63-573: The Jingdian Shiwen , often simply referred to as the Shiwen by Chinese philologists, was a Chinese dictionary compiled by the scholar Lu Deming c. 583 . Based on the works of 230 scholars whose work spanned the Han , Wei , and Six Dynasties periods, the work provides exegetical commentary on the evolution of words present in the Confucian Thirteen Classics and
126-466: 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
189-535: 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
252-520: 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
315-436: 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
378-585: 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")
441-680: 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
504-590: 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
567-488: A set collection, and to be called collectively the "Five Classics". Several of the texts were already prominent by the Warring States period , but the literature culture at the time did not lend itself to clear boundaries between works, so a high degree of variance between individual witnesses of the same title was common, as well as considerable intertextuality and cognate chapters between different titles. Mencius ,
630-517: 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
693-455: 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
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#1732779626515756-512: 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
819-524: 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
882-421: 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
945-487: 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
1008-429: 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
1071-507: 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
1134-473: 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
1197-532: 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
1260-579: The Biographies of the Immortals , a collection of Taoist hagiographies and hymns. Liu Xiang was also a poet, being credited with the " Nine Laments " that appears in the Chu Ci . The works edited and compiled by Liu Xiang include: This work was continued by his son, Liu Xin , who finally completed the task after his father's death. The transmitted corpus of these classical texts all derives from
1323-736: 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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#17327796265151386-835: The Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents , which meant that these texts would have been exempted, and that the Book of Rites and the Zuo Zhuan did not contain the glorification of defeated feudal states which the First Emperor gave as his reason for destroying them. Nylan further suggests that the story might be based on the fact that the Qin palace was razed in 207 BC and many books were undoubtedly lost at that time. Martin Kern adds that Qin and early Han writings frequently cite
1449-489: 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 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
1512-605: 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
1575-1326: 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 , 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
1638-615: 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
1701-527: 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
1764-573: 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
1827-527: 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
1890-596: The Middle Chinese stage of the language's history. Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren considered the Jingdian Shiwen and the Qieyun , a rime dictionary assembled in 601, as the two primary sources for the reconstruction of Middle Chinese . Many studies in Chinese historical linguistics use data from the Jingdian Shiwen . Chinese dictionary There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in
1953-649: 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")
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2016-498: The Song dynasty to serve as general introduction to Confucian thought, and they were, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, made the core of the official curriculum for the civil service examinations. They are: The official curriculum of the imperial examination system from the Song dynasty onward are the Thirteen Classics . In total, these works total to more than 600,000 characters that must be memorized in order to pass
2079-701: The Thirteen Classics . The Chinese classics used a form of written Chinese consciously imitated by later authors, now known as Classical Chinese . A common Chinese word for "classic" ( 經 ; 经 ; jīng ) literally means ' warp thread ', in reference to the techniques by which works of this period were bound into volumes. Texts may include shi ( 史 , ' histories ') zi ( 子 'master texts'), philosophical treatises usually associated with an individual and later systematized into schools of thought but also including works on agriculture, medicine , mathematics, astronomy , divination, art criticism, and other miscellaneous writings) and ji ( 集 'literary works') as well as
2142-562: 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
2205-615: 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
2268-685: 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
2331-582: 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
2394-652: The Classics, especially the Documents and the Classic of Poetry , which would not have been possible if they had been burned, as reported. The Five Classics ( 五經 ; Wǔjīng ) are five pre-Qin texts that became part of the state-sponsored curriculum during the Western Han dynasty , which adopted Confucianism as its official ideology. It was during this period that the texts first began to be considered together as
2457-556: The Confucian Classics and their secondary literature; history; philosophy; and poetry. There are sub-categories within each branch, but due to the small number of pre-Qin works in the Classics, History and Poetry branches, the sub-categories are only reproduced for the Philosophy branch. The philosophical typology of individual pre-imperial texts has in every case been applied retroactively, rather than consciously within
2520-500: The Daoist Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi . Namely, it tacks the gradual shifts in both the meaning and pronunciation of classical words. to It also cites numerous ancient works that no longer exist; citations which for some constitute the only documentary evidence of their previous existence. The dictionary's pronunciations are given by fanqie annotations, and have proved invaluable for historical linguists studying
2583-464: 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
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2646-597: 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
2709-486: The alleged Qin objective of strengthening Legalism, the traditional account is anachronistic in that Legalism was not yet a defined category of thought during the Qin period, and the "schools of thought" model is no longer considered to be an accurate portrayal of the intellectual history of pre-imperial China. Michael Nylan observes that despite its mythic significance, the " burning of books and burying of scholars " legend does not bear close scrutiny. Nylan suggests that
2772-479: 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
2835-419: The ancient virtuous rulers. Li Si believed that if the people were to read these works they were likely to invoke the past and become dissatisfied with the present. The reason for opposing various schools of philosophy was that they advocated political ideas often incompatible with the totalitarian regime. Modern historians doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later. Regarding
2898-460: The command of the emperor, Liu Xiang (77–6 BC ) compiled the first catalogue of the imperial library, the Abstracts ( 別錄 ; 别录 ; Bielu ), and is the first known editor of the Classic of Mountains and Seas , which was finished by his son. Liu also edited collections of stories and biographies, the Biographies of Exemplary Women . He has long erroneously been credited with compiling
2961-558: 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
3024-465: The cultivation of jing , 'essence' in Chinese medicine. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Four Books and Five Classics were the subjects of mandatory study by those Confucian scholars who wished to take the imperial examination and needed to pass them in order to become scholar-officials . Any political discussion was full of references to this background, and one could not become part of
3087-413: The examination. Moreover, these works are accompanied by extensive commentary and annotation, containing approximately 300 million characters by some estimates. It is often difficult or impossible to precisely date pre-Qin works beyond their being "pre-Qin", a period of 1000 years. Information in ancient China was often by oral tradition and passed down from generations before so was rarely written down, so
3150-760: The first emperor of China , unified China in 221 BC, his chancellor Li Si suggested suppressing intellectual discourse to unify thought and political opinion. This was alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought , with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism . According to the Shiji , three categories of books were viewed by Li Si to be most dangerous politically. These were poetry, history (especially historical records of other states than Qin), and philosophy. The ancient collection of poetry and historical records contained many stories concerning
3213-540: 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
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#17327796265153276-452: 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
3339-600: The leading Confucian scholar of the time, regarded the Spring and Autumn Annals as being equally important as the semi-legendary chronicles of earlier periods. Up to the Western Han, authors would typically list the Classics in the order Poems-Documents-Rituals-Changes-Spring and Autumn. However, from the Eastern Han the default order instead became Changes-Documents-Poems-Rituals-Spring and Autumn. In 26 BCE, at
3402-625: The literati—or even a military officer in some periods—without having memorized them. Generally, children first memorized the Chinese characters of the Three Character Classic and Hundred Family Surnames and they then went on to memorize the other classics. The literate elite therefore shared a common culture and set of values. According to Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian , after Qin Shi Huang ,
3465-493: 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
3528-712: The older the composition of the texts may not be in a chronological order as that which was arranged and presented by their attributed "authors". The below list is therefore organized in the order which is found in the Siku Quanshu ( Complete Library of the Four Treasuries ), the encyclopedic collation of the works found in the imperial library of the Qing dynasty under the Qianlong Emperor . The Siku Quanshu classifies all works into 4 top-level branches:
3591-741: 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,
3654-546: The reason Han dynasty scholars charged the Qin with destroying the Confucian Five Classics was partly to "slander" the state they defeated and partly because Han scholars misunderstood the nature of the texts, for it was only after the founding of the Han that Sima Qian labeled the Five Classics as Confucian. Nylan also points out that the Qin court appointed classical scholars who were specialists on
3717-766: 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
3780-795: 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
3843-528: The versions edited down by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin. Michael Nylan has characterised the scope of the Liu pair's editing as having been so vast that it affects our understanding of China's pre-imperial period to the same degree as the Qin unification does. The Four Books ( 四書 ; Sìshū ) are texts illustrating the core value and belief systems in Confucianism . They were selected by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) during
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#17327796265153906-558: The writing system, with current unabridged character dictionaries containing 60,000 to 85,000 graphs. Footnotes Chinese classic texts The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves an abridgment of
3969-522: 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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