ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary

The single-sort alphabetic order of the entries provides by far the simplest and fastest way to look up a term whose pronunciation is known. Radical charts help locate characters when the pronunciation of a term is not known and facilitate access to traditional, simplified, and variant forms of characters. Other distinctive features of this dictionary include: information on whether a character is free form, sometimes bound, or always bound; traditional character equivalents for preceding simplified characters for each entry where appropriate; measure words for particular nouns; data from both the PRC and Taiwan indicating the relative frequency of entries that are complete or partial homographs; unique one-to-one correspondence between transcription and characters that permits calling up on a computer the characters of any entry by simply typing the corresponding transcription.

Renowned Chinese studies scholar DeFrancis (Chinese, U. of Hawai'i) expands on the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary, the first strictly alphabetically ordered and Pinyin computerized dictionary. With 196,000-plus entries—as compared to 71,000-plus in the earlier work—this newest publication is the most comprehensive one-volume dictionary of Chinese. Additional distinctive features include presentation for each entry (where appropriate) of the traditional character equivalents for the preceding simplified characters; information regarding boundness of individual characters, including differences in bound status for different meanings or uses of the same character; indication of the appropriate measure word to be used for a particular noun; and inclusion of a comprehensive radical chart providing users with access to the traditional, simplified, and variant forms of characters. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR