Whaleshares Playground Academy. Learning Mandarin: How to Use Chinese Dictionaries (¿Cómo usar diccionarios chinos?)

Chinese dictionaries are really interesting since Chinese script is not based on the sound of each character but in the number, shape, and order of the strokes for each character.

Digital dictionaries are the best option if you just want to quickly find the meaning of a character. My favorite site is mdbg.net, when you land on the site you will get something like this:

On the textbox you can input the PinYin for your word or an English word o find the Chinese equivalent. If you are searching for the meaning of a Chinese character and don't know the PinYin, you should click on the brush and you will get a box where you can draw the character. Of course, you could just copy and paste the character on the textbox.

Here is where things get tricky, in order for you to find the character you have to draw the best that you can the shape of the character, but also you have to write the character with the correct other of strokes. If you got the shape correct but the order is not, you won't get the character. Below is an example of my mouse drawing of the character from the writing practice # 1.

What I like the most about mdbg.net is the completeness of the information provided by them. They have the stroke order of the character, its pronunciation, advanced search to find words that contain the character you just draw, and many more.

Once you have some practice, you will be able to guess over 90% of the time the correct order of the stroke on any character. In the beginning, you will have to remember only a handful of them and practice enough to write the character almost intuitively.

The basic rules are:
- First, write the upper side, then write the lower side
- First, the write the left side, then write the right side
- Horizontal strokes first, then vertical strokes
- Enclosure before filler
- First, the filler strokes then closing the enclosure
- Strokes that cross many others are written last
- Symmetrical characters' middle strokes should be written first

This rules have exceptions, they should be seen as guiding lines. More detailed rules can be found here.

I use two types of indexes for printed dictionaries in order to find the meaning of the characters, those indexes tend to be in the beginning or in the middle of the dictionary. On the first index, you should identify the main radical of the character and then count the extra strokes that the character has.

If I can't recognize the character's radical, then I went on an index that has the characters ordered by the number of the strokes it has. Thus I have to count how many strokes the character has and search it on the index. Finally, all the characters are ordered alphabetically by its PinYin, so if I know what the PinYin of a character is I just search it as I was searching in an English dictionary.

As a parting gift, there is a link to a pdf document with all the 214 simplified radicals. Also below is a video with all the radicals as well.