Tuttle Learner's Chinese-English Dictionary. Li Dong
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5 CULTURAL AND USAGE NOTES
As a dictionary for learners rather than a mere wordlist, this dictionary goes out of its way to give essential information on cultural context, pronunciation, grammar and usage of words. For example:
lǐwù 礼物 [modif: 礼 gift + 物 thing] N gift, present (件 jiàn)
…
NOTE: Chinese modesty requires that you belittle your present, describing it as 一件小礼物 yí jiàn xiǎo lǐwù a small/insignificant gift. Upon receiving a present, it is bad manners to open it immediately. The recipient is first supposed to say 不用不用 búyòng búyòng You didn’t have to and then express thanks for the gift, describing it as 这么好的礼物 Zhème hǎo de lǐwù such a nice gift, e.g. ■ 谢谢你送给我这么好的礼物。Xièxie nǐ sònggei wǒ zhème hǎo de lǐwù. Thank you for giving me such a nice gift.
There are hundreds of such notes in the dictionary.
6 HOW TO LOOK UP A WORD IN THE DICTIONARY
6.1 By Pinyin romanization
This dictionary arranges headwords alphabetically according to pinyin. So if you know how a word is pronounced, you can find it easily, just the way you will look up an English word in an English dictionary.
6.2 By radical
Very often, however, you do not know the pronunciation of a word when you come across it in reading. In that case you can find it either by its radical or the number of its strokes.
Radicals (部首 bùshǒu) are certain component parts of characters that have been used in Chinese dictionary-making for nearly 2,000 years. Characters sharing a radical are grouped together under the heading of that radical. To find a character in a dictionary, follow these steps:
(i) In the List of radicals, look up the character’s radical according to the number of strokes in the radical. This gives a Radical Index number.
(ii) Turn to the number in the radical index
(iii) Locate the character according to the number of remaining strokes needed to write the character (i.e. number of total strokes minus radical strokes = remaining strokes). You will find the pinyin by the character.
For example, to find 活:
(i) The radical group of 活 is 氵, which has three strokes. In the List of radicals, look up 氵in the section marked “3 strokes”:
3 strokes
氵33
(ii) Turn to number 33 in the radical index.
(iii) As there are nine strokes in 活, and the radical has three strokes, six strokes remain to complete the character 活 (9 – 3 = 6). Look in the section “6 strokes” and locate 活:
6 strokes
活 huó
(iv) Turn to huó in the dictionary:
huó 活 …
6.3 By number of Strokes
Unfortunately, looking for a character by its radical is not an entirely satisfactory method as learners may not always know which part of the character is the radical. Therefore, this dictionary includes a Stroke index to aid the learner further. Simply look for the character according to the number of its strokes, and then locate the character by its first stroke.
For example, to find 活:
(i) There are nine strokes in 活. Go to the section of nine strokes.
9 strokes
(ii) As the first stroke of 活 is “ 、”, locate 活 under “、”.
、
…
活 huó
(iii) Turn to huó in the dictionary.
huó 活...
6.4 By English Meaning
To find out the Chinese equivalent or near-equivalent of an English word, use the English-Chinese Word Finder, which is practically a handy English-Chinese dictionary. Chinese equivalents or near-equivalents of over 6,000 English words are listed alphabetically in the Finder.
For example, to find out what airport is in Chinese, turn to “A” in the Finder and locate airport in the list of words beginning with “A”:
airport fēijī chǎng 飞机场 55, jīchǎng 机场 86The entry for 飞机场 fēijī chǎng is found on page 55 and the entry for 机场 jīchǎng, on page 86.
It is my firm belief that learners of Chinese will find this dictionary a valuable learning aid.
List 1
Meaningful Character Components
Most of Chinese characters are made up of two or more component parts. “Signific graphs” (义 符 yìfú) are components that suggest the meaning of characters. Hence, learning the meaning of these component parts will deepen your understanding of characters you know, and help you guess the meaning of unfamiliar characters. The following is a list of such meaningful character components.
冫= freezing, ice (e.g. 冰 bīng, 冷 lěng, 寒 hán)
讠, 言 = word (e.g. 语 yǔ, 词 cí)
八 = dividing (e.g. 分 fēn, 半 bàn)
亻, 人 = man, person (e.g. 他 tā, 信 xìn)
刂, 刀 = knife (e.g. 利 lì, 剩 shèng)
力 = muscle, strength (e.g. 男 nán, 办 bàn)
阝 (on the left) = mound, steps (e.g. 院 yuàn, 附 fù)
阝 (on the right) = city, region (e.g. 部 bù, 邮 yóu)
氵, 水 = water (e.g. 河 hé, 海 hǎi)
忄, 心 = the heart, emotions (e.g. 情 qíng, 怕 pà)
宀 = roof, house (e.g. 家 jiā, 室 shì)
广 = roof, hut (e.g. 庭 tíng, 店 diàn)
门 = door,