Chinese - english dictionary file
827 BCE – 782 BCE), and was the source of the 籀文 zhòuwén variant forms listed in the Han Dynasty Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. For example, the Shizhoupian ( 史籀篇) was compiled by one or more historians in the court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. The earliest of them only survive in fragments or quotations within Chinese classic texts. The precursors of Chinese dictionaries are primers designed for students of Chinese characters. Zidian is a much older and more common word than cidian, and Yang notes zidian is often "used for both 'character dictionary' and 'word dictionary'. 'character dictionary') combines zi ( 字 "character, graph letter, script, writing word") and dian ( 典 "dictionary, encyclopedia standard, rule statute, canon classical allusion").įor word dictionaries, cidian is interchangeably written ( 辭典/ 辞典 cídiǎn tzʻŭ²-tien³ "word dictionary") or ( 詞典/ 词典 cídiǎn tzʻŭ²-tien³ "word dictionary") using cí ( 辭 "word, speech phrase, expression diction, phraseology statement a kind of poetic prose depart decline resign"), and its graphic variant cí ( 詞 "word, term expression, phrase speech, statement part of speech a kind of tonal poetry"). The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character/logograph dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms.įor character dictionaries, zidian ( Chinese: 字典 pinyin: zìdiǎn Wade–Giles: tzŭ⁴-tien³ lit. The general term císhū ( 辭書, "lexicographic books") semantically encompasses "dictionary lexicon encyclopedia glossary".
2.3 Phonetically organized dictionaries.2.1 Semantically organized dictionaries.