How would you use a Chinese Mandarin dictionary?

Question

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

Answer 1

You have to have a fundamental understanding of how chinese characters work in order to use a chinese dictionary. Chinese characters are broken down into parts that often have their own meanings, and then they’re sorted in the dictionary by how many penstrokes it takes to write each part.