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Introduction
There
are usually 2 ways to look up a character.
- For a character
you know the pronunciation but not its character and meaning, you
simply look for it by its sound as you would do an English dictionary,
according to its alphabetical definition.
- For a character
you cannot recognize in a text and you need to find its meaning,
you need to go get the dictionary definition by its radical, then
find the word, and finally go to the dictionary definition itself
with sound,meaning, and illustrations.The tutorial you will do here
is the second way.
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| 1.Radical
chart |
Go
to the Radical Chart (部首检字表）first. Every Chinese dictionary has
a radical chart, which contains all the 100 or so radicals.These radicals
are mostly the most rudimentary characters, in monographic forms: |
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| 2.Find
the radical of 确. |
The
radical in this character is 石 ,which has 5 strokes. Find the radical
from the radical chart by its stroke numbers.The number 56 refers to
the page of （检字表）where you will find all the words with 石 radical:
|
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| 3.Find
the character |
In
检字表 find the word by counting strokes of the rest of the character.
In the character 确，aside from the radical 石， the rest part of the
character has 7 strokes. You find the character under the 7 stroke column
and the page number where you should go to to find the word.. |
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| 4.Find
the word |
Then
you go to page 942 to finally find the word. You get the pronunciation
and the meaning of the character and the meaning of the word 确实。 |
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| 1.Find
the radical |
The character 实 has a different radical, which is its upper part. The
radical has three strokes; thus we find the radical from the 3 stronk
column: |
|
|
| 2.Find
the character |
Then
you go to page 26 to find all the characters with the radical. You find
the character you want by counting the strokes of the rest of the character,
which has 5 strokes: |
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| 3. |
After
you find the character in the 5 stroke column, you get the page number
1026,where you will find the word 实,with sound, definition,illustrations,and
all the words in combination with 实: |
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| Assingment |
Now
find the meaning of the following two words. Provide the pinyin of the
words and their meanings in English |
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1.秘密
2.忍耐 |
