Chinese-English pocket dictionary with Mandarin and Shanghai pronuncation

272 Pages·17.397 MB·Chinese-English

by  Davis D.H., Silsby J.A.

GIFT OF
J0H1T ALPIBD SILSBY

p.
CHINESE-ENGLISH POCKET DICTIONARY
WITH
MANDARIN AND SHANGHAI PRONUNCIATION
AND REFERENCES TO THE
DICTIONARIES OF WILLIAMS AND GILES
BY
•
D. H. DAVIS
AND
JOHN ALFRED S1L8BY
"THE INDEX DICTIONARY"
SHANGHAI
T'U-SE-WEI PRESS
1911
\
PREFACE
The Shanghai Vernacular Dictionary was published
elevenyearsago. Arranged in Radicalorder, it hasheen
found a great time-saver, and has been used to some
extent by students of Chinese outside the limits of
the Shanghai dialect. The first edition having been
•exhausted, the compilers concluded to add Mandarin
pronunciations and thus make the dictionary more
useful in other sections of China while its usefulness
,
in the Shanghai district will not be impaired.
The characters in the dictionary number about
8000, a good many new characters having been insert-
ed. These insertions are numbered by adding decimals
to the rotation numbers of the characters after which
they have been inserted. The old rotation numbers,
therefore, have been preserved, and the Complete
Shanghai Syllabary is good for the new edition as well
•as the old.
The 8000 characters of this dictionary will be
found suflfcient for most books. Those which have
been omitted are rarely used, and their inclusion would
make the search for others more laborious. The
references after each character, first to Williams and
then to Giles, make it easy to find characters in the
larger dictionaries, while the brief definitions will
in most cases render the use of the more cumbersome
volumes unnesessarjggO
mJ
The Mandarin pronunciation is given in Standard
Romanized, the system adopted by the Educational
Association of China, and the description given is
taken from the book published by the Association
entitled The Standard System of Mandarin Roma-
nization, a book which all students of Chinese will
do well to study. This system is a greatimprovement
on the systems of Williams and Wade, and we trust
will be appreciated by those who feel the need of a
system that is adapted to a larger field than that of
the Peking dialect.
Those who have attempted to prepare Chinese
dictionaries know how difficult it is to avoidmistakes.
Doubtless many will be discovered in this book, but
we trust that those who make use of this little dictio-
nary will find it so convenient and time-saving that
they will forgive inaccuracies, and will help us to
prepare for a new and more careful edition when this
one is exhausted.
IV