Dr Stewart Paton was Head of the Department of Languages at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, from 1976 to 1981.

‘The whole thrust of the work is that it is more helpful to learners of Chinese

characters to see them in terms of sound, than in visual terms. It is a radical,

provocative and constructive idea.’ Dr Valerie Pellatt, University of Newcastle.

By arranging frequently used characters under the phonetic element they have

in common, rather than only under their radical, the Dictionary encourages the

student to link characters according to their phonetic. The system of cross referencing

then allows the student to find easily all the characters in the Dictionary

which have the same phonetic element, thus helping to fix in the memory the link

between a character and its sound and meaning.

More controversially, the book aims to alleviate the confusion that similar

looking characters can cause by printing them alongside each other. All characters

are given in both their traditional and simplified forms.

Appendix A clarifies the choice of characters listed while Appendix B provides a

list of the radicals with detailed comments on usage. The Dictionary has a full

pinyin and radical index.

This innovative resource will be an excellent study-aid for students with a basic

grasp of Chinese, whether they are studying with a teacher or learning on their

own.