Product Description

This dictionary has been referred to as the Rosetta Stone of the Chinese language. A Chinese Dictionary for the Western Mind. This dictionary is a must for every Chinese language student because it is the only dictionary indexed by the root of the character, named the "radical". Most Chinese dictionaries are indexed by the pronunciation or the complexity of the character, that is, by the number of strokes in the character. The unique feature of this dictionary is that the characters are looked up using the English word of the radical of a character instead of the number of strokes or the pronunciation of the character. This simple rearrangement dramatically narrows the field of search for any given character. This dictionary teaches
how to identify the radical and also provides its etymology to help with
memorization

Go also includes expansive exercises and indices designed to help the student master recognize and memorize the radicals. The dictionary features:

How to use the dictionary
• Explanation of how to locate and identify the radical of a character
• The ancestral forms (etymology) of the 214 radicals. Fortunately, the 43 most common radicals appear in 75% of the 5,000 characters.
• Practice exercises to locate and identify the most common radicals appearing in characters found on a walk through Chinatown or on a Chinese menu
• Rapid access index of the English names of radicals
• Index of the simplified characters
• Dictionary of 5,000 Chinese characters sorted by the English name of the radical, with pronunciation, "Pinyin" spelling, and English definition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #285480 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From the Publisher
About Simplex Publications
Ping-gam Go founded Simplex Publications in 1977. His mission was to share how he simplified learning the Chinese language. His books reflect his quest to learn Chinese after receiving a Western education. After his death in October 2000, his three daughters chose to continue the legacy of his books.

History of Simplex Publications

In 1966, my father, Ping-gam Go, brought his wife and three daughters from Amsterdam, The Netherlands to San Francisco’s Bay Area. In spite of his Chinese heritage, he was born in Indonesia and Chinese was not one of the five languages he spoke. For the first time in his life, my father was unable to engage in conversation with the local people when he visited San Francisco’s Chinatown. As a world traveler who lived and traveled three continents, my father’s quest to learn Chinese was the genesis of Simplex Publications.
Trying to learn Chinese at the age of 44 proved to be extremely difficult for my father. He found the character strokes counterintuitive and nearly impossible to memorize. As he studied, he learned that the language was borne out of a more ancient form that was much more pictorial. Using the ancient strokes, he began to unravel the complexity of the Chinese characters. He was so proud when he mastered the first twenty characters that he made a chart depicting the ancient form next to the modern brush form, framed it, and hung it up on our living room wall. Not long after, he replaced this chart with one containing about 50 characters. This chart soon became the most frequent conversation piece in our house and many of our guests encouraged my father to write a book.
By 1976, he had written his first book, twelve pages of 100 simple Chinese characters consisting of 1 to 5 strokes. The next year, he founded Simplex Publications. During the next seven years, he self-published three very simple, but charming, staple-bound books which he gave away to friends and business clients: How to Understand Chinese Characters by Means of their Ancient Symbols, Part 1: 1-5 Strokes, Part 2: 5-10 Strokes, and Part 3: over 10 Strokes. In 1984, these books grew into his first commercial book, How to Understand Chinese Characters by Means of their Ancestral Forms, which is now in its third edition. In 1991, he published a tourist version of the book, named Read Chinese Today, which was both more compact and affordable.

By this time my father was beginning to make very good progress in his quest to learn Chinese. He was frustrated, however, with the way most Chinese dictionaries are organized because you had to know how many strokes a Chinese character has before you can look it up. As a result, he created a dictionary that was sorted by the name of the radical, or the root pictogram, of the character. In 1995, he published What Character Is That? An Easy-Access Dictionary of 5,000 Chinese Characters, now in its second edition. The dictionary was an immediate success, drawing many positive reviews.

Throughout the years, many members of the Japanese community urged my father to write similar books for Kanji characters. In 2000, Gam Go wrote Understanding Kanji Characters by their Ancestral Forms, Learning Kanji through Pictures. Suddenly, at the age of 78, he passed away, only weeks after submitting the book to the printer.

As my sister and I worked to close up our father’s home, the printer notified us that the Kanji book was printed and ready to be picked up for distribution. At the same time, the fax machine spewed multiple orders from wholesale distributors. Not wanting to disappoint our father and his legacy, we worked hard to fill the orders in time for the Christmas rush. My sisters and I were in the publishing business!

Now I love showing my two young children the first simple give-away books their "Opa" created. This beginning demonstrates that, to be successful, you can start very small and very simply, as long as you follow your passion. My sisters and I plan to carry on this legacy of simplicity and passion through Simplex Publications.

Diana Go
(Go Tjing-Hian)

About the Author
The ancestors of Ping-gam Go descended from the Fukien province in China. Born in Java, Indonesia, Gam traveled abroad for his education, earning his Bachelor of Science in physics and mathematics from the University of Amsterdam. He also did postgraduate work at the Imperial College of Science & Technology in London. He continued his studies at Leyden University in Holland, where he received a Masters degree in geology.

After working for the Indonesian Geological Survey in Java, he returned to Amsterdam, where he worked as a science editor for Elsevier Publishing Company. At the time, Elsevier compiled and produced English translations of all Nobel Prize lectures, which were held in the winner’s native language. The Nobel Foundation in Sweden officially recognized Ping-gam Go for his work as Editor and for his contributions to these translations.

Customer Reviews

An overhyped hotch potch amateurish but charming
I have rarely seen anything as over-hyped as this. It really looks like the reviews are all written by the family!
And what an amateurish production: No proper pinyin font - absence of 1st tone markers, a complete jumble of pages - introductions appear half way through the book, pages are numbered in the most haphazard way - it is clear that this has been amended and amended in paper form without any proper editing or electronic help.
From my point of view, another problem is that the simplified characters have clearly been grafted on later, but I have found it useful to look up traditional characters.
Mind you, all you get is a very short meaning - you may well then need to take the pinyin and look up in another dictionary.
I bought this near the beginning of my chinese studies and I did find it helpful and somewhat charming.

A "must read" prior to seeking a good chinese dictionary.
In my stuggles with the Chinese I have encountered many dictionaries and text books. This is probably the best comprehensive introduction to Chinese that I've seen. If you're going to China, taking Chinese classes or if you just want to read a Chinese menu, this probably will not be the last or most comprehensive book that you will want but it is the very first book that you must get! Reading it will make all future encounters with Chinese significantly demystified and much more user-friendly. Best of all, you will learn to navigate through a Chinese to English dictionary with ease. Buy it, and enjoy!

excellent
traditional and simplified characters arranged by radical in english, according to complexity ie number of strokes - wow, what a find! a great supplementary book for beginners to intermediate esp for those of us who get fed up with pin-yin dictionaries where the structure of the character takes second place to the pronunciation. the author aims to present a few thousand of the most popular charachers and does a pretty good job. though mandarin only, it's a bit easier to use than rita choy's book (the latter also has cantonese pronunciations but beware her mandarin is without tones!). Go's book is also for those who might be a bit overwhelmed by the extensiveness of defrancis' "geneology" dictionary (also excellent). it's no surprise that oxford has "nicked" the idea in their new "simple" chinese dictionary of presenting the written structure of characters alongside the pin-yin word order. strongly recommend.