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# Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition)

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Review: Terrific tool for learning and memorization! - 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.
Review: Find a character with ease - What a cleverly designed book! -Search by pinyin (romanization) -Search by bopomofo (zhuyinfuhao) -Search the English word list -Search by THE PART OF THE CHARACTER YOU RECOGNIZE (doesn't have to be the radical) -Or, ok, search by stroke or radical -Another way to search, not mentioned in other reviews or even in the intro to the book itself: search by looking for a character that goes with the target character (i.e. I have no idea what this character is, but I just saw it printed right after the word for water. Fine, I'll just look up water, and there's my mystery character). And the definitions show plenty of combinations as well. After all, what is a zi (character) by itself? With this book, you will not be squinting through row after row of tiny characters as with, say, the Far East brand dictionary. You can find a word or combination in seconds, I promise. Focuses on "traditional" characters, as used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc, the same characters that have been used for the last 2000 years. Also, includes simplified form in brackets, which have been used in Mainland China for 50 years. If you don't care about written Chinese, and you just want to look up what you hear, then John DeFrancis' ABC Dictionary is surely the book for you. (It has simplified characters searchable by pinyin combinations). If you love Chinese writing, and long to look up every word you see, but are tired of asking your friend to explain it to you, then this book, 'Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary by Rick Harbaugh' is perfect. One thing on the website which is missing from the book: reference numbers linking the character to Wieger's etymology, which (correctly or not) attempts to further explain a character's origins with samples of gu-wen (ancient writing). Notice that this book currently takes 1-2 weeks to ship.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #965,960 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,740 in Foreign Dictionaries & Thesauruses |
| Customer Reviews | 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (175) |
| Dimensions  | 5.25 x 1 x 7 inches |
| ISBN-10  | 0966075005 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0966075007 |
| Item Weight  | 1.05 pounds |
| Language  | English, Mandarin Chinese |
| Print length  | 544 pages |
| Publication date  | September 1, 1999 |
| Publisher  | Yale University Press |

## Images

![Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81KtP26xF9L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Terrific tool for learning and memorization!
*by T***C on April 21, 2003*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Find a character with ease
*by S***K on March 15, 2002*

What a cleverly designed book! -Search by pinyin (romanization) -Search by bopomofo (zhuyinfuhao) -Search the English word list -Search by THE PART OF THE CHARACTER YOU RECOGNIZE (doesn't have to be the radical) -Or, ok, search by stroke or radical -Another way to search, not mentioned in other reviews or even in the intro to the book itself: search by looking for a character that goes with the target character (i.e. I have no idea what this character is, but I just saw it printed right after the word for water. Fine, I'll just look up water, and there's my mystery character). And the definitions show plenty of combinations as well. After all, what is a zi (character) by itself? With this book, you will not be squinting through row after row of tiny characters as with, say, the Far East brand dictionary. You can find a word or combination in seconds, I promise. Focuses on "traditional" characters, as used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc, the same characters that have been used for the last 2000 years. Also, includes simplified form in brackets, which have been used in Mainland China for 50 years. If you don't care about written Chinese, and you just want to look up what you hear, then John DeFrancis' ABC Dictionary is surely the book for you. (It has simplified characters searchable by pinyin combinations). If you love Chinese writing, and long to look up every word you see, but are tired of asking your friend to explain it to you, then this book, 'Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary by Rick Harbaugh' is perfect. One thing on the website which is missing from the book: reference numbers linking the character to Wieger's etymology, which (correctly or not) attempts to further explain a character's origins with samples of gu-wen (ancient writing). Notice that this book currently takes 1-2 weeks to ship.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Zhongwen Zipu
*by C***N on April 11, 2010*

I've used this dictionary for about eight months now. This dictionary doesn't have every single Chinese character in it, but it has enough so that it's useful as a reading companion. This dictionary and a more comprehensive dictionary together would be ideal. After using this dictionary, I'm of the opinion that every Chinese dictionary should be organized with zi4pu3 (genealogical tables). One nice thing is that you can look up a character without knowing how it's pronounced or what its radical is. It's usually not too hard to find a character, but every once in a while (especially as a beginner) you'll come across an elusive one. However, if you already know the pronunciation of the character, it's quite easy to find. There are four ways to use this dictionary to find a character, which I'll rank from quickest to slowest: (1)by pronunciation, (2)by radical, (3)by the genealogical tables, and (4)by the number of strokes. Hopefully you never have to use (4). This dictionary is organized using traditional characters. Since traditional characters are usually closely related to their simplified versions, using this dictionary is acceptable for those of us who wish to learn Pu3tong1hua4 (mainland Mandarin). The simplified versions of all the characters are written in the entries.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-27*