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A dictionary to beef up Chinese
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FOREIGNERS, who come to China to learn Chinese, tend to ask: “How many Chinese characters are there?”
The answer to this question might be more complicated than you think, as the number of characters varies from case to case — from 5,000,54,678 to 106,230.
If you learn Chinese and take the official Chinese language test called the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (also known as the HSK), you only need to know 2,600 characters to pass the exam at the highest level.
However, that is not much if you want to understand a street conversation, appreciate a Chinese opera, or make a special trip to the classical Chinese gardens. For a serious study of the Chinese language, “you need to remember about 6,000 to 7,000 characters,” says Adrian van Amstel, a professor of English at the Guangdong University of Finance and Economics in Guangzhou.
In order to remember and spot differences in characters that look almost similar, Amstel has compiled a sort of “Chinese Character Dictionary” in which characters with the same phonetic are grouped together.
In his dictionary, 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.
Counting strokes is not necessary, but it is important to remember the order of the 17 categories to which the first component belongs to. And then, there is a list of the character tables, which will guide you to the series with the character.
It may take some time before users are capable of determining quickly the location of the components. For this reason, a 30-page introduction is included, in which the method used for looking up characters is explained step by step.
A self-test is provided for users to practice their skills on how to dissect the character and where to find it.
Moreover, the dictionary contains a brief overview of the historical development of Chinese characters in general. Almost every component is supplied with an etymological explanation, which are helpful for better understanding of the historical background of the radicals, phonetics and characters. They are very effective in helping with remembering characters and distinguishing them from others that look similar.
For serious learners of Chinese who have taken a special interest in the written form, the dictionary by Amstel will come in handy when characters of the same phonetic part are compared and studied together.
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