How to use a Chinese dictionary 

Contents

Part 1: 3 ways to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary

Part 2: the steps involved in looking up a character in a Chinese dictionary by radical

Part 3: Basic stroke chart

Part 4: Radical name chart

Part 5: Radical table

Part 6: two examples with screen shot (by radical)

Part 1: There are usually 3 ways to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary.

1. For a character you know the pronunciation but not its character and meaning, you simply look for it by its sound as you would do an English dictionary, according to its alphabetical definition. For example, you want to look up the character “江(jiāng)”. First, go to the “Initial column” and find “J”, then find the syllable “jiang” under it, and finally you can find this character.
2. For a character which has no radical and you do not know its pronunciation, you can look it up by the total number of its strokes. For example: “甩(shuǎi)(fling)”, “垂(chuν)(hang down)”, and “凸(tū)(convex, stick out)”
3. For a character you cannot recognize in a text and you need to find its meaning, you need to go get the dictionary definition by its radical, then find the word, and finally go to the dictionary definition itself with sound, meaning, and illustrations.

Part 2: The steps involved in looking up a character in a Chinese dictionary by radical.

1.    Identify the radical under which the character is most likely to have been indexed.

      e.g. to look up “房” (house), you decide that “户” (household, family) is the radical, instead of considering “方” (square) as the radical.

2.    Count the number of strokes in the component you have selected as the most likely radical. Search the radical index for the radical beginning with entries containing the counted number of strokes. Find the section of the dictionary associated with that radical.

      e.g. you count the number of strokes in “户” and find there are 4 strokes. Then you go to the radical index and find “户” listed in the group titled “4 strokes”.

3.    Count the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character. Look under that number (plus or minus, depending on your accuracy) for the compete character.

      e.g. after decide the radical and find it in the radical index, you count the number of strokes of “方” and find there are 4 strokes (you may take it for a 5-stroke part, in that case, you will not find the character unless you re-count it and do it correctly).

4.    Find the pages in the dictionary listing characters under that radical that has that number of additional strokes.

5.    If you cannot find the character, select another component as the next most likely radical, and try again.

      e.g. if you consider the radical of the character “房” is “方”，you will not find the character as expected. In that case, you should identify “户” as the radical.

e.g consider the character “信” (mouth with sound - a "human" standing next to his "words") meaning "truth", "faith", "sincerity", and "trust". Its index radical is "human" (亻) and there are 7 additional strokes in the remaining portion (言). To look this character up in a dictionary, one finds the radical for "human" in the part of dictionary that indexes radicals, finds the page for that radical, and then passes through the lists of characters with one additional stroke, 2 additional strokes, etc. until one reaches the entries with 7 additional strokes. If the radical chosen by the user matches the radical used by the dictionary compiler (which can be difficult to guarantee for more complicated characters), and if both the user and the dictionary compiler count strokes the same way (also often a problem with characters that the user is unfamiliar with), the entry will be in that list, and will appear next to an entry number or a page number where the full dictionary entry for that character can be found.

6.    In order to further ease dictionary lookup, dictionaries sometimes list radicals both under the number of strokes used to write their canonical form and under the number of strokes used to write their variant forms. For example, “心” can be listed as a four-stroke radical but might also be listed as a three-stroke radical because it is usually written as “忄” when it forms a part of another character. This means that the dictionary user need not know that the two are etymologically identical.

7.    If you have run out of possibilities, you are advised to look it up by number of strokes.

8.    As a rule of thumb, radicals in the left or top of the character, or elements which surround the rest of the character are the ones most likely to be used as index radicals. For example, “信” is typically indexed under the left-side radical “亻” instead of the right-side “言”. There are, however, ideosyncratic differences between dictionaries, and except for simple cases, the same character cannot be assumed to be indexed the same way in two different dictionaries.

9.    In order to further ease dictionary lookup, dictionaries sometimes list radicals both under the number of strokes used to write their canonical form and under the number of strokes used to write their variant forms. For example, “心” can be listed as a four-stroke radical but might also be listed as a three-stroke radical because it is usually written as “忄” when it forms a part of another character. This means that the dictionary user need not know that the two are etymologically identical.

      e.g. “火” may be listed as “灬”, “水” as “氵” in some old versions.

10.           If there are two radicals, either of each occupies one entire side of the character (the whole left or the whole right, the whole top or the whole bottom, as in “好”or “安”), left is stronger than right and top is stronger than bottom. Thus, the first of these will be under woman -- not child -- and the second under roof -- not woman.) If there is no such radical, but there is a radical in the upper left corner, it will count as the radical. We will call such radicals dominant.

Part 3: Basic stroke.

Part 4: Radical Name.