That’s deliberate though isn’t it? He’s not suggesting that these are neccesarily the ‘real’ etymologies of the words.
Brian
Yeah, but the prior edition is significantly smaller, so I keep a copy of that (ok, three copies) for carrying around (even though it’s still not exactly a pocket dictionary). You just can’t have everything; there are other decent pocket dictionaries, but they won’t have even a quarter of the contents of this ABC Comp. So, they have different functions. Put this one on your desk.
As for the traditional char’s, we must be realistic: the vast majority of Chinese usage around the world, based on population, is simplified char’s. I’d prefer primary status for the trad’s, too, but again, you can’t have everything. BTW, the noting of bound forms, and PRC vs TWn usage (while still needing some improvement), is nice, no?
Although he admits in the preface that some of the explanations do not incorporate some recent research, he dismisses such research as being “only of academic interest”. But I would argue that it does readers absolutely no favor to tell them explanations that aren’t true, and can be rather confusing to the reader as well. Saying the inaccuracies are deliberate hardly excuses them, in my opinion. If the purpose of the book is merely to be mnemonic, and the explanations are often not valid, the author should be clearer about that up front. Harbaugh’s preface does not warn readers strongly enough on this point.
I didn’t mean to be overly critical of the book’s accuracy. I was simply warning readers to be aware of the fact that, while it is very useful for finding and learning characters, it is in fact often rather unreliable when it comes to the etymology, so you should take the explanations with a grain of salt. A much bigger grain of salt than Harbaugh’s subtle caveat would lead you to expect. Because even when he says he follows Shuowen, he often fails to do so, even when he should have followed it. One example should suffice.
Here’s an example of how he gets it wrong in ways that are sloppy and confusing, and where he fails to follow Xu Shen, when in fact Xu Shen was right (and quite obviously so). Harbaugh gives the misimpression that the phonetic in 豎 shu4 ‘vertical’ (69-98) is 豆 dou4, ‘a serving container’ (now borrowed for ‘bean’), when that doesn’t even make any phonetic sense! It is clear that the phonetic (and in fact the etymon, i.e., original graph) is in fact 豆, a simpler variant of 壴 zhu4 (4th tone in Hanyu Da Zidian; but types as 3rd tone in MS Word; I believe 4th tone is correct), a drum set up on a stand, and by extension, to set up, to erect; erect, vertical (its origin is evidenced by its presence in the left side of gu3 ‘drum’, where it is semantic).
Now, to his credit, Harbaugh includes an entry for 壴, but although he claims he follows Shuowen, he fails to actually do so. Both Shuowen AND other scholars will tell you what I have, i.e., 壴 is correctly defined in Shuōw
That’s interesting.
For me it’s just a good way to look up characters that I don’t know how to pronounce and didtinguish between characters that I confuse.
Brian
Yeah, Harbaugh is great when you run into a character like 侍 shi4, and you get confused with something like 待 dai4, and then you realize the right side is in a couple others you know, and you want a convenient way to look up all the common graphs that have the same right-hand side – the exact opposite, in many cases, of the 部首 bu4shou3 or “radical” lookup method (actually this use of the term radical is incorrect; radical should mean the etymological or semantic radix, i.e., root, of a graph. Not all the bushou play that role, so this translation is bad). Despite my above criticism, I ＊ｄｏ＊ recommend it, as long as you don’t use it for real etymology.
KS
Yes, I could definitely use the publisher’s address if you have it.
I tried Google Taiwan but it didn’t show up (?).
Thanks also for this appetising narrative. The dictionaries I have are all bare bone affairs and I feel I’m getting subtly stupider with each new definition I read.
EB
PS. FED is also excellent for Buddhist terminology
五南 Publishers have a new Chinese to English dictionary out. It looks really nice, and different, too. For every character, they will not only show its meaning, but also expand into Chinese synonyms (which don’t necessarily contain the same character), and the English definitions of those synonyms.
It’s a little too big to carry around - and carrying it around is a must for me…
It’s interesting…
As for the 建宏 one… That was one big mofo… You might need one of those little passenger cars attached to the side of your scooter to carry that mother around. Dictionaries like that are better off on a CD-Rom…
[quote]五南 Publishers have a new Chinese to English dictionary out. It looks really nice, and different, too. For every character, they will not only show its meaning, but also expand into Chinese synonyms (which don’t necessarily contain the same character), and the English definitions of those synonyms.
[/quote]
What’s the title? I tried googling it, but couldn’t find anything.
Here it is:
http://www.wunan.com.tw/bookdetail.asp?no=6707
It’s actually not too big in size. Its format is definitely different than other dictionaries… Kind of like a Chinese thesaurus with English definitions…
Just imagine if it were bilingual – you’d need a forklift, too.
Personally, I strongly prefer the printed versions of dictionaries, because it’s important for me to be able to add pronunciations, cross references, etymologies etc. in the margins. It would be nice if publishers put them out in both formats, though, to make everybody happy; check with 建宏, they might have it out on CD by now.
[quote=“Sinister Tiddlywinks”]Here it is:
http://www.wunan.com.tw/bookdetail.asp?no=6707
It’s actually not too big in size. Its format is definitely different than other dictionaries… Kind of like a Chinese thesaurus with English definitions…[/quote]
Sounds interesting. Could you give us the book title please? I tried your link but got a blank page, and had the same problem surfing their site by key words. I tried calling both their Heping Rd and Shida stores, but they didn’t have any idea what book this was, without an ISBN or title, and couldn’t pull up anything under a catalog #6707 as per your above link. Thanks!!!
BTW, does anyone know of a good route for selling used CED/ECD’s? I’ve got at least half a dozen that I don’t use (simply because I have far too many). I tried a couple of the foreign hangouts but they only want English novels and the like, nothing related to studying Chinese.
That’s funny. Here’s the title and ISBN and a picture of the new 五南 dictionary:
漢英搭配辭典
I S B N ╱ 957-11-3376-0
I like to scribble in my dictionaries, too. But I can’t do it at home. I need the tea shop/coffee shop background…
Too bad it has only bopomofo order and a stroke index. Definitely not convenient without pinyin order or a pinyin index. But I’ll check it out, thanks.
I find it goes faster to go through tables-pinyin, bopomofo, or strokes- than fumble directly through pinyin-ordered pages and often miss and have to go back.
With 11,OOO words and 2,500 characters, the Wunan is definitely a small dictionary, but I think it can be used as a workbook for memorising characters and vocabulary.
EB
(Not to be confused with the 12 or so volume Hanyu Da Cidian!!!)
[quote=“speakpigeon”]Yes, I could definitely use the publisher’s address if you have it.
I tried Google Taiwan but it didn
I’m just barely starting to toy with monstrous multi-volume dictionaries, and am extremely curious as to whether others have seen or used them, and any comments you might have.
The 漢語大辭典 Hanyu Da Cidian (辭 - HDC not to be confused with the 建宏 publishers’ Hanyu Da Zidian - 字 mentioned in earlier postings here) has over a third of a million 
entries. (370,000 entries, over 1.5 million citations, and about 23,000 characters, acc. to its foreword). The ABC Series of Univ. Hawaii Press (bless their hearts!) put out a new pinyin index for it last year by Victor Mair, which I recently picked up. It’s only marginally larger than the ABC Comp, but just compiling an index like that for something like an OED is a gargantuan task! Anyway, Mair’s foreword says the HDC is as close as you can get to an OED for Sinitic.
In his foreword, he contrasts it with two works about which I know nothing: Morahashi’s Dai Kan-Wa jiten and the Zhongwen Da Cidian (which Mair says is essentially a translation of Morohashi’s work). Mair says they are encyclopedic, including people, places, texts, phrases, literary allusions, etc., while the HDC is a dictionary more specifically of polysyllabic words, modern vernacular back to ca 6th cent BCE. He says it contains monosyllabics too but I have not found them yet, for what it’s worth.
Mair’s main regret appears to be that the HDC is completely lacking in etymological info.
I just tried looking up about a dozen items in it, and did find four of them, including 剛卯, for example. I’ll have to head down to the Academia Sinica libraries and look the terms up in the HDC now.
Very, very curious, if y’all have any informed comments on this :help: or on the Zhongwen Da Cidian which Mair mentions.
Times Advanced English-Chinese Pinyin Dictionary was not found at Caves 
. The people there claimed to know nothing about it. All they had there was Far East publications as with most other bookstores. I will have to get it from China.
I have an opportunity to go to New York in December. Anyone knows a Taiwanese bookshop there? Last time I went, I spent several days trawling Chengjie but found only mainland bookshops, although two had the Far East Dictionary.
I believe there’s an “upmarket” Taiwanese district inside Manhattan but don’t know where it is.
EB
[quote=“Dragonbones”]Very, very curious, if y’all have any informed comments on this :help: or on the Zhongwen Da Cidian which Mair mentions.[/quote]From what I know, the first Big Chinese dictionary, like OED size, was the Dai Kanwa Jiten. It soon became a necessity for sinologists (my Chinese prof from college had one lining the top shelf of his office, I think). Chinese folks on both sides of the Strait noticed, and decided they had to produce their own versions. The 中文大詞典 is, I think, the Mainland-produced version, while the 漢語大詞典 is the Taiwanese one. I forget which one is supposed to be better, but I seem to remember that the Mainland one has a slight edge. Side story: I priced a 漢語大詞典 at Student Books 學生書局 on Heping (you’ve all been there, right? Excellent little store!), but never had the money to buy one.