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An Etymological Dictionary of Common Chinese Characters

Using the links below, you can download a very preliminary version of my planned etymological dictionary of common Chinese characters. It contains entries for something over 5,000 common Chinese characters. Each entry gives the standard Mandarin pronunciation in pinyin romanization (tones indicated by a suffixed 1, 2, 3, 4, in this preliminary version; ë5í indicates neutral tone), a character in its traditional, simplified, and (in most cases) Japanese forms, and its pronunciation in Middle Chinese (the pronunciation codified in the Qièyùn system of rhyme dictionaries) according to the transcription system presented in my Handbook of Old Chinese phonology (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992). For some entries, Sino-Japanese readings have also been added: ëKOí indicates Kaníon, ëGOí indicates Goíon, and ëKYOí indicates Kaníyôíon, Sino-Japanese pronunciations are given first in a romanized transcription of the rekishiteki kanazukai or historical kana spelling which was used until the post-World War II script reform, and then in the Hepburn romanization system. (Note that not all the Sino-Japanese pronunciations given are in common use today.)

In future versions, the remaining Sino-Japanese readings will be included, and Sino-Korean and Vietnamese pronunciations will be added, as will pronunciations from Cantonese and other Chinese ëdialectsí. Glosses, grammatical labels, and other reconstructions (including Old Chinese) may be added in the future, but the focus at this point is on Middle Chinese as a means of relating the pronunciations of various Chinese ëdialectsí and Chinese loanwords in modern languages.

The preliminary nature of this draft should be emphasized; I am distributing it in this form only because I believe some may find it useful to have a convenient guide to my transcription of Middle Chinese. Questions and corrections should be addressed to me at wbaxter@umich.edu.

The present draft is 188 pages (plus front matter); it is divided for downloading into ten .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files, each containing twenty or fewer pages of the text. After downloading, you can read and/or print out the files using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. This procedure should work on any standard platform (Macintosh, Windows, or Unix), and it is not necessary to have special Chinese software installed on your system in order to read and print the Chinese characters.

Download:

University of Michigan: Department of Asian Languages and Cultures | Department of Linguistics

This page was last updated Fri, Mar 30, 2001, at 1:50 PM.
If you have comments or corrections, please contact William Baxter (wbaxter@umich.edu).