Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification, and Signification: A Thorough Study from Chinese Documents

by Léon Wieger, L. Davrout (Translator)

A series of etymological lessons classifies 2,300 Chinese characters, noting their modern and archaic forms, pronunciation, origin, semantic content, and variants, plus quotations of classical usage. Supplements include listings of phonetic elements and the primitives on which characters are based, an index of characters based on number of strokes, and other study aids.

Genres: Language, China, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Reference

820 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1965

Reviews

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful quick reference whenever I need to figure out what is the best way to properly translate or interpret a chinese word or a phrase....it is always useful to go back to old school rules and find the pictogram and sort out how it evolved ...it is like getting to "know" the personality of a word in the chinese language and how it grew up.....you make friends with it by understanding its history.

Of course for a more in-depth analysis you have to look it all up in chinese archives but I find this book so useful like a pocket-dictionary edition. :) thanks. www.ceciliayu.com

[Galatea · Rating 5 out of 5]

這本書太好重要的。我要保護。

deadass I read an entire dictionary published in 1926 huh damn
the Dover edition was made in 1965, but that doesn't change the fact that this book was written before the Taiwan-China split, before the red revolution, before all that.

Some of the meanings are outdated, a few of the writing and romanizations are as well, and the entire thing is in Wade-Giles, instead of the Pinyin which most people are familiar with nowadays.

Despite that, it's still one of the best Chinese dictionaries I've ever seen, split into four main parts:
>Etymological explanations of Chinese ideographs,
>Phonetic series of the characters, arranged by pronunciations and their cognates,
>Characters arranged alphabetically in Wade-Giles romanization,
>and the Kangxi listing system, just for good measure

there's also an extra appendix for the history of how these words developed from proto-writing to the language everyone knows today, and even an introduction explaining the historical context. God damn.

This thing is a comprehensive look, not at the entire Chinese language, but at thousands of characters that are more or less commonly used today. Reading this book cover to cover won't make you fluent, but it will help a lot.

[✨Jinglemarco✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler: on the cover there are a tree, a bird, a house/family and a boat. :)

[Dr. Carl Ludwig Dorsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dover reprint of the "Dr. L. Wiegel, S.J." second edition (1927) of his 1915 "Chinese Characters, Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification. A Thorough Study From Chinese Documents."

Not necessarily a reputable or recommended resource (particularly for etymologies), but an interesting prospect on a language.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to own a copy, horribly dated and missing Chinese characters for many terms.