first edition Ciyuan were sometimes unclear as to sources, the editors of the revised edition rechecked every citation, corrected errors, and added references for authors and chapter numbers. In 1988, Commercial Press published
750-418: A number of methods to order and sort characters to facilitate more convenient reference. 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
825-458: A one volume edition, with a Four-Corner Method index. Plans for a second edition Ciyuan began after a 1958 conference about revising the Ciyuan and Cihai dictionaries. Hartmann says, "It was decided to maintain Ciyuan ' s emphasis on literary, historical and classical terms and to revise and augment it as a reference work for researchers and students of pre-modern Chinese". In 1964,
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#1732780410042900-510: A palatal medial -j- , but there was no such tendency for the rounded medial -w- , which was represented solely in the final character. There was also a strong tendency to spell words with labial initials using final characters with labial initials. The third character 反 fǎn "turn back" is the usual marker of a fanqie spelling in the Qieyun . In later dictionaries such as the Guangyun ,
975-473: A pinyin index attached. Content of the new Ciyuan focuses on classical terms and encyclopedic items relating to Chinese literature and history up to 1840, the time of the First Opium War . The editors deleted technical terms from natural and social sciences, and international words that had been appended into the original edition Ciyuan during 60 years of revisions and updates. They also added
1050-585: 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. 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")
1125-680: 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. Besides categorizing ancient Chinese dictionaries by their methods of collation, they can also be classified by their functions. In
1200-694: A reduced-size, single volume edition Ciyuan . The third edition (辞源(第三版)) was published in 2015 following 8 years of editing.( "《辞源》出版百年 第三版全球同步首发" . 2015-12-24. )( "快讯︱《辞源》第三版问世——九大修订、纸电同步" . 2015-12-24. ) Footnotes Chinese dictionary There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language : 'character dictionaries' ( 字典 ; zìdiǎn ) list individual Chinese characters , and 'word dictionaries' ( 辞典 ; 辭典 ; cídiǎn ) list words and phrases. Because tens of thousands of characters have been used in written Chinese , Chinese lexicographers have developed
1275-590: A repository of late Qing documentary Chinese, although there is little or no indication of the citations, mainly from the Kangxi Zidian [ Kangxi Dictionary ]." 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
1350-517: A standard reference database. The CEDICT is the basis for many Internet dictionaries of Chinese, and is included in the Unihan Database . Chinese publishing houses print diverse types of zhuanke cidian ( 專科詞典 / 专科词典 " specialized dictionary "). One Chinese dictionary bibliography lists over 130 subject categories, from "Abbreviations, Accounting" to "Veterinary, Zoology." The following examples are limited to specialized dictionaries from
1425-455: 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 . 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
1500-512: A system of 200 radicals. 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
1575-470: Is a much older and more common word than cidian , and Yang notes zidian is often "used for both 'character dictionary' and 'word dictionary'. 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
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#17327804100421650-421: Is a pocket-sized reference, alphabetically arranged by pinyin. It is the world's most popular reference work . The 11th edition was published in 2011. Lü Shuxiang 's (1973) Xiandai Hanyu Cidian ("Contemporary Chinese Dictionary") is a middle-sized dictionary of words. It is arranged by characters, alphabetized by pinyin, which list compounds and phrases, with a total 56,000 entries (expanded to 70,000 in
1725-629: Is an old variant for ciyuan 詞源 "word origin; etymology", usually written with ci 詞 "word; term; speech". The Ciyuan has been popular with Chinese intellectuals. For example, during the Chinese Civil War , Mao Zedong carried two modern dictionaries, the Ciyuan and the Cihai . The lexicographer Reinhard Hartmann predicts that the revised Ciyuan "should remain a basic research tool for all students of China's pre-modern literature and history for many years to come". The Ciyuan , which
1800-487: 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
1875-429: 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
1950-507: Is now available online. The author Liang Shih-Chiu edited two full-scale dictionaries: Chinese-English with over 8,000 characters and 100,000 entries, and English-Chinese 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. The user can therefore in
2025-413: Is now pronounced qí because in the level tone, the voiced initial becomes aspirated, but the second character is now pronounced liǎng . That is because in the rising tone, sonorants like [l] conditioned the yin register, which led to the modern third tone. In Cantonese , fanqie can be found in some dictionaries to this day, often alongside other romanization system or phonetic guides, to indicate
2100-415: Is the first major Chinese dictionary of the 20th century, has been republished and revised repeatedly. Chinese lexicographers began compiling the first edition Ciyuan in 1908, with Lu Erkui (陸爾奎, 1862–1935) as editor-in-chief . They chiefly derived material from the 1710 Kangxi Dictionary and 1798 Jingji cuangu (經籍簒詁) dictionary of characters used in the Chinese classics . In 1915, Commercial Press,
2175-473: Is the world's oldest known dialectal dictionary. The circa 200 CE Shiming ("Explaining Names") employs paranomastic glosses to define words. 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
2250-532: 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". Nevertheless, the Chinese made their dictionaries, and developed three original systems for lexicographical ordering: semantic categories, graphic components, and pronunciations. The first system of dictionary organization
2325-736: The Chinese and English Dictionary in 1842. 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 . The British consular officer and linguist Herbert Giles criticized Williams as "the lexicographer not for
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2400-439: The Ciyuan xubian (辭源續編 "Source of words continuation/sequel"), compiled by Fang Yi (方毅, 1916–1997) and others, in two volumes totaling 1,702 pages. This supplementary dictionary comprises terms accidentally omitted from the 1915 edition, and new terms coined after it. Fang Yi's preface explained the reason for publishing an extended edition of the Ciyuan in 1931: "Within more than a decade and following progressive developments in
2475-605: 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
2550-460: The Guangyun . For example, in that dictionary, That implies that 東, 德 and 多 must all have had the same initial. By following such chains of equivalence, Chen was able to identify categories of equivalent initial spellers, and a similar process was possible for the finals. Unaware of Chen's work, the Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren repeated the analysis to identify the initials and finals in
2625-615: The Japanese language . While some foreign borrowings became obsolete, others became indispensable terms in modern vocabulary. 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: 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
2700-577: 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
2775-573: 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
2850-527: 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
2925-649: 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")
3000-403: The Qieyun , the character 東 is described by the formula 德紅反. The first two characters indicate the onset and the final, respectively, and so the pronunciation of 東 [tuŋ] is given as the onset [t] of 德 [tək] with the final [uŋ] of 紅 [ɣuŋ] , with the same tone as 紅. In the rhyme dictionaries, there was a tendency to choose pairs of characters that agree on the presence or absence of
3075-417: The fanqie method, a character's pronunciation is represented by two other characters. The onset (initial consonant) is represented by that of the first of the two characters (上字 "upper word", as Chinese was written vertically); the final (including the medial glide, the nuclear vowel and the coda) and the tone are represented by those of the second of the two characters (下字, "lower word"). For example, in
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3150-562: 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. Lu Erkui's (1915) Ciyuan ("Sources of Words") was a groundbreaking effort in Chinese lexicography and can be considered the first cidian "word dictionary". 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. The Cihai remains
3225-499: The 1910s. Chen's method can be used to identify the categories of initials and finals, but not their sound values, for which other evidence is required. Thus, Middle Chinese has been reconstructed by Karlgren and later scholars by comparing those categories with Sino-Xenic pronunciations and the pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese . The method described the pronunciations of characters in Middle Chinese , but
3300-570: The 1st century brought Indian phonetic knowledge , which may have inspired the idea of fanqie . According to the 6th-century scholar Yan Zhitui , fanqie were first used by Sun Yan (孫炎), of the state of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD), in his Erya Yinyi (爾雅音義, "Sounds and Meanings of Erya "). However, earlier examples have been found in the late-2nd-century works of Fu Qian and Ying Shao . The oldest extant sources of significant bodies of fanqie are fragments of
3375-615: 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; and the (1986–89) Hanyu Da Zidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters") with 54,678 head entries for characters. They both use
3450-685: The Australian missionary Robert Henry Mathews . 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. 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. Main entries were listed in Gwoyeu Romatzyh , and they distinguished free morphemes from bound morphemes . A hint of non-standard pronunciation
3525-582: 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
3600-464: 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
3675-597: 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. 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. 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
3750-479: 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
3825-483: The centenary anniversary of its first publication. In Chinese terminology , the Ciyuan is a cidian ( 辭典 "word/phrase dictionary") for spoken or written expressions, as opposed to a zidian ( 字典 , lit. "character/ logograph dictionary") for written Chinese characters. A character dictionary contains only the definition(s) and pronunciation(s) for a character in isolation, whereas a dictionary of words contains both individual characters and characters in words. Whereas
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#17327804100423900-480: The character 强 , which had two readings in Middle Chinese. It could be read as [ɡjɑnɡ] in the level tone, meaning "strong, powerful", which developed regularly into the modern reading qiáng . However, it could be read also as [ɡjɑnɡ] in the rising tone, meaning "stubborn" or "forced". The regular development would be for the voiced initial [ɡ] to condition the yang register of the rising tone, becoming
3975-558: The court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827 BCE – 782 BCE), 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
4050-501: The desired syllable and one with the same rest of the syllable (the final). The method was introduced in the 3rd century AD and is to some extent still used in commentaries on the classics and dictionaries. Early dictionaries such as the Erya (3rd century BC) indicated the pronunciation of a character by the dúruò (讀若, "read as") method, giving another character with the same pronunciation. The introduction of Buddhism to China around
4125-540: 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). The British missionary Walter Henry Medhurst wrote a Hokkien ( Min Nan ) dialect dictionary in 1832 and
4200-412: The fourth tone of modern Chinese and for the rising tone to condition an unaspirated initial. Thus, jiàng would be expected, and this does occur in the sense "stubborn", but the character also has the unexpected pronunciation qiǎng for the sense "forced". Chao attributed that to the fanqie formula 强 = 其 [ɡi] (level tone) + 兩 [ljɑnɡ] (rising tone) given in dictionaries. Here, the first character
4275-452: The future but of the past", and took nearly twenty years to compile his A Chinese-English Dictionary (1892, 1912), one that Norman calls "the first truly adequate Chinese–English dictionary". 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
4350-530: The history of and changes in the meanings of words, in the hopes of bridging that gap. Each entry was followed by its pronunciation (with fanqie spelling, a common homophone , and modern Chinese rhyme ), meanings, and often with illustrative quotations from the Chinese classics. However, as Têng Ssu-yü and Knight Biggerstaff say, the first edition Ciyuan "is far from exhaustive, and most of its illustrative quotations were taken from secondary sources without being checked". In 1931 Commercial Press published
4425-566: The initials. Voicing then disappeared in all dialects except the Wu group , with consonants becoming aspirated or unaspirated depending on the tone. The tones then underwent further mergers in various varieties of Chinese. Thus, the changes in both the initial and the tone were conditioned on each other, as represented by different characters in the fanqie pair. For example, the characters of formula 東 [tuŋ] = 德 [tək] + 紅 [ɣuŋ] are pronounced dōng , dé and hóng in modern Standard Chinese ; thus,
4500-508: The lexicographical need for the Ciyuan . In recent years new terms and new affairs have flooded into China. People from less-informed backgrounds find it hard to understand what "new learning" is about because of terms that are incomprehensible. Those who had classical knowledge often ended up giving up on new learning. On the other hand, those who went to study abroad did not understand what had already existed in their homeland when they returned. We therefore published this dictionary to indicate
4575-467: The marker character is 切 qiè "run together". (The commonly-cited reading "cut" seems to be modern. ) The Qing scholar Gu Yanwu suggested that fǎn , which also meant "overthrow", was avoided after the devastating rebellions during the middle of the Tang dynasty . The origin of both terms is obscure. The compound word fǎnqiè first appeared during the Song dynasty . Fanqie provide information about
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#17327804100424650-830: The most important of which was the Guangyun (1007–1008). Even after the more sophisticated rime table analysis was developed, fanqie continued to be used in dictionaries, including the voluminous Kangxi Dictionary , published in 1716, and the Ciyuan and Cihai of the 1930s. During the Qing dynasty , some bilingual Chinese-Manchu dictionaries had the Manchu words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters . The book 御製增訂清文鑑 ("Imperially Published Revised and Enlarged Mirror of Qing"), in both Manchu and Chinese, used Manchu script to transcribe Chinese words and Chinese characters to transcribe Manchu words by using fanqie . In
4725-1028: The most influential Chinese dictionaries ever published was the Kangxi Dictionary , finished in 1716 during the Qing dynasty , with the list of 214 Kangxi radicals it popularized are still widely used. The general term cishu (Chinese: 辭書 ; pinyin: císhū ; lit. 'lexicographic books') semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". 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
4800-493: The number of strokes of the characters, is usually provided. 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
4875-615: The original Yupian (544 AD) found in Japan and the Jingdian Shiwen , a commentary on the classics that was written in 583 AD. The method was used throughout the Qieyun , a Chinese rhyme dictionary published in 601 AD during the Sui dynasty . When Classical Chinese poetry flowered during the Tang dynasty , the Qieyun became the authoritative source for literary pronunciations. Several revisions and enlargements were produced,
4950-741: 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 . Twenty centuries ago,
5025-577: The pronunciation of characters lacking a homophone . For example, in the Sun Ya dictionary the character 攀 is transcribed as pinyin pān and for Cantonese pan¹ and the Cantonese tonal homophone 扳 , whereas 戀, lacking a tonal homophone, is transcribed as lyn² and 〔拉婉切〕 (l-āai + yún) to give lyún. If there is no tonal homophone, the tone is indicated. For example 實用廣州話分類詞典 transcribes 仆 as [pʰok⁶] and fanqie 〔披屋切〕 (p-ēi + ūk) but 𠵿, lacking
5100-470: The relationships have been obscured as the language evolved into the modern varieties over the last millennium and a half. Middle Chinese had four tones , and initial plosives and affricates could be voiced , aspirated or voiceless unaspirated . Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers (traditionally known as yīn 陰 and yáng 陽) conditioned by
5175-421: The sounds of earlier forms of Chinese, but its recovery is not straightforward. Several characters could be used for each initial or final, and in particular, no character was ever used to spell itself. However, it is possible to identify the initials and the finals underlying a large and consistent collection of fanqie by using a method that was first used by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li , in his 1842 study of
5250-410: The tones no longer match. That is because the voiceless initial [t] and the voiced initial [ɣ] condition different registers of the Middle Chinese level tone, yielding the first and the second tones of the modern language. (The pinyin letter d represents the voiceless and unaspirated stop [t] .) That effect sometimes led to a form of spelling pronunciation . Chao Yuen Ren cited the example of
5325-831: 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 "). The Xungu type, sometimes called yǎshū ( 雅書 , "word book"), comprises Erya and its descendants. These exegetical dictionaries focus on explaining meanings of words as found in
5400-795: 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. 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: The Chinese language adopted
5475-515: The world and changes within the political scene, it is natural that in science many new words have emerged". The Xubian also cites sources of quotations in more detail than the core Ciyuan dictionary. The 1939 Ciyuan Zhengxu heding ben (辭源正續合訂本) was a new extended edition, combined into one volume. The 1931 Ciyuan had 65,555 entries and the 1939 edition has 88,074, nearly a 35% net increase in words. In 1969, Commercial Press in Taiwan published
5550-411: The writing system, with current unabridged character dictionaries containing 60,000 to 85,000 graphs. Footnotes Fanqie Fanqie ( Chinese : 反切 ; pinyin : fǎnqiè ; lit. 'reverse cut') is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as
5625-522: 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 . 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
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