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Summary: zhong wen zi pu
Review: This book is the most consisce ans efficent Chinese dictionary out there. due to it's layout it is perfect for memorizing characters, their roots, and meanings.
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Summary: A brilliant, original idea
Review: This book represents the fusion of an etymological study and a dictionary. Rick Harbaugh's brilliant book enables the reader to identify a particular Chinese word if the word itself, or even only the stroke count or a particular radical, is known. The word-genealogies help the student remember the words by describing the nature and origins of the word, i.e., by its definition as a pictograph, ideograph, logical combination, or phonetic complex. This book is much better than the average English-Chinese dictionary because of the flow charts, quick-reference English-Chinese index in the back, stroke-count indices, and thorough definitions. (And, as the webpage says, quite portable!) This book is THE indispensable, encyclopedic resource for students of the Chinese language. -Ben
Rating: 
Summary: Very useful, though not the only dictionary you'll ever need
Review: This dictionary is both genuinely useful and a fascinating book in itself. It won't be the only Chinese dictionary you ever need, but it's an excellent (and very different) complement to, say, John deFrancis' alphabetical pinyin dictionary.It's organised around a system of charts linking characters by elements other than the radical, such as primary phonetic components. This takes a bit of learning but together with the usual radical index, it really does make it much easier to find an unknown character and to remember where you found it. I actually found the book easier to use than its associated website, because everything seems clearer and more spacious. My only real problem with it is that the simplified characters are very minimally treated -- I appreciate this is intentional, but an appendix describing the main types of simplification would have been great.
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Summary: Most useful dictionary for a foreign student of Chinese
Review: This dictionary is compact, so it is easy to carry in a bookbag or while travelling. But perhaps the most important part is that it is extremely easy to use. There are indexes to search for words via radicals, the bopomofo alphabet, total stroke number, pinyin, and english. Moreover, the dictionary is organized "etymologically", that is, characters with similar stems are located together. For example, (if you're a student you may know these words) cheng-to become, cheng-honesty, cheng-city all have a common stem. They are all on the same page. I found this vastly interesting in terms of learning how characters were formed (each definition contains a brief etymological description). Additionally, by viewing easily mistakable words in this context I was better able to distinguish them later, and this process has given me a better understanding of the written language. The particular organization of this dictionary also speeds up the process of finding words that I don't know. For example, say I didn't know the word cheng-honesty, but i recognize that it resembles cheng-to become. I can look up cheng-to become phonetically, find it in the dictionary and voila there is cheng-honesty. For someone unaccustomed to the seemingly impossible practice of searching via radicals, this method is extremely useful. I took this dictionary with me when I travelled in Asia. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary
Review: This dictionary is very useful in writing letters and prose. Word (English and pinyin) lookup is also very simple simple. I highly recommend it to all my friends who want to learn Chinese. The printing of the Chinese characters in this book are very legible, not true in other "Dictionaries".
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Summary: Terrific tool for learning and memorization!
Review: This is a review of _Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary_ by Rick Harbaugh. This is an excellent book for helping students to (1) learn and memorize Chinese characters, and (2) identify characters that are difficult to find in traditional dictionaries. However, as Harbaugh himself makes clear, it is important not to confuse this learning tool with a scholarly guide to the actual etymologies of Chinese characters. In order to understand what is distinctive and especially useful about this dictionary, you need to know a little about how Chinese characters are composed. (If you already know this, or are not interested, skip to the next paragraph in this review.) Traditionally, there are five types of Chinese characters. The simplest characters are either pictograms (which were originally pictures of something concrete) or simple ideograms (whose structure suggests their meaning, even though they are not pictures). So, for example, the character for "person" was originally a drawing of a person, and the character for the number three is three horizontal lines. Many people assume that all Chinese characters fall into these two classes, but in fact only a small percentage do. Most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic compounds, in which part of the character gives a hint about the sound, and another part gives a hint about the meaning. The last two types of characters are compound ideograms (in which two characters are compounded into one, and their individual meanings contribute to the meaning of the whole) and phonetic loans (in which a pre-existing character is borrowed to represent a word whose sound is similar to that of the word the character originally represented). Now, traditional dictionaries are organized according to over 200 so-called "radicals." Every character in Chinese has at least one radical in it somewhere. So if you want to identify a Chinese character you haven't seen before (or can't remember), you take an educated guess at what the radical in it is, then look for it under that radical in the dictionary. However, one problem is that the radicals of some characters are not obvious. What Harbaugh has done is to organize his dictionary around 182 pictograms and simple ideograms. (Many of these overlap with the traditional radicals, but others do not.) Then he shows (using extensive "genealogical" charts) how about 4000 other characters are built up from the original 182 by adding more components. Part of what makes this book really useful is that Harbaugh builds the charts in a way that highlights the phonetic components of characters. For example, his basic character 175 is identified as a "pictograph of [the] interlocking framework of a house." This character is pronounced GOU, and underneath it in Harbaugh's dictionary you will find four characters with very similar pronunciations (and one with a different pronunciation) that include that character as a component. In contrast, in a traditional dictionary, the original GOU is not a radical at all. Furthermore, in a traditional dictionary, EACH of the similarly-pronounced characters would be found under a different radical. Consequently, Harbaugh's dictionary takes a lot of the mystery out of character composition and recognition. Harbaugh also gives you mnemonics for each character. For instance, the first character under GOU means "to construct." It has the wood radical on the left, so Harbaugh suggests you remember it by thinking of a "wooden framework." Each character entry provides a wealth of additional information: the simplified form of the character (used in Mainland China), an identification of the components of the simplified form, the meanings of the character (and their parts of speech), a list of common expressions in which the character is the SECOND component (with an index number to help you find the first character in the expression), and then a list of common words in which the character is the first component (along with their pronunciations, in Pinyin, part of speech, and meanings). Harbaugh has done almost everything imaginable to make this dictionary reader-friendly. Suppose you see one of Harbaugh's components in a character, and look for it there in his dictionary. Some characters have more than one component in them, so Harbaugh may not have put the primary entry for a character where you are looking for it. However, Harbaugh provides cross-references, so you can find a character under ANY of its components. Finally, this dictionary has a number of indexes: an index to expressions by their English translations, a Pinyin (pronunciation) index to characters and expressions, a "Mandarin Phonetic" (Bopomofo) index to characters and expressions, a total stroke number index to characters, and a traditional radical index to characters. The only concern I have with this fine dictionary is that an incautious student (or scholar) might innocently confuse it with an actual etymological dictionary. Harbaugh knows better himself. As he explains in his introductory material, his etymologies are based on those in the 2,000 year old _Shuowen jiezi_ by Xu Shen. This is an important work, but as a result of modern archaeology, we now have access to earlier forms of characters than Xu Shen did. Anyone seriously interested in historical etymology will have to go beyond Xu Shen (and Harbaugh's dictionary). With that minor warning, I can say that Harbaugh's _Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary_ is a godsend to students of Chinese.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific tool for learning and memorization!
Review: This is a review of _Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary_ by Rick Harbaugh. This is an excellent book for helping students to (1) learn and memorize Chinese characters, and (2) identify characters that are difficult to find in traditional dictionaries. However, as Harbaugh himself makes clear, it is important not to confuse this learning tool with a scholarly guide to the actual etymologies of Chinese characters. In order to understand what is distinctive and especially useful about this dictionary, you need to know a little about how Chinese characters are composed. (If you already know this, or are not interested, skip to the next paragraph in this review.) Traditionally, there are five types of Chinese characters. The simplest characters are either pictograms (which were originally pictures of something concrete) or simple ideograms (whose structure suggests their meaning, even though they are not pictures). So, for example, the character for "person" was originally a drawing of a person, and the character for the number three is three horizontal lines. Many people assume that all Chinese characters fall into these two classes, but in fact only a small percentage do. Most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic compounds, in which part of the character gives a hint about the sound, and another part gives a hint about the meaning. The last two types of characters are compound ideograms (in which two characters are compounded into one, and their individual meanings contribute to the meaning of the whole) and phonetic loans (in which a pre-existing character is borrowed to represent a word whose sound is similar to that of the word the character originally represented). Now, traditional dictionaries are organized according to over 200 so-called "radicals." Every character in Chinese has at least one radical in it somewhere. So if you want to identify a Chinese character you haven't seen before (or can't remember), you take an educated guess at what the radical in it is, then look for it under that radical in the dictionary. However, one problem is that the radicals of some characters are not obvious. What Harbaugh has done is to organize his dictionary around 182 pictograms and simple ideograms. (Many of these overlap with the traditional radicals, but others do not.) Then he shows (using extensive "genealogical" charts) how about 4000 other characters are built up from the original 182 by adding more components. Part of what makes this book really useful is that Harbaugh builds the charts in a way that highlights the phonetic components of characters. For example, his basic character 175 is identified as a "pictograph of [the] interlocking framework of a house." This character is pronounced GOU, and underneath it in Harbaugh's dictionary you will find four characters with very similar pronunciations (and one with a different pronunciation) that include that character as a component. In contrast, in a traditional dictionary, the original GOU is not a radical at all. Furthermore, in a traditional dictionary, EACH of the similarly-pronounced characters would be found under a different radical. Consequently, Harbaugh's dictionary takes a lot of the mystery out of character composition and recognition. Harbaugh also gives you mnemonics for each character. For instance, the first character under GOU means "to construct." It has the wood radical on the left, so Harbaugh suggests you remember it by thinking of a "wooden framework." Each character entry provides a wealth of additional information: the simplified form of the character (used in Mainland China), an identification of the components of the simplified form, the meanings of the character (and their parts of speech), a list of common expressions in which the character is the SECOND component (with an index number to help you find the first character in the expression), and then a list of common words in which the character is the first component (along with their pronunciations, in Pinyin, part of speech, and meanings). Harbaugh has done almost everything imaginable to make this dictionary reader-friendly. Suppose you see one of Harbaugh's components in a character, and look for it there in his dictionary. Some characters have more than one component in them, so Harbaugh may not have put the primary entry for a character where you are looking for it. However, Harbaugh provides cross-references, so you can find a character under ANY of its components. Finally, this dictionary has a number of indexes: an index to expressions by their English translations, a Pinyin (pronunciation) index to characters and expressions, a "Mandarin Phonetic" (Bopomofo) index to characters and expressions, a total stroke number index to characters, and a traditional radical index to characters. The only concern I have with this fine dictionary is that an incautious student (or scholar) might innocently confuse it with an actual etymological dictionary. Harbaugh knows better himself. As he explains in his introductory material, his etymologies are based on those in the 2,000 year old _Shuowen jiezi_ by Xu Shen. This is an important work, but as a result of modern archaeology, we now have access to earlier forms of characters than Xu Shen did. Anyone seriously interested in historical etymology will have to go beyond Xu Shen (and Harbaugh's dictionary). With that minor warning, I can say that Harbaugh's _Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary_ is a godsend to students of Chinese.
Rating:
Summary: This book is actually good, but one caveat though...
Review: This is a revision of my initial unfavorable review of the book. After realizing that a certain liberty was taken for the sake of "orthographic economy," I have re-evaluated this book to be quite good for my Chinese education. My only caveat is how this book handled the vowel ü, which was very nicely explained by reviewer Zhou Hanqing. I recommend reading his review before trying to pronounce the ü and u vowels. Pronunciation is very important. :)
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Summary: Fantastic learning tool ! Add it to your library.
Review: This is an excellent dictionary for learning Complex Chinese characters (fantizi). You can use it to look up a character and discover why you confuse this character with others. Because the character combinations are based on frequency and importance, you can learn a new character much more easily by learning all the useful words its used in. This is especially useful as traditional dictionaries only list words that START with the character and then may list unimportant or infrequently used words. THIS dictionary traces the character if its used ANYWHRERE in a word, and then only gives you useful combinations. INCREDIBLY useful. Anyone who has studied chinese knows there are a lot of good (and bad) books out there. Well, this is a good one and a "must buy" for your reference library.
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Summary: An excellent dictionary for learning Chinese
Review: This is an excellent dictionary for those who are interesting in improving their knowledge of Chinese characters and the language in general. I would recommend it to anybody either learning or interested in learning Chinese. It cross-references most of the languages elements and is a handy tool for looking up information on any Chinese character. A definite must for learners of Chinese.
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