How would you organize a library or index in a language without an ordered alphabet, such as chinese?
In: Culture
Pingyin is a product of westernization.
First you need to understand a chinese word. it could be ranging from a single block like water 水 where as something like an ambassy would be using 3 word 大使馆
to actually find the word in a dictionary, you need to understand that a character is made up of components.
操 is made up of 3 parts, the 手leftside radical, then the 品top radial, and lastly the 木radical.
You would then organise all the letters with the leftside radical together, then further organise them on the 2nd top radical, and lastly on the bottom radical.
Here is where it gets fuky. there is basic words in the chinese vocab that are considered the “fundamentals”, those are categorized by number of strokes, and are basically our ABCs, except they actually mean something.
So in a typical dictionary, it would be the basic, then ALWAYS followed by left hand radicals, which then sub divide into the right hand component. Then once all left hand radicals are logged, you move onto ones with no left hand radical but only top radicals, so on and so forth. And unlike english, while you could gain some meaning from reconizing radicals, it is nearly impossible to know the pronounciation and actual meaning of the word, compared to english, where you can read it out.
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