The Quick Guide to Chinese Characters - Compact Edition

This Quick Guide arranges the 7000 most used Chinese characters in order by radicode, a combination of the English name of the character's radical in a list of 102 radicals and a numerical code quickly made up by looking at the character. 100 of the radicals are meaningful or descriptive and helpful in remembering the character. (Most of these 100 are among the 214 traditionally recognized radicals.) If the character has no meaningful radical – as happens for about 14 percent of characters – it is classified as AA unless it is split vertically, in which case it is AB.

If you already know 200 or so characters, you can learn the basic system in about 20 minutes and then find characters as fast and almost as confidently as finding words in a dictionary. Once you find the character, you get its pinyin pro­nunciation, basic meaning, fre­quency, and idiomatic use in com­mon two-character com­bi­nations.­

The numerical part of the radicode is made up by assigning numbers between 0 and 7 to the strokes in the character after removing the radical. This system of stroke encoding -- not stroke counting -- was developed by two Chinese authors. The strokes are taken in a geometrically determined order, so it is not necessary to know the caligraphic order used in writing the character.

The XinHua Dictionary with English Translation was used as a guide for pronunciation and meanings, but Internet resources such as The Flora of China, Avibase, Fish Base and the Chinese Wikipedia were consulted where appropriate.

While the Quick Guide is primarily a guide to characters rather than a dictionary of two- and three-characters words, the 6000 or so of these words used in the intermediate level of the intermediate level of the official test of proficiency test in Chinese (HSK) have been included. Each of these words is listed under its first character, and its pronunciation and meaning are given.

The content of this compact edition is the same as that of the desk edition; only the format is different. The compact edition has 5 x 8 inch pages and fits within a purse or coat pocket. The desk edition with its 8.5 x 11 inch double-column pages has slightly larger type, is thinner and therefore slightly less expensive.

This Quick Guide arranges the 7000 most used Chinese characters in order by radicode, a combination of the English name of the character's radical in a list of 102 radicals and a numerical code quickly made up by looking at the character. 100 of the radicals are meaningful or descriptive and helpful in remembering the character. (Most of these 100 are among the 214 traditionally recognized radicals.) If the character has no meaningful radical – as happens for about 14 percent of characters – it is classified as AA unless it is split vertically, in which case it is AB.

If you already know 200 or so characters, you can learn the basic system in about 20 minutes and then find characters as fast and almost as confidently as finding words in a dictionary. Once you find the character, you get its pinyin pro­nunciation, basic meaning, fre­quency, and idiomatic use in com­mon two-character com­bi­nations.­

The numerical part of the radicode is made up by assigning numbers between 0 and 7 to the strokes in the character after removing the radical. This system of stroke encoding -- not stroke counting -- was developed by two Chinese authors. The strokes are taken in a geometrically determined order, so it is not necessary to know the caligraphic order used in writing the character.

The XinHua Dictionary with English Translation was used as a guide for pronunciation and meanings, but Internet resources such as The Flora of China, Avibase, Fish Base and the Chinese Wikipedia were consulted where appropriate.

While the Quick Guide is primarily a guide to characters rather than a dictionary of two- and three-characters words, the 6000 or so of these words used in the intermediate level of the intermediate level of the official test of proficiency test in Chinese (HSK) have been included. Each of these words is listed under its first character, and its pronunciation and meaning are given.

The content of this compact edition is the same as that of the desk edition; only the format is different. The compact edition has 5 x 8 inch pages and fits within a purse or coat pocket. The desk edition with its 8.5 x 11 inch double-column pages has slightly larger type, is thinner and therefore slightly less expensive.