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Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary | 
 enlarge | Author: Rick Harbaugh
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $17.00
You Save: $2.95 (15%)
New (16) Used (12) from $15.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 29180
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 550
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0966075005
Dewey Decimal Number: 495
EAN: 9780966075007
ASIN: 0966075005
Publication Date: August 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Book Description
This dictionary is designed to help students understand, appreciate and remember Chinese characters. It has the following features: -Every character entry includes a brief traditional Chinese etymology. -Genealogical charts highlight the connections between characters, showing the creation of more than 4000 characters from less than 200 simple pictographs and ideographs. -Mandarin standards in China and Taiwan are distinguished. -Simplified forms for each character are given. -Character entries list all words which use the character in any position, allowing a word to be found even if the first character is unknown. -English definitions are referenced in an English-Chinese index. -A word pronunciation index allows students to directly search for an overheard word without having to guess the initial character. -A stroke count index lists every character by number of strokes.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 Unique. Very helpful. Not intended as etymologic. May 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you want to learn the signs along their shape, take this book.
The book describes todays state of the signs, and their internal relations.
As somebody of the reviewers said: "this editor fell prey to the seductive charm of cute graphic stories"
Yes, and intentionally so. This book is for learning todays signs, gives relations and sometimes what is called "folk etymology", to make learning easier. If you are a sinologist, who wants to know how the signs developed diachronically, this book isn't for you. You dont need it in the first place, because you know all the signs already.
I hope this distinction: structure of todays signs vs hard core sinology & etymology is helpful.
Excellent tool April 4, 2008
I'm studying chinese language for 2 years now, have some conventional dictionaries and use internet for help me learning. After several months of using [...] as my prefered online dictionary to get definitions, and character genealogy, I bought this excellent book that has very clever indexes to find the information using the sounds, character components, pinyin, english meaning, stroke count, radical, etc. It is a great help for learning. Great work !
Unique tool March 9, 2008
A unique tool for searching chinese characters for foreign language students. It's easy to read. The book includes all the possible ways of looking for words: by English entries, by Chinese sounds, by stroke counting, by stroke order. The body of the dictionary is designed to illustrate how Chinese characters are actually constructed starting from radicals.
Chinese charactr search made easy February 20, 2008
Chinese Characters: A Geneology and Dictionary makes searching for Chinese words easy. The author, Rick Harbaugh, has included six indexes
to help the scholar and learner in what has often been a long, and sometimes futile, search through traditional Chinese dictionaries.
The use of the radical index had been the only option if the pronunciation of the word is unknown.
Harbaugh includes the traditional radical index, a stroke index, a pronunciation index, an English-to-Chinese index, a Chinese index, and an index using the Bopomofo phonetic system.
The dictionary itself is structured around the radical system; all words
derived from the same radical are presented in a geneological tree.
Word combinations, bound forms, are then listed and explained.
Pinyin romanization is used throughout.
I highly recommend Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary.
I wish this book had been available when I began my study of Chinese many years ago.
 Worthless December 3, 2007
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
I'm at a real loss as to how this book rated such good reviews. It's possible that it is a good book but I can't tell because the printing is VERY tiny. You would either need the vision of a Barn Owl or a really big magnifying glass just to make out the characters. It's going back tomorrow.
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