Re: Order of logograms

--- caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
wrote:

> Because logograms cannot be alphabetized, how are
> they ordered?  There
> are Chinese dictionaries, aren't there?
>
There are several different ways of organizing Chinese
dictionaries.  In Taiwan you will sometimes find
dictionaries aranged according to the be-pe-me-fe
onset-rhyme phonetics with the characters grouped by
syllable and tone, then ordered by stroke count.  So a
character pronounced bao1 would come before a
character pronounced bao2.  If you have several
characters prononced bao1, then the one written with
six strokes would come before the one written with
eight strokes.

In China you get the same thing with the pinyin.

Then there are dictionairies that go by stroke count
and then organize all the characters with 25 strokes
by any number of methods (usually according to
radical, but sometimes phonetically).

Most common is the ordering by radical.  (I'll assume
for the moment that you know what a radical is.)
There are a limited number of them (219 is what keeps
coming to mind) which are arranged in a list ordered
by number of strokes and whether the first stroke is
hrizontal or vertical, etc.  Characters are grouped
according to radicals and then by count of the
*remaining* strokes in the character.  If you have two
characters with the "man" radical each with 15
additional strokes then (as far as I can tell) each
dictionary makes its own choices about how to order
them (phonetics, frequency of use, similarity to
characters appearing in the compiler's girlfriend's
name, etc.)

The radicals are character pieces (many of them are
also characters in their own right, though in slightly
[or radically] different shapes) which give vague,
generalized clues to meanings and frequently appeal on
the left-hand side of the character, but they also
show up at the top or bottom and occasionally on the
right-hand side or even in the center.  When a
character is made up of several bits, each of which
*could* be a radical, you just have to keep checking
till you find the character in the index, but start
with the left-hand bit.  Often you will find a special
appendix of characters with difficult or obscure
radicals lising complicated characters with familiar
radicals in odd places and characters with radicals
written in odd elongations or variants of the standard
shapes for the radical in question.

Adam

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