Hello!
So let’s say I encounter a Hanzi (hope I got the name right) that I have not seen before, nor know the meaning of or how it’s pronounced or written in Pinyin (also not a 100% sure about these).
Assume I can not just use the internet. In English I would open the dictionary and look for the meaning of the world by alphabetical order.
How would I find it in a Mandarin dictionary? I assume I won’t have to look through the entire dictionary trying to find the matching symbol.
Thanks in advance!
In: Other
Two indices will help.
The first has all the characteristics ordered by the number of strokes needed to write the character. (I don’t know how they order two characters with the same number of strokes).
The second index has characters ordered by “radicals”. There are around 250 radicals that are used to create the complex characters.
For example 明 (bright) is a simple combination of 日(sun) and (月) moon. The sun is the most important so the word will be placed with other characters that have the sun in a similarly important position.
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