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Fanqie
''Fanqie'' ( zh, t= 反切, p=fǎnqiè) is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one with the same rest of the syllable (the final). The method was introduced in the 3rd century AD and used in dictionaries and commentaries on the classics until the early 20th century. History Early dictionaries such as the '' Erya'' (3rd century BC) indicated the pronunciation of a character by the ''dúruò'' (讀若, "read as") method, giving another character with the same pronunciation. The introduction of Buddhism to China around the 1st century brought Indian phonetic knowledge, which may have inspired the idea of ''fanqie''. According to the 6th-century scholar Yan Zhitui, ''fanqie'' were first used by Sun Yan (孫炎), of the state of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD), in his ''Erya Yinyi'' (爾雅音義, "S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhyme Dictionary
A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book () is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary that collates characters by tone and rhyme, instead of by radical. The most important rime dictionary tradition began with the '' Qieyun'' (601), which codified correct pronunciations for reading the classics and writing poetry by combining the reading traditions of north and south China. This work became very popular during the Tang dynasty, and went through a series of revisions and expansions, of which the most famous is the ''Guangyun'' (1007–1008). These dictionaries specify the pronunciations of characters using the '' fǎnqiè'' method, giving a pair of characters indicating the onset and remainder of the syllable respectively. The later rime tables gave a significantly more precise and systematic account of the sounds of these dictionaries by tabulating syllables by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The phonological system inferred from these books, of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rime Table
A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the ''Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significantly more precise and systematic account of the sounds of those dictionaries than the previously used analysis, but many of its details remain obscure. The phonological system that is implicit in the rime dictionaries and analysed in the rime tables is known as Middle Chinese, and is the traditional starting point for efforts to recover the sounds of early forms of Chinese. Some authors distinguish the two layers as Early and Late Middle Chinese respectively. The earliest rime tables are associated with Chinese Buddhist monks, who are believed to have been inspired by the Sanskrit syllable charts in the Siddham script they used to study the language. The oldest extant rime tables are the 12th-century '' Yunjing'' ("mirror of rhymes" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qieyun
The ''Qieyun'' () is a Chinese rhyme dictionary, published in 601 during the Sui dynasty. The book was a guide to proper reading of classical texts, using the ''fanqie'' method to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The ''Qieyun'' and later redactions, notably the ''Guangyun'', are important documentary sources used in the reconstruction of historical Chinese phonology. History The book was created by Lu Fayan (Lu Fa-yen; ) in 601. The preface of the ''Qieyun'' describes how the plan of the book originated from a discussion with eight of his friends 20 years earlier at his home in Chang'an, the capital of Sui China. None of these scholars was originally from Chang'an; they were native speakers of differing dialects – five northern and three southern. According to Lu, Yan Zhitui (顏之推) and Xiao Gai (), both men originally from the south, were the most influential in setting up the norms on which the ''Qieyun'' was based. However, the dictionary was comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qieyun Dong Entry Fanqie
The ''Qieyun'' () is a Chinese rhyme dictionary, published in 601 during the Sui dynasty. The book was a guide to proper reading of classical texts, using the ''fanqie'' method to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The ''Qieyun'' and later redactions, notably the ''Guangyun'', are important documentary sources used in the reconstruction of historical Chinese phonology. History The book was created by Lu Fayan (Lu Fa-yen; ) in 601. The preface of the ''Qieyun'' describes how the plan of the book originated from a discussion with eight of his friends 20 years earlier at his home in Chang'an, the capital of Sui China. None of these scholars was originally from Chang'an; they were native speakers of differing dialects – five northern and three southern. According to Lu, Yan Zhitui (顏之推) and Xiao Gai (), both men originally from the south, were the most influential in setting up the norms on which the ''Qieyun'' was based. However, the dictionary was co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yupian
The ''Yupian'' (; "Jade Chapters") is a c. 543 Chinese dictionary edited by Gu Yewang ( 顧野王; Ku Yeh-wang; 519–581) during the Liang dynasty. It arranges 12,158 character entries under 542 radicals, which differ somewhat from the original 540 in the ''Shuowen Jiezi''. Each character entry gives a fanqie pronunciation gloss and a definition, with occasional annotation. The ''Yupian'' is a significant work in the history of Written Chinese. It is the first major extant dictionary in the four centuries since the completion of ''Shuowen'' and records thousands of new characters that had been introduced into the language in the interim. It is also important for documenting nonstandard ''súzì'' ( 俗字, "popular written forms of characters"), many of which were adopted in the 20th century as official simplified Chinese characters. For instance, the ''Yupian'' records that ''wàn'' (traditional 萬, "ten thousand, myriad") had a popular form of (simplified 万), which is muc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kangxi Dictionary
The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710 in order to improve on earlier dictionaries, to show his concern for Confucian culture, and to foster the standardization of the writing system. The dictionary takes its name from the Emperor's era name. The dictionary was the largest of the traditional dictionaries, containing 47,035 characters. Some 40% of them are graphic variants, however, while others are dead, archaic, or found only once. Fewer than a quarter of the characters it contains are now in common use. The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' is available in many forms, from Qing dynasty block print editions, to reprints in traditional Chinese bookbinding, to modern revised editions with essays in Western-style hardcover, to a digitized Internet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guangyun
The ''Guangyun'' (''Kuang-yun''; ) is a Chinese rime dictionary that was compiled from 1007 to 1008 under the patronage of Emperor Zhenzong of Song. Its full name was ''Dà Sòng chóngxiū guǎngyùn'' (, literally "Great Song revised and expanded rhymes"). Chen Pengnian (, 961–1017) and Qiu Yong () were the chief editors. The dictionary is a revision and expansion of the influential ''Qieyun'' rime dictionary of 601, and was itself later revised as the '' Jiyun''. '' Pingshui Yun'' system, the standard for poetry rhyming after the Song Dynasty, is also based on ''Guangyun''. Until the discovery of an almost complete early 8th century edition of the ''Qieyun'' in 1947, the ''Guangyun'' was the most accurate available account of the ''Qieyun'' phonology, and was heavily used in early work on the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. It is still used as a major source. The ''Guangyun'' has a similar hierarchical organization to the ''Qieyun'': * The dictionary is split into fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Dictionary
Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article discusses some of the most important. Terminology The general term ''císhū'' (, "lexicographic books") semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: ''zidian'' (character/logograph dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and ''cidian'' (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms. For character dictionaries, ''zidian'' () combines ''zi'' "character, graph; letter, script, writing; word") and ''dian'' "dictionary, encyclopedia; standard, rule; statute, canon; classical allusion"). For word dictionaries, ''cidian'' is interchangeably written /; ''cídiǎn''; ''tzʻŭ²-tien³''; "word dictionary") or (/; ''cídiǎn''; ''tzʻŭ²-tien³''; "word dictionary"); ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jingdian Shiwen
''Jingdian Shiwen'' (), often abbreviated as ''Shiwen'' in Chinese philological literature, was a c. 583 exegetical dictionary or glossary, edited by the Tang dynasty classical scholar Lu Deming. Based on the works of 230 scholars during the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties periods, this Chinese dictionary analyzes the pronunciations (given in historically invaluable ''fanqie'' annotations) and meanings of terms in the Confucian Thirteen Classics and the Daoist ''Daodejing'' and '' Zhuang Zi''. It also cites some ancient books that are no longer extant, and are only known through ''Jingdian Shiwen''. Bernhard Karlgren considered ''Jingdian Shiwen'' and the 601 ''Qieyun'' rime dictionary as the two primary sources for reconstructing Middle Chinese. Many studies in Chinese historical linguistics (for instance, see References) use the important ''Jingdian Shiwen'' data. References Further reading * Kishima Fumio,Changes of the ''Jingdian Shiwen'' 經典釋文 – As seen in the Pattern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchu Language
Manchu (Manchu:, ) is a critically endangered East Asian Tungusic language native to the historical region of Manchuria in Northeast China. As the traditional native language of the Manchus, it was one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty (1636–1912) of China, although today the vast majority of Manchus speak only Mandarin Chinese. Several thousand can speak Manchu as a second language through governmental primary education or free classes for adults in classrooms or online. The Manchu language enjoys high historical value for historians of China, especially for the Qing dynasty. Manchu-language texts supply information that is unavailable in Chinese, and when both Manchu and Chinese versions of a given text exist they provide controls for understanding the Chinese. Like most Siberian languages, Manchu is an agglutinative language that demonstrates limited vowel harmony. It has been demonstrated that it is derived mainly from the Jurchen language though there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ciyuan
The ''Ciyuan'' or ''Tz'u-yüan'' was the first major Chinese dictionary linguistically structured around words (''ci'' ) instead of individual characters (''zi'' ) used to write them. The Commercial Press published the first edition ''Ciyuan'' in 1915, and reissued it in various formats, including a 1931 supplement, and a fully revised 1979–1984 edition. The latest (3rd) edition was issued in 2015 to commemorate the centenary anniversary of its first publication. Contents and significance In Chinese terminology, the ''Ciyuan'' is a ''cidian'' ( "word/phrase dictionary") for spoken or written expressions, as opposed to a ''zidian'' (, lit. "character/ logograph dictionary") for written Chinese characters. A character dictionary contains only the definition(s) and pronunciation(s) for a character in isolation, whereas a dictionary of words contains both individual characters and characters in words. Whereas a dictionary of discrete characters would have separate entries for ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcription Into Chinese Characters
Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to '' phonetically'' transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translation into Chinese whereby the ''meaning'' of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since, in mainland China and often in Taiwan, Hanyu Pinyin is now used to transcribe Chinese into a modified Latin alphabet and since English classes are now standard in most secondary schools, it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts. However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of the Chinese minorities, transcription into characters remains very common. Despite the importance of Cantonese and other southern coastal varieties of Chinese to foreign contact during the 19th century (as seen, for instance, in the number of Cantonese loanwor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
